BISENHOWER WAS READY TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The Johnson administration got a very welcome assist from Eisenhower September 10 when the former president revealed that he had been prepared to use nuclear weapons against China on at least two occasions, These are recounted in the forthcoming second volume
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of Eisenhower's memoirs but were discussed by the general in advance of publication at a press conference in Gettysburg. The publicity was no doubt intended to help sell the book. but also had a political purpose == to show that the country's most eminent Republican sees eye~to-eye with the head of the Democrats on using nuclear weapons to exterminate Asians, thus helping to condition the American people to accepting nuclear weapons as a "standard" instrument of war.
Eisenhower's revelations about the secret war plots of his regime were given front-page treatment in the U.S. press, Here is how it was reported in the September 12 New York Times:
"tIt never occurred to me,! he said, that the United States should not use atomic weapons if they would 'best serve! the interests of the country. In some conceivable situations, he asserted, atomic weapons would be the only ones that could stop aggressors,
"twaging Peace! [the title of the forthcoming volume of memoirs] relates how the President and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, drafted a memorandum detailing the circumstances under which the United States might have to use atomic weapons against China. The memo was drawn up on Sept. 4, 1958, then studied and edited to avoid any misunderstanding. Communist [China] had resumed shelling the off-shore islands of Matsu and Quemoy and President Bisenhower writes that he wanted to make sure that the United States would be ready to react if the islands were invaded. seen
"The President and Mr. Dulles believed that the United States, to be successful, might 'face the necessity of using small~yield atomic weapons against hostile airfields.!
"The memo added that while there would be popular revulsion against the United States in most of the world,.it might not last long if the bombs were exploded in the air, so that there would be no tappreciable! fallout or large civilian casualties.
"Moreover, the memo stressed, adverse world reaction might not be so lasting or so serious as the loss of most of Asia, which could follow Peking's capture of Quemoy and Matsu,."
The other occasion on which Eisenhower now admits he was prepared to use nuclear weapons was at the end of the Korean war,
Once before President Eisenhower had drawn up plans for the possible use of atomic weapons against the Chinese Communists," reports the New York Times.
"In 1953, he let word leak out that unless a satisfactory armistice could be arranged in Korea, the United States would use its nuclear power to gain full victory. Shortly thereafter the Communists agreed to armistice terms."
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The most ominous part of these revelations, aside from their obvious timing, is the perfectly logical way in which they fit into Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam.
If Hisenhower was ready to use nuclear weapons in Korea in 1953, and again in 1958 to keep Quemoy and Matsu in the hands of “Chiang Kai-shek, why shouldn't the Pentagon use them now to step up the escalation in Vietnam one more notch,
HARRIMAN