Bush’s Secret Nuclear Strike Plans
By Leslie on November 6, 2007 at 4:02 PM in Bush/Cheney, Current Affairs, Iran, Nuclear weapons
“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.
(Release: November 13)
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Another version of the same here:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004639.php
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.
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.
me too Jerry. I was also wondering what ever happened to the other nukes.
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)
Thanks for connecting the dots Sandy!
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.
(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).
Where the bill will probably die a silent and quick death.
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.
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.
“When the war crimes trials come”
I do not recommend holding your breath until that happens.
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
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
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.
Ever read Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed?
[...] Bush’s Secret Nuclear Strike Plans Filed under: George W. Bush, Iran — jr @ 1:20 am Bush’s Secret Nuclear Strike Plans [...]
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….
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