Dave Lindorff: This Was No Accident: Nuclear Weapons Are Different

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/26631

This Was No Accident: Nuclear Weapons Are Different
Submitted by dlindorff on Mon, 2007-09-10 12:45. Iran


Nobody should fall for a story that those six (yeah, it was first reported as five, but now the original military whistleblowers have told Army Times it was six) nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that were flown in launch position on a B-52 from Minot, ND to Barksdale, LA, were put on there inadvertently.

I had some experience with the way nuclear weapons get handled, as compared to conventional weapons, and I can assure you that there is no way anyone would just “accidentally” pick up the wrong weapons.

snip//

My point in recounting this experience is to note that nuclear weapons and warheads are not stored together with conventional weapons. They are also guarded much more tightly than are conventional weapons. There is simply no way that a ground crew could accidentally stroll into a weapons storage center and pick up the wrong missiles. (There’s good reason for this, too, even aside from security issues: nuclear weapons have fail-safe triggers, and are not prone to just exploding on their own, but conventional weapons are different. They can and often do go off by accident, and if one were stored amidst nuclear weapons and this happened, it could shatter the nuke and spread dangerous nuclear material all over the place. As a result, whether at Seal Beach Naval Station or at Minot AFB, nuclear weapons are strictly segregated from other weapons materials.)

It’s clear that so far, no one in Congress or in the corporate media is asking the hard questions about this very disturbing incident.

I would say that the chances that those Advanced Cruise Missiles and their W80-1 nuclear warheads were loaded accidentally on that B-52 are exactly zero. So the question is: who ordered this flight, and why?

Until we have answers to those questions, we have to assume the worst—that this was deliberate, and thus sinister in the extreme—not the best.

_____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and political columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in a paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

the answers are predictable:

you don't need to know.
your security clearance is not high enough.
It is a matter of national security.
Those e-mails cannot be located.
It appears as though all documents were accidently destroyed.

and this admin are so potentially careless with these weapons. It's beyond what 'they' think we need to know. But where are the Dems representing us? Has anyone raised a stink about this?

and comparing security on one side of the road to the other side.

You're right, that sounds like extensive enough experience to make him a subject matter expert!

warheads are or what they look like if I fell over one.
And maybe he's not expert enough, but it's nice to read that someone actually gives a shit to question what's going on. There's not too much of that going on.

The chances of someone stealing one are zero.

There are plenty of smaller and more simple to use devices. The W-80 is not something a terrorist could adapt, it's too complicated and not something you could pull apart and get it to work later.

Those weapons never leave their storage and transport containers unless they are being deployed.

I think someone was going to send a very loud message.

Who knows, Junior could just be yanking our chain to distract us.

:scared: :kick:

This was no accident. My first thought was, what in the hell are they trying to pull now? Are they showing that this could happen in order to set the stage for an "accidental" nuclear deployment they could blame on terrorists? Far fetched? Hell, they lied to get us into a war that has cost $300 billion and over 100,000 lives. Why not?

Take the "nuclear football" away from the idiot in chief. He was a cheerleader and has no experience handling the ball, only his mouth. And he does a pretty shitty job of doing that, as we have all observed!

"Take the "nuclear football" away from the idiot in chief. He was a cheerleader and has no experience handling the ball, only his mouth. And he does a pretty shitty job of doing that, as we have all observed!"

I agree.

we should run with that. Take the football away as soon as possible-- impeachment is mandatory! Is Nancy Pelosi serving us nukes for dessert?

Rumsfeld left the same week that Saddaam was executed and I always wondered if that was his strategic move. Could the rumor that Cheney was suppose to leave within 2-3 weeks have anything to do with these nuclear missiles? Was bombing Iran Cheney's strategic move?

And if my theory holds up that these gentlemen are folding like pawns on a chess board, what did we give up with Gonzo and Rove? And is the new timetable for Cheney pushed back because there was no bombing?

Out of power, cheney is vulnerable for the greatest heist of the US Treasury AND a shit load of war crimes.

Air Force brass and office layer is full of end-time fundie crusaders.

Someone posted some rumor mill stuff that is sorta interesting theory in the Lounge re Steve Fosset and the LOOSE NUKES. One hopes it's just silly, but one has seen an awful lot of previously unbelievable stuff turn out to be sadly true in recent years.

I think it's dangerous to have fundies in charge of the Air Force. It's too easy to drop bombs on anybody you don't like, when you don't have to stick around and watch them die, I imagine.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x6914221

But I am pulling a raid on Havocdad's antiacid stash.

guy who said, IIRC, that he/his crew would certainly be in trouble. Morning Edition, I believe, had the interview. It may have been the day after the story broke.

The correct kind of weapons were mounted on the correct aircraft, the guy said. One can assume that they were stored in the correct place (since they were found there).

But the warheads were to have been removed. The crew doing the mounting were incorrectly told that the missiles were ready to be mounted. Now, I'd have assumed that a missile minus the warhead has a gap in the front, that anybody not in a coma could look at it and say, "Yes, there's the warhead, it's not removed," or, "Gee, look at that gaping hole, that must be where the warhead goes." But I know that's an assumption, and one that this interview challenged; I could equally well have assumeed that the warhead is under a shroud or cover, so that when the warhead is removed the missile looks about the same as it ever did, but with its center of gravity shifted slightly back. The interviewee lends support to the latter assumption.

Now, assuming that this interviewee was actually knowledgeable and telling the truth, Lindorff's article cleverly and deftly demolishes a strawman. But it's hard to mount a valid when there are so many unsaid assumptions that any argument requires more assumptions on the part of the arguer than s/he has actual facts.

But it appears the "signature" of nuclear material is easily enough identified to negate any mistake as to where a bomb originated.

Of course, that's assuming the government is truthful in identifying lab results of such testing...

and we still don't have an answer on that one. Never stopped believing that was part threat to media and pols and part test of the public's will to get to the bottom of things.

We failed that test rather miserably.

guard an outer perimeter from watch-towers at the four corners of a compound in which nuclear warheads were stored, guarded more closely within by an American unit seconded to our brigade; maybe even our regiment. The location of their billet eludes me now. But we sometimes had an American breakfast with them - flapjacks and eggs, "sunny-side up"! We also drove them on ration runs to Kassel.

Well, I don't know if it was because we were artillery, not infantry, and they felt they couldn't trust us with live small-arms ammunition, but they never did give us any, and it all seemed a bit of a charade, to put it mildly. (The same, when I was supposed to be guarding a Pay Corps geezer and the money he was carrying on a trip to a bank in Paderborn. I was carrying an SMG, but no bullets).

Mind you, it was said that our people were never told whether the warheads were there at any given time, anyway, so personal motivation to be alert and vigilant was to put it mildly a problem. Some of us were more likely to snuggle down on the floor for a kip in the cold weather. I think there used to be a kind of heater on the floor by one wall of the tower cabin, but it may be my memory's playing tricks on me. It would probably be different under today's circumstances. What all this has to do with this horrific matter of the 'misplaced' nuclear war-heads I'm not too sure. I started off well enough.