[PatrickHenry]

Nuclear weapons are now considered illegal to use except in retaliation for an attack by nukes on the defending nation. http://www.dannen.com/decision/int-law.html#H

Resolution on Nuclear Weapons, United Nations, November 24, 1961 RESOLUTION ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS United Nations, November 24, 1961 General Assembly Resolution 1653 THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, Declares that: (a) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons is contrary to the spirit, letter and aims of the United Nations and, as such, a direct violation of the Charter of the United Nations; (b) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons would exceed even the scope of war and cause indiscriminate suffering and destruction to mankind and civilization and, as such, is contrary to the rules of international law and to the laws of humanity; (c) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons is a war directed not against an enemy or enemies alone but also against mankind in general, since the peoples of the world not involved in such a war will be subjected to all the evils generated by the use of such weapons; (d) Any State using nuclear or thermo-nuclear weapons is to be considered as violating the Charter of the United Nations, as acting contrary to the laws of humanity and as committing a crime against mankind and civilization;

Even threatening to use nukes is illegal:

On the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons International Court of Justice The Hague, 8 July 1996 The opinion of the International Court of Justice ("World Court") came in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly. The Court found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons "would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict." However, the Court was unable to make a determination "in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake." In general, the Court based its ruling on the body of international law protecting civilian populations. Its analysis cited specifically Hague II and IV, the Nuremberg Principles, and the Geneva Conventions. ... A threat or use of force by means of nuclear weapons that is contrary to Article 2, paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter and that fails to meet all the requirements of Article 51 is unlawful;

Article 2 Paragraph 4:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Perhaps the debaters here are unaware that the Bush Administration is rethinking the use of nukes and had strategized about "first use" in Iraq in the days before the invasion of 2003. http://www.clw.org/control/iraqnukes.html

One year after President Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," the United States is thinking about the unthinkable: It is preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq. At the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha and inside planning cells of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, target lists are being scrutinized, options are being pondered and procedures are being tested to give nuclear armaments a role in the new U.S. doctrine of "preemption." According to multiple sources close to the process, the current planning focuses on two possible roles for nuclear weapons: =attacking Iraqi facilities located so deep underground that they might be impervious to conventional explosives; =thwarting Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons have, since they were first created, been part of the arsenal discussed by war planners. But the Bush administration's decision to actively plan for possible preemptive use of such weapons, especially as so-called bunker busters, against Iraq represents a significant lowering of the nuclear threshold. It rewrites the ground rules of nuclear combat in the name of fighting terrorism. It also moves nuclear weapons out of their long-established special category and lumps them in with all the other military options -- from psychological warfare, covert operations and Special Forces to air power in all its other forms. <snip> Among other things, the still-classified posture review said, "nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack (for example, deep underground bunkers or bioweapon facilities)." The review called upon the military to develop "deliberate pre-planned and practiced missions" to attack WMD facilities, even if an enemy did not use nuclear weapons first against the United States or its allies. <snip> What worries many senior officials in the armed forces is not that the United States has a vast array of weapons or contingency plans for using them. The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else. While Pentagon leaders insist that does not mean they take nuclear weapons lightly, critics fear that removing the firewall and adding nuclear weapons to the normal option ladder makes their use more likely -- especially under a policy of preemption that says Washington alone will decide when to strike. To make such a doctrine encompass nuclear weapons is to embrace a view that, sooner or later, will spread beyond the moral capitals of Washington and London to New Delhi and Islamabad, to Pyongyang and Baghdad, Beijing, Tel Aviv and to every nuclear nation of the future. If that happens, the world will have become infinitely more dangerous than it was two years ago, when George W. Bush took the presidential oath of office

Thus the United States has decided that, if it so chooses, it can ignore the International Laws and the opinions of the world and use nukes if it sees fit. Bush is a criminal of the most outrageous sort. A nuclear terrorist with the ordnance and the defensive sheild of US authority to threaten anyone. Bunkerbuster nukes must never be used, for they would place the US in clear violation of the laws of humanity and the International Court of Justice.