Spiegel seems to have willfully ignored Time Magazine’s [url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1816035,00.html?imw=Y] spin[/url]:

[i]The U.S. keeps an estimated 350 thermonuclear bombs in six NATO countries. In four of those — Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — [b]the weapons are stored at the host nation's air bases[/b], where they are guarded by specially trained U.S. military personnel.
But according to an internal U.S. Air Force report, the sites are falling short of Department of Defense requirements, with fencing and security systems in need of repair, thin rotations that often lead to staffing shortages, and responsibilities falling to inadequately trained foreign security personnel. [/i]

In spite of that fact, the title, of course, and the fact that the picture accompanying the article is of conventional weapons, the piece only alludes to a failure on the part of the US military, when in fact the report was about the shabby state of base security. To repeat:

[i][b]the weapons are stored at the host nation's air bases[/b][/i]

Those nations parade a kind of deep, thoughtful concern, what with their desire to defend their reputation as being efficient, thoughtful, concerned, and not prone to error, ever… something impossible in any human system of organization. Nonetheless, guess who has the [i]huevos[/i] to step up and take it on the chin. Time didn’t need to seek anyone out, wake them up, or bird-dog them in any way, but still managed to get a quote from General Roger A. Brady posted of the base’s website:

[i] I have concerns because of our mission, and I have concerns because it's human beings doing it. [/i]

While NATO handles this “grave matter” this way:

[i] In Brussels, a NATO official said there is no alliance-wide policy on weapons security: "Security arrangements for U.S. nuclear weapons are made bilaterally between the U.S. and the host country. Any improvements that would be deemed necessary should be discussed between those two governments and not in a NATO context." [/i]

So Time did little to get this story, and Spiegel even less, but there you have it.

Time: [i] A Belgian Defense Ministry spokesman, Commander Olivier Séverin, denied that security was lax at the Kleine Brogel Air Base in northeastern Belgium, where the FAS estimates the U.S. keeps 20 bombs. "We have professionalized the guards in all our installations," he said. "These are not conscripts but professional soldiers. [/i]

Reuters: [i] In addition to problems in structural security, the Air Force review said security manpower in some places was provided by conscripts with as little as nine months of active duty experience and that unionized security personnel presented challenges at other locations. [/i]

SPON quotes BZ quoting Gysi, of all people:[i]Der Fraktionschef der Linken, Gregor Gysi, sagte der Zeitung: "Wenn die Bundesregierung ein Kreuz hätte, würde sie unverzüglich von den USA den Abzug der Atomwaffen - möglichst unter deren Verschrottung - verlangen." Damit wären Deutschland und Europa sicherer. Die Mängel bei der Lagerung der Atombomben zeigten: "Mit Atomwaffen gibt es keine Sicherheit."[/i]

Which should give him pause about European military capacity if they can’t man the fence. Instead it turns into a rehash of [i]Atomkraft/Atomwaffen Nein Danke![/i] dusted off a narrative from 1977 which he surely must have known about by being the one East German who actually watched “[url= http://sk.dra.de/grape/seite80.htm]Der Schwarze Kanal[/url]” all [url= http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8465770216356180721&q=Der+Schwarze+Kanal&ei=rZVjSJPHGo6E4gKvr_jMAg&hl=en]those years[/url].

Well, to begin with, it wouldn't be you asking your sons to go to war, and I doubt that if there was a larger strategic risk, that we wouldn't actually turn our backs on the Europeans. But that's for other reasons altogether and has nothing to do with your sons.

The cold war was war, and we did do an awful damn lot to secure their space and keep it bloodless in Europe (but not in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, etal). I concider that from a historical perspective, that it could be isolated and minimized over such a long period of time in a dynamic space was a monumental achievement.

In fact keeping the jihad busy elsewehere and not on their patch is fighting for their security and interests.

But if you want NATO to be dissolved, it should be dissolved, not turned into another OECD or Sportverein.