When you nuke sand it may well become glass, but the OIL
underneath becomes contaminated by radiation, making it
useless for decades! Didn't you see the movie, "Goldfinger"?



I thought it was Never Say Never Again.



In fact, both of these movies involved the threat to use nuclear weapons.


I remember that in "Goldfinger," Bond stops a gold-obsessed villain from
nuking Ft. Knox simply in order to irradiate all its gold, so that *his* gold
would increase in value!

In the other movie, the threat was to actually kill people via nukes --
blackmailing the world's governments for money.



In any case, it is rather reckless, to say the least, to consider "turning
the Middle East into green glass" (from sand), when you consider that we want
their oil, and want it NOW! One might just as well open with 1.g4.

Oh yes, and there are more than a few living creatures in the Middle East --
many of them human -- who would instantly die, leaving only the strongest
cockroaches to crawl away, and come looking for new homes!
I saw a program on TV where some of these critters, *after being tested for
radiation survival at many times the level required to kill humans*, were
disposed of by placing them in sturdy plastic bags filled with *deadly poison*,
and cast into a steel dumpster. A few still managed to chew their way out of
the poison-filled bags, and crawled away, into the city!
How to kill them, if radiation AND poison AND sealing them in plastic bags
all fail? They suggested using a hammer to crush the skull, and warned that
even a headless cockroach can live for up to a month, eventually dieing *of
thirst*!!! And you thought merely defending a lost position was *tough*....