To B53 Or Not B53

Another execution took place in Texas. Only this one probably won't have the same groups up in arms as the last one. In Amarillo, the last of the United States B53 nuclear bombs was dismantled. This delivery system for death from above, hundreds of times more powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima, is being taken out of service. The disassembling is taking place one year ahead of schedule as part of the President's goal of reducing our nuclear stockpile.
First put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed ten thousand pounds and was the size of a minivan. The significant difference would be that you probably couldn't use it to drive the kids to soccer. It was designed to be carried by B-52 bombers with the stated purpose of destroying underground bunkers. Since the Cold War ended a few decades ago (you can blame Ronald Reagan for that), there isn't as big a need to destroy underground bunkers. Instead, our efforts in national defense center around shoes, underwear, and model planes, not to mention the occasional minivan.
It's a different world, and you can expect that we will continue to take apart those weapons of mass destruction as part of our dedication to peace. That's the kind of job creation I'm happy to see. Now there's just about nine thousand, nine hundred left to go.