The Human Costs of Bombing Iran

Matthew Rothschild reports on the coming(?) war on Iran. The good news - our troops may not be involved. The bad news - we'll still drop bombs. The worst news:

“The number of deaths could exceed a million, and the number of people with increased cancer risks could exceed 10 million,” according to a backgrounder by the Union of Concerned Scientists from May 2005.
The National Academy of Sciences studied these earth-penetrating nuclear weapons last year. They could “kill up to a million people or more if used in heavily populated areas,” concluded the report, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Physicians for Social Responsibility examined the risks of a more advanced buster-bunker weapon, and it eerily tabulated the toll from an attack on the underground nuclear facility in Esfahan, Iran. “Three million people would be killed by radiation within two weeks of the explosion, and 35 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, would be exposed to increased levels of cancer-causing radiation,” according to a summary of that study in the backgrounder by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
While Congress last year denied funding for a new nuclear bunker-buster weapon, the Pentagon already has a stockpile of one such weapon in the arsenal: the B61-Mod11, according to Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Federation of the American Scientists.
That the Administration is considering using such a weapon against Iran is “horrifying and ludicrous,” says Young.
But it is now Bush Administration doctrine to be able to use such weapons. The new “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” which Bush unveiled in March, discusses the use of nuclear weapons in an offensive way. “Our deterrence strategy no longer rests primarily on the grim premise of inflicting devastating consequences on potential foes,” it states. “Both offenses and defenses are necessary. . . . Safe, credible, and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role.”
If the United States used nuclear weapons against Iran, it would be violating the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, which prohibits nations that possess nuclear weapons from dropping them on nations that don’t.

Iran is touting its entry into the nuclear club (I still wonder if that is such an honor). So does this mean a nuclear weapon is around the corner? Experts

...familiar with the program say Iran still is far from producing any weapons-grade material needed for bombs and may be exaggerating its own progress.

Will this stop W? Not if he sees this as his ticket to glory.

History made - inner voices heeded - and millions die.