Did Israel ever sign and ratify the Treaty? For that matter, did the US ever ratify it?

We Can Do It- 'Cause We's BIG

In France they used to sniff for romance. With US, it's the money...


"The US has always been somewhat impatient with international non-proliferation agreements. Despite a 1992 self-imposed moratorium, in the past six years the States has conducted 19 nuclear tests, dismissing them as sub-critical and therefore acceptable.

"But the Bush administration has upped the nuclear ante considerably. It plans another sub-critical nuclear test for 2004, and has authorized the nation's weapons labs to resume full-on nuclear testing with as little as six-months' notice.

"And that's bad news for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The UN-sponsored organization was set up in 1996 to ban nuclear-test explosions and to establish a corresponding global monitoring system. But there's a catch - the treaty can't go into effect until all 44 of the nuclear-capable countries that joined in 1996 have ratified it, a prospect looking increasingly unlikely as holdouts point to US intransigence as justification for their own burgeoning nuclear weapons programs.

"Take Iran, which as one of the original signatories, permitted five monitoring stations to be built on its soil. In January 2002, soon after the US began withholding funds from the CTBT's on-site inspection program, Iran began withholding monitoring data from the international community, thus rendering its stations useless.

"With America pulling back from the CTBT, other countries have been expected to join Iran in withdrawing their support as well. According to Daryl Kimball of the US-based arms Control Association, "The US is risking that possibility, and that may indeed be what the US wants."

"After all, Armageddon is big business stateside. The US budget for nuclear-weapon activities in fiscal 2004 tops $6 billion, over half a billion more than in 2003. Expenditures for nuclear-test readiness alone surged by 39% in the same period, and in a major policy shift, the Bush administration is poised to seek Congressional authorization for "usable" nuclear weapons."