RSS Feed for This PostCurrent Article

Bush’s Secret Nuclear Strike Plans

By Leslie on November 6, 2007 at 4:02 PM in Bush/Cheney, Current Affairs, Iran, Nuclear weapons

revision03.jpg

“If the president decided to nuke Iran, here’s the plan.”

From Laura Rozen at Mother Jones:

The Federation of American Scientists’ director of the nuclear information project Hans Kristensen reports that he has gotten ahold of a surprising document that shows the Bush White House guided the US military to change the US nuclear posture in 2002 to develop nuclear strike plans against rogue states, including North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

“Everybody got so afraid of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and the combination of the two that White House guidance ordered the military to prepare nuclear strike plans against them,” Kristensen tells me in a phone interview Monday. “This particular document is the main surprise here. It is a briefing that that US strategic command held sometime in 2002 which is about national nuclear war plans that went into effect in March 2003. Since then, there has been only upgrade of the plan.”

Kristensen says the document he got hold of is a compilation of slides, 126 pages. “They only released 23 of those, and most of that is heavily redacted,” Kristensen says. “But one thing they surprisingly let through is the identification of new strike plans against rogue states. And this is a surprise. … This shows nuclear strike planning rose all the way to the top, the national strategic war plan, a new development.”

Bush’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, which may or may not acquire nuclear weapons in future; the administration’s push to build new nuclear weapons and refusal to discuss treaties or engage in negotiations, especially with “rogue” states; the US-India nuclear trade deal, which doesn’t require India to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] or undertake any disarmament commitments the P-5 [original NPT signatories: US, Russia, UK, France and China] agreed to; stalled talks between the US and Russia over further reductions to nuclear stockpiles, the chaos in nuclear-armed Pakistan, which will further destabilize Afghanistan…it’s all contributing to a loss of security for the US and the world at large.

  • Blunt Force Trauma

    Another version of the same here:

    http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004639.php

    • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

      Thanks BFT! As TPM [above] and Scientific American [see Taters's comment below] both point out this is the 2003 revision, which may not be the most current revision. But, based on it, the Bush administration appears to be broadening nuclear targeting.

  • JerryB

    Now we know why they were moving those nukes. Do we know if they were ever all accounted for? I read on a comment here that there may be one missing.

    • Brenda Stewart

      me too Jerry. I was also wondering what ever happened to the other nukes.

  • Sandy

    http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11012007.html

    November 1, 2007

    INCOMPETENCE OR COVER-UP?
    The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight
    By DAVE LINDORFF

    “It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.”
    –Pentagon official

    There is something deeply disturbing about the Air Force’s official report on the Aug-29-30 “bent spear” incident that saw six nuclear warheads get mounted on six Advanced Cruise Missiles and improperly removed from a nuclear weapons storage bunker at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, then get improperly loaded on a B-52, and then get improperly flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana-a report that attributed the whole thing to a “mistake.”

    According to the Air Force report, some Air Force personnel mounted the warheads on the missiles (which are obsolete and slated for destruction), and another ground crew, allegedly not aware that the missiles were armed with nukes, moved them out and mounted them on a launch pylon on the B-52′s wing for a flight to Barksdale and eventual dismantling. Only on the ground at Barksdale did ground crew personnel spot the nukes according to the report. (Six other missiles with dummy warheads were mounted on a pylon on the other wing of the plane.)

    The problem with this explanation for the first reported case of nukes being removed from a weapons bunker without authorization in 50 years of nuclear weapons, is that those warheads, and all nuclear warheads in the US stockpile, are supposedly protected against unauthorized transport or removal from bunkers by electronic antitheft systems-automated alarms similar to those used by department stores to prevent theft, and even anti-motion sensors that go off if a weapon is touched or approached without authorization.

    While the Air Force report doesn’t mention any of this, what it means is that if weapons in a storage bunker are protected against unauthorized removal, someone-and actually at least two people, since it’s long been a basic part of nuclear security that every action involving a nuclear weapon has to be done by two people working in tandem-had to deliberately and consciously disable those alarms.

    Since the Air Force report does not explain how this hurdle to unauthorized removal of the six nukes could have been surmounted by “mistake,” the report has to be considered a whitewash, at best, or a cover-up…..”
    (excerpt)

    • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

      Thanks for connecting the dots Sandy!

  • Dee Loralei

    These people are criminally evil. And the effing congress just killed Kuchinich’s impeachment bill! When the war crimes trials come, many Dem names will be on the docket.

    • neclark

      (point-of-fact) The Kucinich impeachment bill has NOT been killed, but it has been sent to the House Judiciary Committee (which handles Articles of Impeachment).

      • http://noquarterusa.net/blog/ Leslie

        Where the bill will probably die a silent and quick death.

      • Brenda Stewart

        that is the way I understand it too. Geez, I sure hope they can get it done! We all have been waiting on this for ever do long.

      • http://zippitydog.blogspot.com/ Mad Dogs

        And as KagroX said over at Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/6/164257/349):

        “So the bill goes to the Judiciary Committee. Where it will sit next to Kucinich’s other resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, which was offered through regular channels back in April.”

        So as to being “killed”, the bill ain’t goin’ anywhere, anytime soon. Just the way the House Dem leadership wants it.

    • Shirin

      “When the war crimes trials come”

      I do not recommend holding your breath until that happens.

  • taters

    From Scientific American..

    Axis of Evil” Targeted by U.S. Nuclear Weapons

    U.S. nuke list mushroomed in 2003 from traditional Cold War adversaries to smaller nations with nuclear ambitions

    The nuclear warheads resting on ballistic missiles in silos, circling the globe in submarines or carried—sometimes mistakenly—by aircraft hail from an era when the U.S. targeted its largest foe, the U.S.S.R. and, more recently, Russia and China. But a document newly obtained by the Washington, D.C.–based Federation of American Scientists (FAS)—founded by the creators of the original nuclear bomb in 1945 and monitoring the weapons ever since—reveals that in recent years the U.S. target list has expanded to include so-called “regional proliferators,” smaller states seeking to acquire such weapons of mass destruction.

    “This is the first formal confirmation at that high level that those countries entered mainstream strategic nuclear war planning,” says Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at FAS, which obtained the excerpt from a 2002 U.S. Strategic Command (U.S. STRATCOM) briefing on the new war plan to take effect in 2003. Such “broadening of nuclear targeting” is troubling, Kristensen says, “especially when diplomats claim we have decreased the role of nuclear weapons.”

    U.S. Navy Lt. Denver Applehans said U.S. STRATCOM had no comment.

    Specifically, the heavily redacted document includes pictures of a North Korean missile, an underground Libyan facility to produce nuclear material, and a short-range, Russian-made SCUD ballistic missile (the weapon that played a terrifying role in the Persian Gulf War). Whereas the latter is employed by many countries, only five such nations were listed in the broader Nuclear Posture Review put together by the Bush administration in December 2001: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria.

    Iraq was likely dropped from this list subsequent to the March 2003 U.S. invasion, Kristensen says, as was Libya when its leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, formally foreswore such weapons in December of that year. The 2003 revisions for including such regional states include a “series of [redacted] options” and a “scenario-driven approach” as well as “attack structure changed to increase execution flexibility.”

    http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=12023068-E7F2-99DF-3CBCE4AD9D3FCD19

  • ybnormal

    In other news, a new planet was discovered in another solar system outside of our own, with an estimated surface temperature in the range of liquid water.

    The discovery gave encouragement to scientists. Because the discovery was made after a relatively short period of searching, it raises the probability that many other such ‘compatible’ planets may be discovered.

    And none too soon either, as we seem to be on track to blow up this planet. It’s always so nice to have a spare available.

    • GR3

      Ever read Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed?

  • Pingback: Bush’s Secret Nuclear Strike Plans « Rochester Liberal

  • Donovan Fraser

    Just nuts…..plain and simple.

    when we have lit the world a flame, will we remember it was it us who made it possible, not OBL?

    Wine, I need a glass of wine….

  • http://Dearestone, Mis anita

    Dearest one,

    My name is anita Mbaye I decided to write you due to I have no other
    alternative after the sudden death of my beloved parents during the crisis in my country sudan.

    I have been in a very big difficulty on how to safeguard the money they laboured for me which is presently in a bank and the amount in question is $3.7millionUSD.

    I will explain to you fully and God will always bless you for your help which I know you shall never regret as i am going to take you as my caretaker.I am waiting inpatiently to read from you.

    Here is my email ( anitambaye4@yahoo.com )

    Yours sincerely
    Anita.