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Are We Preparing to Nuke Iran

By Larry Johnson on November 7, 2007 at 12:07 AM in Current Affairs

More today on the mysterious movement of nuclear tipped cruise missiles from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana in September. An excellent piece in Counter Punch by Dave Lindorff identifies some key gaps in the story. According to Lindorff:

The Pentagon has been stonewalling on my requests for answers to key questions. For two weeks a public affairs office has been declining to respond to my question about whether the six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles flown by B-52 from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB were programmed for specific targets, and if so what those targets were, or even whether the team that investigated the incident checked to see if they were targeted.

The Air Force and Pentagon have also declined to explain whether US nuclear weapons in storage in US bunkers have been provided with the same alarm and motion-detection sensors that the National Nuclear Security Agency helped to install on the nukes being stored on Russian bases.

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So I sent the article to my buddy, the B-52 pilot (retired). Here’s his take:

I can’t fault any of the logic he (Lindorff) uses and no matter what road you take they all come back to the fact that there is more to this than just a mistake. We both agree that there was another purpose for the nukes than to mistakenly put them on obsolete, soon to be destroyed, cruise missiles and ship them off. They were used as “saber rattling” or a prelude to their actual use. I can understand the first one, the second one scares me. Whatever the truth is may not be known for some time, but for now it seems things may have been put on hold. Although we still are making a lot of noise about Iran etc. I’m sure that one of the plans for any response in that area would be to use cruise missiles with nukes to take out the major defenses and their capability to make their own weapons.

I do not know Lindorff’s sources, but I know my friend. He’s a combat veteran and quite conservative. I take his word seriously. The Bush Administration got caught at Barksdale. I believe they were trying to pre-position nukes for use in Iran. Let’s pray I am wrong.

  • Teaeopy

    I hope that no one in command is entertaining the idea of decommissioning some of the “obsolete” cruise missiles through underground nuclear detonation; underground as in holes opened by bunkerbusters. It seems unlikely that something heavy-duty would not be detonated in the holes, if there ever are such holes, and a nuclear weapon would finish the destructive task at a site while rendering the site not visitor-friendly.

    I should not have to think like a mad supreme commander.

  • MEP

    Had read Lindorff’s piece earlier at Counter Punch. Thank God someone is still following this story. No one with an ounce of brains believed the official line of crap. I hope your wrong also, but as the criminal bunch in control of our government gets desperate the danger increases. I have maintained for years that these people will not allow the transfer of power as laid out by the Constitution. Their crimes are too great and their plan is not yet finished. Please enlighten people to the fact that all necessary measures for the legal takeover of our Republic are in place. The only thing that has to happen is an incident deemed a significant national event. WTF? Could be a quake, monster storm, terrorist attack, economic crisis, external event like nuking Iran. W gets to decide, remember he’s the “Decider”. Our elected representatives have given W the authority to legally decide this without Congressional approval. If you have not yet read The End of America, by Naomi Wolf you should. It can happen here, in fact, to a great extent it already has. And for all those who think people like me have shit for brains, I truly hope your right also.

  • Long Tooth

    Our nation was Big Lied into unleashing war upon the people of Iraq. Over and out.

    There is no scenario too sinister that can be dismissed as beyond the pale where the GOP is concerned.

    I know nothing of your background, Johnson, aside from the autobiography you’ve selected to broadcast. Or that of Valerie Plame. I know enough of Pat Lang to consider him a well informed ex-soldier, and an intolerant, prima donna’s prima donna-type.

    You people consider yourselves an elite, that much is evident.

    But all you do is scribble. You’re all talk.

    Mind you, so am I. But I don’t pretend to be otherwise.

    If you people truly fear for our Constitutional Republic, what else are you prepared to do?

  • Sandy

    They are capable of anything…even the worst….and no one….no one in Congress is going to stop them. That’s the scary part to me.

    The madness of King George.

    And we must sit and wait.

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

    Let’s hope the Bushies don’t bomb Iran. But they’re sure talking and acting like they intend to.

    How could the air force make that many mistakes handling nukes?

  • ybnormal

    Are We Preparing to Nuke Iran

    I would say ‘we’ the people are not, but it looks increasingly as though someone somewhere is.

    It begs the question. If nuclear bombing of Iran were ordered by the POTUS, withOUT Congressional authorization, wouldn’t it put Central Command in a catch-22? How far would military obedience to the commander-in-chief go when confronted with violating the Constitution to such an extreme degree?

    I hope a nuke attack is not attempted, among other reasons because military insurrection would not be a pretty sight, even if it is to uphold the Constitution. In an alternate scenario, the lack of defiance would not be pretty either.

  • J

    Larry,

    too bad that congress can’t have an inspection date with diego garcia to see stratcom’s preparations for their unnecessary strike on iran.

  • Grandma M

    There is also another question in this mix – Did the USAF use a “Tactical Nuke” on Syria September 6th, to test the strength of Iran’s border protection capabilities which are supposedly weaker than Syria’s?

    Per The Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1192380718519

    Larry can you find out and let us knoiw? You may be the last defense for our poor country!

  • Grandma M

    There is also another question in this mix – Did the USAF use a “Tactical Nuke” on Syria September 6th, to test the strength of Iran’s border protection capabilities which are supposedly weaker than Syria’s?

    Per The Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1192380718519

    Larry can you find out and let us know? You may be the last defense for our poor country!

    Sorry about the typo in previous post!

  • Kathleen

    I am a media junkie. The “cakewalk in Iraq” zealots have been repeating their unsubstantiated claims about Iran all over the MSM the last four years. Reuel Marc Gerecht, Micheal Ledeen, James Woolsey (came to Ohio to rant about Iran in front of Ohio legislators in Columbus), Cheney, John Bolton, Bill Kristol….have been relentless. John Bolton was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation and repeated these unsubstantiated claims about Iran over and over again, Neil Conan did not challenge him one time. Deja Vu.

    IAEA’s El Baradei has repeated over and over again that Iran does not pose an “imminent threat” and that there is “no” hard evidence to back up these endlessly repeated claims.

    General Wesley Clark, Scott Ritter, Elbaradei, and so many more keep repeating that diplomacy and negotiations are the only way to deal with Iran.

  • J

    Larry,

    the bushies have been gearing up for an iran strike ‘for years’ according to former insiders in the bush admin.

    see the oct 18 esquire article:

    The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn’t Want You to Know

    http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107

  • Kathleen

    It’s all at the Project for a New American Century website.

    http://www.newamericancentury.org/

    Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David and Liv Wurmser have been helping draw up these “Clean (bloody) Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” plans for regime change in the middle east for quite a while. The death and destruction and the “collective disorientation” that is the result of our invasion of Iraq and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and pre-emptive strike on Syria, sure makes it look like the “cakewalk in Iraq” zealots plan for the middle east is right on schdule.

    http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

  • G Hazeltine

    It is curious that the extraordinary courage of the “Saddam Hussein and his henchmen” confronting ‘Joe’ does not extend to discussing uncomfortable matters such as this. After all ‘Val’ was a proliferater tracker, wasn’t she? Or maybe her task didn’t extend to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons mounted on cruise missiles fired by constitution shredding folks she used to work for.

    “Coping with the Bush administration should not cause us to ignore at our peril very real adversaries that would do us harm. These clearly include Iran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”

    Right. Iran offered to negotiate ‘everything’ in 2003. But, spending one percent of our military budget on theirs, they are clearly very real adversaries, and muslims to boot. Not to be trusted.

    Which means in the end regime change, which as ‘Joe’ knows so well, the systematic destruction of water systems (agricultural, drinking, sanitation), power systems, communication systems. A few hundreds of thousands of dead children (‘worth it’ of course), civil society in ruins, civil war, if possible. And what better lesson than all that with a few nukes thrown in.

  • oldtree

    I don’t worry about those that are concerned about the actions of the insane. I worry about the actions of the insane. It is the insanity that most people would choose to prevent.
    Why does no one choose to stop the mad bastards?

  • Kathleen

    Kucinich and Impeachment..worth the watch.
    Cheney impeachment measure advances.

    Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s (D-OH) resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney advanced in the House today due largely to the backing of House Republicans. Kucinich’s measure “failed to win the backing of the House leadership,” and when a vote came to table the impeachment resolution, conservatives voted against it before they voted for it:

    Midway through the vote, with instructions from the GOP leadership, Republicans one by one changed their votes from yes — to kill the resolution — to no, trying to force the chamber into a debate and an up-or-down vote on the proposal.

    At one point there were 290 votes to table. After the turnaround, the final vote was 251-162 against tabling, with 165 Republicans voting against it.

    “We’re going to help them out, to explain themselves,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. “We’re going to give them their day in court.”

    UPDATE: The House just voted 218-194 to send Kucinich’s impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee, thus killing the bill and preventing a debate on impeachment.

    UPDATE II: CapNewsNet has video of the activity on the House floor today. November 6, 2007 4:34 pm | Comment (101)

  • Kathleen

    Oops here is the link to Kucinich on Impeachment of Cheney
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJYbgouqlMw

  • Kathleen

    I have been saying for quite some time that the Republicans could possibly trump the Democrats by helping bring the Impeachment issue to the table before or despite Pelosi stating that “Impeachment was off the table” by moving Impeachment proceedings forward. If Republicans can make it appear that they support the “rule of law” by getting on the Impeachment of Cheney
    Bus (even though when they had the power they did nothing in regard to accountability) this could up their taking responsibility numbers. They helped Kucinich yesterday. The tables could be turning here

    Think Progress has more
    http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/06/cheney-impeachment-measure-advances/

  • ybnormal

    I think Lindorff is being presumptuous. He says the Pentagon is stonewalling his requests for information about missile targeting. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Why would the Pentagon brief a reporter with nuke targeting information which is most likely limited even within the Pentagon?

    Meanwhile B-52 pilot (retired) offers something more realistic and useful:

    They were used as “saber rattling” or a prelude to their actual use.

    A slim possibility would be if the whole thing was a test to see if safeguards worked. The only problem with that is, you would run the test with simulations of real nukes, not actual real nukes; and if that were the case, it would have been quickly pointed out, which it wasn’t.

    Back to saber rattling vs real use. Either one is an over-blown threat, and what do we gain? Everyone in the world already knows we have the most devastating nuclear armament. To me it sounds like chest-beating. so, the sooner we get the monkeys out of the tool shed, the better.

  • k

    Maybe the CIA, acting like a friendly party, brought the missiles to Iran to show them the technology. Of course, the CIA would have changed one part first, so it would actually throw off Iranian nuclear advancement. Kind of a Project Merlin 2, and possibly just as successful.

  • Kathleen
  • mudkitty

    The answer to the question is “Yes.” It’s all part of the plan of leaving the Democratic winners with the biggest, stinkiest mess ever.

  • Pingback: Twelfth Bough » Blog Archive » Update on Barksdale

  • ybnormal

    Naturally, the answer to the question “Are we preparing to nuke Iran” depends on who’s answering.

    A nuclear bomb can only reliably accomplish one thing, incinerate a large above ground infrastructure, such as a city or a military inastallation. The sometimes reported use as a bunker buster is over-rated. No matter how deep a bomb can penetrate (which for a nuclear bomb is not very deep), it’s always possible for the enemy to dig deeper. Even then, the above ground damage is still widespread. To increase underground destruction range by ten times means having to increase explosive power a thousand times, which pretty much guarantees vast widespread above ground destruction. Energy discharge follows the path of least resistance.

    So a critic of nuking Iran would point out the huge indiscriminate damage to life and widespread surrounding environment. Then an advocate would claim destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations; except that they have not been proven to exist.

    If the under ground targets are deep enough, which we could reasonably expect is possible, then they can be isolated and effectively neutralized by destroying the tunnel entrances leading to them with regular explosives, just about as well as with nukes.

    So what do we gain by deploying a nuke? An asshole like Cheney might imagine he gets superficially bigger balls. The reality is that what the country gets is a bad reputation.

    • Teaeopy

      If a nuclear weapon were to be precision-guided into a hole made by a conventional bunkerbuster, some of the heat and shock would be absorbed underground, but significant radioactivity would be blown out, so I hope it’s a far-fetched and even unthinkable notion. Certainly detonating a nuclear weapon at or near ground level is. I hope there won’t be any kind of nuclear attack, or even one using only conventional weapons. After all the official talk intended to make us conceive of strikes against Iran, what are we expected to envision? Surgical precision and efficiency?

  • The Oracle

    Has any mention been made about where these six nukes are today?

  • G Hazeltine

    The ‘very real adversaries who would do us harm,’ or what we are about to destroy.

    http://picasaweb.google.com/aatrvash/Iran02/photo?authkey=WHfBV-cDZ2E#s5096647238259937938

    A bit long, with too much architecture, in my view. But many beautiful photos.

  • readerOfTeaLeaves

    In a sane world, no politician would be allowed to run for national office (in any nation) without first being required to spend three days looking in a microscope at cancer cells, and then job-shadow oncologists and radiologists for three more days. A little confrontation with the very real, observable impacts of exposure to nuclear materials might better inform their policies and actions.

    Are the political leaders of Iran ‘nice people’? Not likely.
    Do I ‘trust’ them? No.
    But so what? The world is chock-full of assholes.

    When the weapon you inflict on someone else ends up creating mutations in your own tissues, then congrats on your Mutant Phyrric Victory. What does the BushCheney administration think they’re going to ‘win’? How many kinds of cancer do we need to inflict on ourselves before we get sane leaders who recognize that it’s the age of molecular biology, and that weapons like nuclear warheads should go the way of the Mercury Capri, the Toni Perm, and Velvetta?

    Don’t more national leaders — besides Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel — have the conceptual ability to see larger patterns? Are these the only two ‘national leaders’ who seem to have a f*cking clue that what we breath, eat, and drink becomes part our own tissues?

    One can only assume that neither Bush, nor Cheney (nor Putin, Akmeniadjaid (sp??), nor Bin Laden) have even a basic understanding of cell biology — a subject commonly taught in most US high schools. If they had the slightest grasp of the reactions involved in genetic damage from chemical and nuclear toxins, they could not possibly speak or act as they do.

    I don’t believe that I’m alone in being furious, appalled, and deeply alarmed.

    At this point, I don’t give a damn whether someone is ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican’. I’m fed up with the superficial, distracting labels. I do care whether they’re sane, whether they can connect dots, and whether they can consider very complex information without being sucked into egotistical lunacy.

    Webb and Hagel should not have to do so much Congressional heavy lifting. Where the f*ck are the other 98 so-called ‘leaders’ in the United States Senate?! How can 98 United States Senators have less collective knowledge than a classfull of teens at my local public high school? Appalling.

    Apologies for the rant, but I appreciate the opportunity. Like many Americans, part of my life was spent ‘downwind’ of nuclear technologies in the American West. I’m not alone in knowing the bitter, tragic cost of technologies that promised power, but instead delivered years of suffering. If anyone understands the risks of nuclear weapons, it should be the Japanese, those affected by Chernobyl, and some of us (pissed off, indignant rowdies) from the ‘Libertarian West’.

    Bush, Cheney, and their corrupt administration are full of sh*t, but it’s inexcusable that there are only two United States Senators speaking out — firmly — against this madness. That is absolutely, unacceptably inexcusable on the part of Congress. Shameful.