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01.02 Blaming the Victims - The Dominant Media Vilify Hamas 12.30 Shock, Awe and Lies: The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza 12.10 We All Failed Gary Webb US Politics, Policy & Culture
01.07 Gaza Voices, American Silence 01.06 The $6 Million Social Worker 01.06 Bush Spins Scandalous Neglect of Vets 01.02 2009 is Starting Off with a Shameful and Criminal Bang 12.27 Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths 12.24 Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure 12.22 Cheney's Contempt for the Republic 12.19 Obama's New Appointments 12.18 Obama v. Washington Mythmaking 12.17 The Electoral College Has Got To Go 12.16 A Million McVeighs Now: The American-Made Insurgency in Afghanistan 12.15 Thinking About Illinois 12.14 Obama and US-Russia Tensions 12.12 A Time Machine to Save America 12.11 Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite? 12.10 Workers of America: Wake Up! We All Need a Union! US High Crimes
12.31 America's War On Islam - The "Fort Dix Five" 12.30 Henry Kissinger: Eminence Noire 12.28 The Grinning Skull 12.22 Obama v. Richard Falk on Israel and Occupied Palestine 12.19 White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal 12.18 Judge Declines to Jail 'Ghosts of the Iraq War' 12.18 Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture: No One Can Be Above the Law 12.17 Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World's Unfinished Business 12.17 Abandoned by the World: UN Declares Open Season on Somalia 12.17 Assessing the Bush Legacy: The Measure of the Man and His Administration 12.16 Cheney Admits Detainee-Abuse Role 12.15 The Abduction, Secret Detention, Torture, and Repeated Raping of Aafia Siddiqui 12.12 Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush 12.11 Atrocity Unlimited: US Seeks to Turn Somalia into Global Free-Fire Zone 12.10 The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
01.05 Thinking About the 2008 Numbers 12.29 Thinking About Realities 12.26 Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff 12.24 The Federal Reserve Abolition Act 12.22 Thinking About Expectations 12.12 Excess Debt and Deflation = Depression International
01.07 The Quartet's Hypocrisy and Failure in Occupied Palestine 01.07 Gazing at Gaza's Destruction: Israelis Sip Pepsi, US Progressives See 'Silver Lining' 01.05 Fallujah by the Sea: Aping America, Israel Unleashes Chemical Weapons in Gaza 01.05 Global Human Rights Groups Protest Slaughter in Gaza 12.30 How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills 12.29 Israel's Wanton Aggression On Gaza 12.26 Christmas 2008: Hell in the Holy Land 12.17 Canada's Prince of Darkness Assumes Leadership of the Liberal Party We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:This was No Accident: Nuclear Weapons are Different
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?
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. Back in 1978, I was working as an investigative producer/reporter for the news program “28-Tonight” at KCET-TV in Los Angeles. I got word from some anti-nuke/peace organization that there were nuclear weapons being stored at the Seal Beach Naval Station south of Los Angeles. There was concern about this on two counts: first of all, it was a very densely populated urban area, and second, the weapons were allegedly being stored under the flight path of a busy civil airport, where a crash could easily happen.
Beyond the south fence were the weapons bunkers-long high mounds of earth, covered with parched sod. Each was perhaps 75 feet long, and 15 feet high. There was a concrete doorframe in the middle of each with an old iron door in the middle. No one was visible anywhere. On the north side, however, where there were similar bunkers, but these mounds were bigger—perhaps 20 feet high and much longer. The piled up earth looked newer, and the entrances were much more solid looking. As well, the door to each had an armed guard standing in front of it. Clearly whatever was being stored in the bunkers on the north side of the street were much more important than those on the south side. We stopped our car and got out, and the photographer started snapping still photos of the scene. Immediately there was commotion inside the compound. Within less than a minute, a jeep came roaring towards us, filled with marines who were armed to the teeth. Guns drawn they ordered us, from behind the fence, to stop photographing and to stand where we were. Moments later there were sirens, and more armed jeeps came towards us from both directions down the road. We were quickly surrounded by armed marines who asked us what we were doing. We told them we were investigating the nuclear weapons storage at the base. They told us we had to go to the base headquarters, and took the camera. (The photographer, a pro at this stuff, had already snapped a role and stashed it in her pocket, so when they later took out and exposed the roll of film in the camera, we still had our visual evidence). At base headquarters, the commander grilled us. Our station was called, and after it was confirmed that we were indeed journalists, they took the film, chastised us for bothering them, and, refusing to comment on whether or not there were nukes on the base, sent us on our way. My point in recounting this journalistic adventure 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. About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with
Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for ImpeachmentCopyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on September 10, 2007. |
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