At least Chris Cannon doesn't try to pretend that he is against nuclear testing, even as he helps move the United States to relive that particular nightmare. The Utah congressman could thus be said to have taken a more honest position on the matter than have, say, Utah's two senators.
   More honest, but still wrong.
   Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch back funding for research, design and non-nuclear testing of the proposed "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons, even though most of the enemies of civilization live not in bunkers but out in the open, setting off car bombs. Both also claim that mere research will not necessarily mean more of the same Nevada nuclear testing that spread cancerous clouds of fallout over Utah decades ago.
   Maybe. But it seems foolish to even start down that road, whether we end up testing or not, spending a lot of money and depleting our credibility as we urge other nations to forswear their nuclear aspirations.
   The position of our senators on this issue is an unsustainable straddle between two camps. One is Utah public opinion, voiced by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and a unanimous Legislature, which opposes nuclear testing in Nevada. The other is the neocons at the Pentagon, who can't wait to take a gratuitous victory lap in the nuclear arms race.
   Cannon, though, straddles nothing. He not only won't pretend that the nuclear genie can be kept in the bottle, he is inviting it to come out and make itself at home. Testing the new generation of bunker-busting nuclear weapons isn't enough for him. He wants to retrieve our old nuclear weapons from what should have been the ash heap of history and test them, too, just to make sure they haven't deteriorated.
   Of course, if we do test the old nukes, and they don't work, that will leak out and destroy whatever deterrent value their uncertain status might have had.
   While Cannon's position is more consistent than some others, it does carry a fatal flaw. It assumes that we can bully the rest of the world into becoming enlightened democracies, like us.
   "We need to give them the fear of destruction," Cannon incredibly told The Tribune the other day, "and hopefully over time people will recognize that the democratic system works."
   But if forcing a new generation of nuclear weapons upon the world, and a new course of nuclear testing on Utah and the rest of the nation, constitutes democracy, the rest of the world is not likely to see its charms.