Kerry's red herrings

With evidence piling up, why are we still paying any attention to Kerry's proposal to get help from the U.N. in dealing with terrorism?

Kerry's energetic denunciation of the nuclear bunker buster weapon seems to have caught Bush flatfooted, and impressed the media. It's a potential difficulty because it raises the specter of nuclear war which disappeared when the Cold War ended. Hugh dispatches such fears logically, in the link, but that doesn't mean Kerry won't score points with it.

But when you think about it, using a tactical nuke to obliterate Osam bin Laden in his tunnel system doesn't sound like the scenario for On the Beach. It sounds more like an reasonable counter to the increasing use of underground bunkers by people like Saddam, Laden and Kim Jong Il. How cancelling R&D of weapons for attacking these tunnels is suppposed to stop nuclear proliferation, I don't know. Kerry's use of it doesn't make sense, but it allowed him to sound morally outraged. Given the activities of the Chechyan terrorists, I don't see it as something that the Russians would react to violently.

Kerry got this from the anti-nuke people trying to gin up alarm to aid their fundraising. I suspect that it doesn't really amount to more than a lot of computer modelling, but Bush had better deal with it.