Fortunately, when an informed, thorough debate on the CTBT was conducted by the Senate, fully half of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” refused to consent to the treaty’s ratification. No arms control agreement in history had been so thoroughly – and so properly – repudiated.

Now, however, Sen. Carl Levin – hands-down the most radical anti-defense legislator ever to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee – has decided to try to resuscitate the defective and rejected CTBT. Not content with undermining the U.S. position in Iraq and purging the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman Levin is seeking to engineer a stealthy, back-door reversal of the Senate’s historic position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Sen. Levin’s vehicle is the annual defense authorization legislation, which is expected to be considered by the full Senate after the 4th of July recess. He has attached to the bill a “sense of Congress” resolution expressing support for the CTBT and calling for its ratification. Were the full Senate to approve the bill in its present form, the Genie-stuffers would be able to claim that the previous rejection has been supplanted by an endorsement, clearing the way for a hasty reconsideration of the accord.

Unfortunately, political cover has recently been afforded to the Genie-stuffers by several elder statesmen who should know better than support the CTBT as a means of ridding the world of nuclear weapons: former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. Citing Ronald Reagan’s idealistic vision of a world without nuclear arms – one he had the good sense not to pursue as an immediate objective or through a nuclear test ban, Messrs. Kissinger and Shultz have joined forces with former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and Sen. Levin’s predecessor as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Sam Nunn (now working for the Nuclear Threat Institute, a creature of the inveterate U.S.-disarmer Ted Turner).

These geezer Genie-stuffers have been joined by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. His endorsement of denuclearization is a throwback to the USSR’s historic efforts to disarm the United States. Its utter insubstantiality is underscored by Gorbachev’s successor, Vladimir Putin, and the current Russian capo’s aggressive nuclear modernization program and threats of devastating attacks on Europe.

There are many still serving in the Senate who opposed the CTBT eight years ago – including the entire Republican leadership and ranking members of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Energy and Appropriations Committees. There are, however, thirty-six Senators who have been elected since that time who have not benefited from any hearings, let alone real debate, about this treaty. It is a disservice to them and to the American people they represent to try by stealth to enlist them in the Genie-stuffers’ irresponsible agenda.