LaRouche on Gulf: Obama Must Seek Exception to Nuke Test Ban Treaty

Economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche said today that a critical matter of the BP/Gulf of Mexico oil disaster for which President Obama has to be held to account, is that he has taken no steps to clear the most likely ultimate method of ending the oil gusher — a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE).

LaRouche charged that the President, despite accumulating evidence, has failed to act on the fact that — since this blowout may actually be a systemic blowout of a whole area of leaks, or a single disastrous blowout greater than hitherto acknowledged — in those cases the United States would have to use a peaceful nuclear explosion to end it.

"The President should have been advised of this, and he should have already gone to other signators of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," LaRouche said. "We should have gotten the agreement of the parties, in advance, to prepare an exception for this case, in case it may be necessary, with the implication that it may be necessary in other cases as well."

By seeking such agreement in advance, the President would also have been initiating preparations, LaRouche emphasized, since the United States may ultimately have no other way to stop the blowout. But Obama, on this front as on others in the Gulf crisis, has done nothing.

The competence and experience to design and deploy a device appropriate for use in sealing the blown-out BP well exists within the United States national laboratories. The United States' national laboratories have extensive experience with peaceful nuclear explosions, as well as with hundreds of underground nuclear tests carried out through 1992.