No nukes is good nukes??

[warren pease]

Just wondering if anyone has any updates to the story about that B-52 carrying six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB in violation of every known security and C&C protocol and only possible if there were orders from the very top, or if this was some sort of covert op carried out far outside the chain of command by rogue elements in the AF.

I haven't seen anything new since Sunday night, when everybody was on the story. So Rick, nadinbrzezinski, hootinholler, Wiley50, seemslikeadream, mr scorpio and the rest -- any news? Any additional comment on the military blogs or in the various Gannett-owned military newspapers? Any conversations with current or ex-AF flight line, security or C&C personnel? I can't find anything on blogs or in papers, and I don't know any ex-AF people who had anything to do with nukes.

Just curious. I'd hate to see this story get swamped by 9/11 nostalgia, the Betrayus hearings or the impending housing industry meltdowns. Not that these aren't important stories, but I think that Cheney running a black op to steal the weapons to nuke Iran -- and possibly using one of the warheads to simulate a low-yield suitcase bomb and carry out a false flag attack in the US and blamed on "the terrorists" to provide the pretext for nuking Iran -- is a story that shouldn't drop down to page 8 in GD.

Thanks in advance for any news. Thanks also for all the great research people have put into this story, and for the amazing wealth of information you've dug up on everything from nuke security protocols to the responsibilities of a B-52 navigator. I would know exactly as much as the average CNN viewer if it hadn't been for DU.


wp

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Has Congress been investigating this

if this is a President authorized, violation of every known protocol?

[warren pease]

3. Of course not...

They're too busy deciding how many billions to give BushCo to continue the Iraq occupation, or wringing their hands in anguish because their constituents want impeachment so bad that they may well lose their jobs over that issue next election. But they claim there's no time for impeachment because their grand agenda -- whatever the hell that may be -- takes precedence. Which is like admitting they can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

No... I wouldn't expect much to emerge on this from congress. Nor from mass media, of course, since they have their jobs to do and that doesn't include informing the public on anything beyond white house spin, celebrity scandal and sports.

Nope, this is a do-it-yourself journalism project, with knowledgeable people on DU, many of them ex-military and ex-AF, telling us what they know about nuclear weapons security, checking with old friends they served with to get a reality check on all this, reading through posts on this from various military blogs and forums, and reporting back here and elsewhere so the rest of us can understand the magnitude of what has happened.

And, after following the story for a few days now, I must say this is one of the more chilling tales I've seen in the past six-plus years -- which is saying a lot.


wp

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. it is chilling - especially if they get into the 'wrong hands'

[TheWraith]

2. Why don't you tone down the hyperbole?

"only possible if there were orders from the very top, or if this was some sort of covert op carried out far outside the chain of command by rogue elements in the AF."

"I think that Cheney running a black op to steal the weapons to nuke Iran -- and possibly using one of the warheads to simulate a low-yield suitcase bomb and carry out a false flag attack in the US and blamed on "the terrorists" to provide the pretext for nuking Iran"

Folks, please. This is a lot of paranoia, fearmongering, and tin-foil over what is ultimately a story about some people screwing up. Screwups happen. That doesn't make it part of a massive conspiracy. You know what the difference between a screwup and an order to move nukes would be? You wouldn't hear about the latter. No "stealing" neccessary. Bush does after all run the military, and can give them any order he likes, and they're not supposed to talk about it. If Bush wanted a nuclear strike on Iran, there wouldn't be any need for stolen bombs.

[warren pease]

5. What's hyperbolic?

After reading everything on DU and elsewhere about the C&C, transport, security and flight line regulations and protocols concerning how nuclear weapons are handled, I'm left with the impression that this is an absolutely unprecedented act, so far outside the normal chain of custody regulations that absolutely nobody with useful knowledge -- current and former flight line personnel, security staff, crew chiefs, C&C people, even B-52 flight crew members -- have ever heard of a similar incident.

It was so far out of line, and so potentially dangerous, that three officers risked harsh sanctions, including courts-martial, to blow the whistle to a Gannett-owned newspaper called Army Times, one of the Military Times group of newspapers. It's significant, imo, that they didn't blow the whistle to their commanding officer(s) but chose to go outside the chain of command to tell the story. Draw your own conclusions about that.

This was NOT a screw-up, despite mass media's insistence that it was and despite that nationwide stand-down ordered for Sept. 14 to "evaluate nuclear security procedures." Even highly trained individuals occasionally screw up. Dozens of them do NOT screw up the exact same set of protocols at exact the same time, resulting in an unprecedented breach of nuclear weapons security regulations. This is so far beyond coincidence that, if I were a statistician, I'd love to spend time calculating the odds against this happening by random chance. Maybe somebody here can; I'd love to see the results.

So, according to everyone on DU and elsewhere with some history on how this whole nuke security thing works, this is apparently unprecedented and absolutely dependent on many highly trained, constantly evaluated professionals specifically and willingly ignoring the procedures they follow every single day regarding nuclear weapons security. That's a little much to attribute to random chance. And that leads to some disturbing conclusions:

Here's where the story gets a little "tin foilish." I'm not advancing this as anything but a "what-if" scenario, based on current US political expediency, geo-political scheming, control of oil reserves, the PNAC agenda for "full-spectrum dominance," Chertoff's rumbling gut, calls by several GOP bigwigs and neo-con pundits for a new 9/11 to teach the complacent US public a lesson and incidentally save the GOP from going down in flames next year. In short, Cheney wants to attack Iran and the GOP needs to reinstill the proper level of fear in the general public to reassert its control over the national agenda.

Then there's this thread, which contains a lot of great quotes from current and ex-AF regarding the fact that this has NEVER happened before in the entire history of the cold war; a lot of information on the infiltration of the AF and AF Academy by extreme religious wingnut Dominionists whose ideology entails a struggle to the death against Islam; more good information from former AF DUers on their experiences with nuclear weapons security; and a smattering of what you would probably term "hyperbolic" scenarios that attempt to explain the inexplicable.

http://tinyurl.com/28o4l3

So here's what I think is a possible way to mix up all this data and arrive at a pretty ugly hypothesis (or see my post # 50 on the aforementioned thread): It's possible, and I stress the word POSSIBLE rather than EVIDENT or PROVEN, that these nukes were hijacked as part of an end-times fundie nut case plot, enabled by fundie nut cases at all stages of the flight line and nuclear security checkpoints, loaded onto a plane piloted by fundie nut cases who knew they were carrying nukes, which then landed in Louisiana and was intentionally left unsecured on the tarmac for more than 10 hours (according the AF news release on the subject) by complicit fundie nut cases, where a warhead could easily have been removed, converted to emulate a "suitcase" dirty nuke, which was supposed to be transported to a blue city like SF or Portland for use by black ops demolitions experts working for the ultimate fundie nut cases in the executive branch to fulfill their "prophesies" of a massive terrorist attack on US soil, leading to declaration of martial law and the installation of a de facto dictatorship and providing the excuse to use the other five nukes on Iran, which would be blamed for the false flag op, reviled by the American public, and BushCo's ratings would soar just as they did post-9/11.

And the only reason this whole plan has been uncovered is that three officers in Minot remembered their oaths were to the Constitution and the republic -- and not to a regime or a fascist thug -- and spilled the beans to a Gannett reporter who blew the cover off the whole operation.

Here's some additional reading material on "hyperbolic" theories:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/26631

http://tinyurl.com/259tzf

And here's an interview that focuses on the Dominionist influence in the AF: http://tinyurl.com/2htac8 (scroll down to Tikkun)

Here's a piece on a recently retired AF general and leading member of the Dominionist movement: http://tinyurl.com/23zkqp

And here are a couple of pieces that tie in some recent anti-terrorism exercises: http://tinyurl.com/2yoesp and
http://tinyurl.com/yvey2d

And now you're on your own. If you read all this stuff, particularly the posts on that thread from ex-AF DUers and the ones, mostly in posts from seemslikeadream, that quote blog posts from current and ex-AF personnel on the unprecedented nature of this incident, you'll perhaps engage in "hyperbole" yourself. Or not.

I don't give much of a shit either way. Just so long as you have enough information in front of you to decide for yourself whether the official story -- which is that the whole thing was just an amazing series of mistakes and coincidences -- is believable, or whether there's something else going on here.


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[TankLV]

10. And don't forget - the AF is CRAWLING with rampant idiot christians who are fucking that institution

up royally - starting at the AF Academy...

It's the WORST offender...

[Megahurtz]

4. I Have Been Wondering, Too.

You know that the responsible Parties will just try to bury it. I think someone blew the whistle on something big. The timing is just too perfect.

[warren pease]

6. One kick for the late night crowd

[Wiley50]

7. If We make it through the stand down on Thursday and without a war this weekend

following on it's heels, I might feel a little better for a day or two anyway.

Hyperbole, my ass!

With even our side in Congress spinning like wheel balancers at the Betrayus hearings

It's plain to me that our leadership is complicit in the whole gameplan

to liberate the middle east from it's oil. Perhaps they too believe that it's the

only way to save our economy from the mess that unregulated capitalism has made of it.

It may take some very poisonous medicine to purge the corruption in DC and Wall Street.

And that is just what I see coming, administered by Drs Bear and Dragon

[warren pease]

8. Thanks for checking in, Wiley...

Any word from Rick or hootinholler or any of the rest of the ex-AF people from whom I learned so much the past week?

I'd hate to see this story die, as I'm sure it already has in the happy talk land of mass media.


And a shameless kick for the morning crowd.


wp

[BlooInBloo]

11. Or the little kids version: Gno Gnukes Is Good Gnukes!

:hide:

[Flabbergasted]

12. If Cheney wanted to Nuke Iran he would use the nuclear subs alread present in the region.

ANd if he wanted some nuclear material there are vastly less suspicious and easier ways to accomplish this.

[warren pease]

13. I disagree, and my reasons are all over my various posts, so I won't repeat them here...

But there are too many things that had to go wrong simultaneously, too many actions by highly trained and continuously evaluated personnel that fall completely outside normal nuclear weapons handling protocols and security measures, and too many dire forecasts of impending doom coming from the usual fear mongers to take this incident lightly.

If you want to simply ignore every single bit of evidence, physical and anecdotal, that populates all these threads, fair enough. Me, if I'm going to be part of the program leading to WW III, I'd prefer to do so with my eyes wide open.

wp