Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Behold, I come as a stealth bomber!
Blessed is he that watcheth, and goeth into the fallout shelter, lest he walk bald, and they see his radiation sickness.*
So a half-dozen nukes “accidentally” got shipped halfway across the country in a B-52. Now, ordinarily, I’d take the military at their word that this was an unacceptable and careless error. Except for three things.
-
Barksdale AFB, where the nukes ended up, is a staging ground for Middle East operations. As former CIA officer Larry Johnson points out, “A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.” Which leads me to point two.
-
The nukes couldn’t have gotten onto that B-52 without the pilots’ knowledge. Pilots, be they military or civilian, with few exceptions, have to file detailed flight plans whenever they fly somewhere. These flight plans, especially in an the post-9/11 era, must include a cargo manifest. Given the sensitive nature of nuclear weapons, they would have to be explicitly listed on the pilots’ cargo manifest, and the pilots would have to have seen that manifest before they filed it.
-
There’s been a disturbing amount of rumors among the rank-and-file military personnel that plans have already been drawn up to strike targets in Iran. Case in point, this e-mail sent to my good buddy Bartcop, as posted over at Mahablog. (Read the whole thing. It will chill you to the bone.)
Given all this, I would not rule out Bush throwing everything he’s got, militarily and politically, at Iran sometime in the next 502 days.
* In the words of Larry the Cable Guy, “Lord, I apologize.”
