We have 450 land-based Minuteman III nuclear missiles on high alert.  Despite hundreds of near-disasters due to human and mechanical mistakes over the years, these nuclear-armed missiles could be sent by a U.S. president in 13 minutes or less.  Thirteen minutes, with the very real possibility that false information, an electronic glitch or bad signal, or an error in human judgment, would bring the world as we know it to an end.

Urge Congress and the President to take the missiles off high alert.

Minuteman III missiles would not, and nothing can, prevent retaliation.  Even without retaliation, their unilateral use would ruin the earth's atmosphere -- all over the earth.  The missiles' only function is to kill others in a process that kills us too.

An easy immediate step toward sanity would be to de-alert the missiles so that 24 to 72 hours would be needed to launch.  This would increase our security by reducing the likelihood of an accidental or unauthorized launch.  Those intent on achieving nuclear doomsday could rest assured that U.S. submarines and bombers would remain able to complete that job many times over.

A second obvious step that would also work wonders for our federal budget would be to decommission these missiles.

De-Alert and decommission now!

Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.

-- The RootsAction.org team

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P.P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, and many others.

Background:
John Amidon: Dangerous, Deadly, and Time to Decommission
David Swanson: It's Us or the Nukes

Partners:
Voices for Creative Nonviolence