That is the question Larry Johnson asks over at TPMCafe. Johnson is a former counter-terrorism official with the CIA and the State Department.
Johnson questions the official story about the nukes being “mistakenly” flown over the US. A retired B-52 pilot reminds him that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site. Barksdale AFB is being used as a jumping off point for Mideast operations.
Johnson is “certain that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride.” Johnson asks: “Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?” Johnson’s pilot friend believes that “someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.”
Johnson wonders: “Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?”
I certainly hope that is the case. We need responsible officers that are unwilling to let our leaders get away with dragging us closer to war.
UPDATE: The Military Times newspapers, who originally broke the story leaked by unnamed military officers, reports that the squadron commander has been relieved of duty following investigation. The papers also reported that there were six, rather than five, nuclear weapons that were transported across the country.
ya, das ist der ooten-grooten.
I don’t even want to believe that they are staging nukes for possible use on Iran. I know that sounds silly but come on! What is happening in America today that they might be setting the stage to use nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state knowing first hand just what they can and will do?
Using nuclear weapons on a country to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. It’s as absurd as it sounds!
For the sake of humanity let’s hope it was just a royal screw-up.
Your absolutely right! this is ridiculous!!! just think what will happen if they do use nukes on Iran. we will be staring right down the throat of a nuclear world war 3!!!
thank god for whoever leaked this information. Through bush and cheny out before these extremists ruin us all!
Could this be part of the war on nerves against Iran?
Are the nukes bunker busters? That’s the only argument I’ve ever seen for using nukes on Iran in order to take out underground bunkers which are being used to store nuclear material. If these nukes are used in Iran, it will futher damage the US’s reputation.
“If these nukes are used in Iran, it will futher damage the US’s reputation.”
ya think so?
I agree that “accidental” does not add up. It seems to me, perhaps seen in the context of resumed Russian strategic bomber flights or some specific incident, that the simple act of strapping them into the plane and lifting them into the air for three hours is provocative.
This morning’s news, in addition to the nuke transport item, also had Syria resisting Israeli’s airplanes over Syria. I think the plan is to try to provoke some kind of military response that can be made announced as a reason for a major strike at Iran and Syria. The alleged North Vietnamese attacks on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964, come to mind.
—
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego
The AIPAC/neocon propaganda blitz on Iran started this week.
Never have we needed whistle blowers, and better, in our U.S. military. Stand up like men and women for America, not for our fascist, unconstitutional, creepy, unpopular with its own U.S. citizens, federal government.
I don’t believe it was a mistake, not for a minute. I’m a senior NCO in the military and there are WAY too many checks and balances for this to happen.
Whistleblowers have to be very careful though, the military is loaded with “loyal party members” whose first loyalty is not to the Constitution or the military but rather to GW and the neocons. When you blow the whistle, they WILL get even with you, count on it. They will investigate this incident and the focus will NOT be on who screwed up and “accidently” shipped the missiles, the focus will be on finding out who blew the whistle so they can retaliate against them.
Sadly retaliation against whistleblowers is the order of the day.
Can you say Martial Law? Thank God for the Whistleblower who may have bought us a little more time.
The Israeli penetration of Syrian air space was clearly a test of Syrian air defenses in the north of Syria.
Had it happened in the south of Syria, the Israelis could have claimed it was a “mistake”. All they’re claiming now is that Israel does “air exercises in Turkey”.
Yeah, right.
This was a test run and a clear signal that Israel intends to start a war with Syria – and probably Lebanon and Hizballah as well – at the same time the US attacks Iran.
The neocons and Israel are going for broke – trying to take out all their enemies at once.
The justification will be some “terrorist incident” in the US or some “incident” in Iraq where Bush and Cheney can point to Iran as “killing US troops”.
It’s on, there can be no doubt now. We are perhaps only days or weeks – at most months – away from a major war in the Middle East that will bankrupt the US militarily, economically and geopolitically for decades.
If the United States government launches a preventive nuclear strike against Iran, it will put the mark of Cain on all the American people, forever. Even today, the first thing that comes to most people’s mind when Germany is mentioned is not Goethe or Beethoven, but Hitler and the Nazis. The shot that was heard around the world, the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, Madison, Twain, and Mencken will all become footnotes to the fact that the United States government used nuclear weapons against a country that did not possess nuclear weapons, and never attacked us.
The United States government is already responsible for the mass murder of close to one million innocent Iraqi men, women, and children. If the murders that would would result from a nuclear first strike against Iran is added to the murders the United States government is already guilty of in Iraq, the United States government could very well join such governments as the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Maoist China as one of the most murderous governments in history. Something must be done (I wish I knew what that something was) to stop these lunatics before they commit one of the biggest crimes in history.
While these neocons are certainly capable of making mistakes (lol) most of what they have accomplished has been by design. The fact is their “designs” are patently anti-humanitarian, often, if not usually, illegal, filled with hubris, and consistently disasterous for everyone on this planet.
As you can probably tell, I’m sure that the nuclear weapons are at LEAST being used as a threat, and at WORST headed for use against Iran.
May God help us all.
donilo
God has nothing to do with this.
Man has for centuries caused death and destruction under
the banner of religion.
We use it to subjugate and destroy anyone who is not like us
which is an evil act in itself.
Allan,
So that you know my context, I am an affirmed agnostic. So I make no claim as to the reality of the existence of a god (G?)- my statement “God help us all” is simply a familiar phrase that expresses my sense of fear for what might enfold.
I’m in complete agreement with your other comments.
May somebody or something help us all.
donilo
May be time for “the new Pearl Harbor part II”. This way they certainly can have their permanent warfare. Yes, they’re crazy enough to do that.
I didn’t buy the news story from the beginning. It’s beyond ridiculous to suggest these pilots were unaware they had nukes strapped to the plane. I’m of the belief Israel-firsters are pushing for this war while Bush is in office. They have the perfect nut-job in office now and they will take advantage of it.
It’s beyond surreal to watch our government be so detached from what the people want, what the constitution allows and what our national interests demand. I think nothing short of storming the White House will change the course of this nation – as those who hijacked our foreign policy seem hell bent on bombing Iran – come nukes or high water.
If people did not question 9/11 more (they should), they were ready to test them even further.
Unbelievable! I am shocked.
I am not a military expert, but common sense tells me that nuclear weapons are completely segregated from their non-nuke cousins. I would also assume that there are multiple checks and multiple “firewalls” supporting that segregation. So logic would tell us that either someone at a very senior level, with the correct codes, etc., authorized this move, or, on the other hand, our nukes a laying around our military bases, under minimal security, inviting theft or tragic error.
Either scenario sounds pretty scary to me.
Folks, looks like we very well might have a Dr. Strangelove as President
As a friend of mine noted, maybe someone is planning to finish off New Orleans? It’s food for thought; grist for the mill, etc..
I’m not as worried about what the National Socialeists, err, I mean neocons do to Iran, Syria and their alies in Lebanon, as I am concerned about what they plan to do to me after all is said and done.
The ‘Cons’ have already eviscerated the Constitution: what’s to stop them from suspending it out right? How did that twit and company get elected in the first place? Where was the opposition to Le Fou Bouche, then? Maybe the Cons have taken full measure of the US population. America is a scary place and it scares the world. A good qustion to muse: Maybe we are as stupid as the rest of the world thinks we are?
Everybody must have known what they were loading on that B-52. Weapons load crews have to follow a checklist when loading any kind of weapons or ammo on an aircraft.
A load crew chief would have to be pretty stupid not to know he was loading a nuclear weapon instead of a conventional weapon. The crews at the missle storage area would also have to be idiots if the didn’t know what they delivered to the flight line.And, the missles would have to be inspected before the load crew starts loading them.
Addition to my last post:
I forgot to add that the aircrew would inspect any ordnance loaded on their aircraft as part of the preflight inspection. The aircraft forms would probably show what weapons are loaded on the aircraft.
the real terrorists were always bush and cheney bin laden is a biy scout compared to these lunatics
the real terrorists were always bush and cheney bin laden is a boy scout
It’s probably being positioned for use here in America to be blamed on Iran. So they can say…”See we told you the Iranians had nuclear weapons”.
crazy s**t….its amazing that cnn fox ect did not utter a peep about this yesterday…..put on your seat belts
This was just a f**k up on the part of the munitions maintenance people and nothing more! Besides, Barksdale AFB (where the Minot nukes ended up) is host to
a B-52 Bomb Wing – the ‘buffs” have been there for decades! Don’t you imagine that
Barksdale already has nukes?
Dismissed!
Sarge
Indianapolis
Of course it was leaked on purpose. Bravo to the braveheart. You are a real man. Now it's up to us.
I don't think it was an accidental assignment. That was spin control by Cheney when more people found out than he wanted.
Cheney has said any WMD on USA soil will be assigned to Iran with zero investigation. What Cheney wants is not to nuke Iran openly, but a prelude: a false-flag WMD attack on the USA that will be blamed on Iran. Then a US "response" with WMDs is morally justified by the braindead teeveenews.
Covertly assigned nukes sounds just like a Cheney plot. I wonder if there are any WMD wargames going on. A good site for that stuff is falseflagnews.com.
Any one of them could "go live" as 9-11 did, in which USA-military-trained role-player assignee Atta realized his fate only the moment remote controls slammed him into the building, rather than landing him safely to collect the fat paycheck he was promised ("you will test our hijacked aircraft auto-retrieval system" or some pitch like that).
Look. These people are not just flaming world revolutionaries with bizarre politics. They worship a death cult, and even their secular policy docs talk about mass depopulation. Meanwhile Cheney is building giant underground bunkers beneath his home in DC. We're dealing with psychos who think they're great historical figures creating new realities. They're also under mutual death threats and blackmails from their own cult brothers to keep these psyops games afoot. Don't put anything past them.
This was no simple screw-up; ammunition- especially NUCLEAR ammunition- just doesn’t get loaded ‘by mistake’. Who was the base commander (or an even more senior officer) who authorized the loading? Who was the wing commander who signed off on it? Who was the ammunition officer who gave the order to load up? Who was the ammunition handler who unlocked the weapons for transport to the flight line? No, loading nukes is a defeinite process and one that is not prone to ‘mistakes’.
This is simply a cover-up from first to last, and I applaud the guy who blew the whistle on it.
WHO gave the order for nukes to be loaded and WHY? A simple check of the documentation should reveal those answers- where is the mountain of paperwork that certainly must be involved in such weapons being loaded? Look for a signature at the bottom of the order for the WHO, and look for ‘…in accordance with AF order #XXX…’ (or something of that nature referencing an Operational Order) for the WHY. Pretty simple investigative work- so why will this take forever to figure out?
six guys associated with this have mysteriously died within seven days. Check it out.
This Cheney/Bush administration is in exactly the same company with Hitler, Stalin, et al. The only thing that has slowed them so far is the fact that we had some pretty good checks in place, though eroded somewhat over the past 27 years. However, C/B have eroded our protections to alarmingly low levels, and I see us as losing the race to 2008. We can’t sit around and wait for the elections to save us. If impeachment charges were filed now against both of them, at least it might slow down their “march to armageddon” a little bit.
We sure got handed a couple of sociopaths by the supreme court. Bush, the simpleton highschool boy sociopath, and Cheney, the real Stalin in the white house.
The killer for me is how easily most of the press and so many of the citizens have rolled over for them. The country hasn’t become populated with “sheeple,” it now seems to be filled with lemmings.
Arrrggghhhh!
regards,
donilo
911 =inside job wake up
Using the nukes (or whatever) merely to destroy Iran’s nuclear “facilities” does not make sense. The destroyed facilities would be rebuilt quickly. The real value in the Iranian nuke program is contained in the expertise of its scientists and engineers. To really take out the Iranian nuke program, it is necessary to kill Iran’s nuclear scients and other technical personnel. Sounds like a good use for nukes to me. Use multi-megaton bombs to kill the underground facility, and anyone living within commuting distance of it.
People better prepare for the worst. When these assclowns start the new war, possibly with nukes, that will be the final straw: we’ll have to start the 2nd revolution. Thank god for the the 2nd amendment.
I guess this is just a coincidence?
Since the story broke 7 days ago, about the missing nuke\clandestine operation from Minot, we have the following for those who are paying attention:
1. All six people listed below are from Minot Airforce base
2. All were directly involved as loaders or as pilots
3. All are now dead
4. All within the last 7 days in ‘accidents’
http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=10465
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070915/BREAKINGNEWS/70915012
http://www.kxmc.com/News/161562.asp
http://www.kxmc.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=140988
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/07/20/news/state/136489.txt
http://www.komotv.com/news/local/9679367.html
Silly me, seeing more than there is to this story. I guess this is just another coincidence.
But no doubt now that there will be more coincidences in the near future because as I have stated before, you need about fourteen signatures to get an armed nuke onto a B-52, and they may have told their wives and friends.
Dude, learn how the read.
Only ONE of those deaths was AFTER the B52 incident, And you listed that one TWICE.
What difference does that make; something weird going on there; people could have been taken out so new people could accomplish task. It is still strange and what are the odds?
Oh yeah, and he WASN’T a “pilot” or a “loader”, he was part of the security staff.
I’m retired military, both general military aviation and several years with nukes….There used to be a sign in the Minot AFB Medical Records Dept that read “If you don’t wake up at least once a night in a cold sweat….You don’t understand the PRP”…. Thats true…
The PRP is the Personal Responsiblity Program administered throughout all of the Services by the Dept of Energy….In other words…DOE writes the rules the military must follow to handle nukes…..Fail a DOE inspection and your career is over….There are no second chances….At least there wasn’t pre-bush
I started to write a lengthy description of what would be required to get 6 nukes from storage onto an aircraft….Not including actually leaving the base with it…But as I was writing all of the procedures I couldn’t help thinking about our new and improved “enemy combatant” policies…And I really don’t want to get waterboarded in some foreign country while my wife wonders why the hell I didn’t come home from work…
It is truly a sad day in this country when 6 missing nukes is just a bad oops because they didn’t loose them or blow anyone up ha ha…. but talking about it publicly may be a punishable offense
I’m not sure which one of those scares me the most..
I will say this….I think a conservative estimate would be about 50 people of varying ranks would have had to come in direct contact with either just the nukes or the nukes and the aircraft “BEFORE” it left Minot….Nukes are kept in a seperate area aboard the base. Nukes have different color coding….Normal practice dummy rounds are blue…Normal live ordinance is Green…. Every single one of the people who came in close proximity to the nukes or aircraft would have been trained to pay special attention to procedures and checklists….Lots and lots of checklists…They would also know what constitutes an obvious complete base locked down security violation….Like say an aircraft sitting on the runway with nukes and no security detachment guarding it… I would say at least 20 of the 50 would have had to sign documents either transferring or accepting responsibility and /or custody for the nukes including serial numbers. There would have been maybe 10 different and seperate agencies or units aboard the base either directly or indirectly involved in the transfer.. You don’t just tell Dumb and Dumber to go get 6 nukes and hang them on a B-52…The aviation department is a completely different world than the guys that guard and maintain nukes…The aviation part would have inspected the aircraft first by the general maintenance department in preparation for the flight…probably again within several hours of the scheduled departure another pre-flight inspection….then again by the enlisted crew of the aircraft prior to departure and again by the pilot or co pilot before departure.. There may also have been a seperate department tasked soley with loading ordinance and verifying where or not the ordinance was properly ARMED…..There would have to have been someone fairly senior in the maintenance department who reviewed all of the documentation and signatures to ensure everything including the documents associated with the loading of the nukes prior to releaseing the aircraft “safe for flight”….Then someone from the crew would review that information again before accepting the aircraft….Every single one of these people would have to be on the PRP….Every single one of these people would have had to follow a specific protocol if the flight involved nukes.
Basically…. there is no freaking way 6 live nukes gets ACCIDENTALLY loaded on any aircraft by any branch of the service at any time on any base unless somewhere along the line….THERE WAS AN ORDER TO LOAD 6 LIVE NUKES……IT JUST COULDN’T HAPPEN…Its that simple
What is our new agenda?
We need some way of gaining access to the ICBM launch mechanism in either Europe, China, India or America. Once we launch these nukes at various cities many of the global issues will be resolved.
Dr. Stangelove (Chaney’s) fingerprints are all over this. Remember during the Penagon attack, Paneta, while visiting Chaney, witnessed Chaney order a stand down which when Paneta told the 9/11 Commission, they totally ignored and dismissed. We need another real 9/11 investigation.
Sorry, not Panetta, but Norman Mineta:
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified before the 911 Commission on May 23, 2003 and offered an interesting account of Vice President Cheney’s behavior as Flight 77 approached the Pentagon. 2 The essential testimony is in boldface.
MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?
MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane [was] coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant. And —
MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the —
MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.
MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah.
MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the conversation between the young man and the vice president, then at the time I didn’t really recognize the significance of that.
And then later I heard of the fact that the airplanes had been scrambled from Langley to come up to DC, but those planes were still about 10 minutes away. And so then, at the time we heard about the airplane that went into Pennsylvania, then I thought, “Oh, my God, did we shoot it down?” And then we had to, with the vice president, go through the Pentagon to check that out.
MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.
MR. MINETA: Well, I don’t know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.
MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.
MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out. …
My own brief analysis of Cheney’s remarks is straightforward:
The young man’s reports to Cheney of the airliner’s impending approach is followed by his urgent question whether “the orders still stand?” The young man was questioning the order. That question had to be about whether the order NOT to destroy the approaching plane still stood. Given the two prior attacks against the Twin Towers using the commercial airliners as weapons, an order to destroy the plane approaching the Pentagon would be the only order to give and would not be subject to question by the young man as the plane approached. Furthermore, had Cheney’s order been to fire on the plane approaching the Pentagon (which first came near the White House), the anti-aircraft capacity of the Pentagon (or White House), would have sufficed to take out that plane, and certainly to have attempted to take out that plane. Since the Langley/Norfolk jets are at least 10 minutes away and out of range, Cheney’s order is about the on-site Pentagon or White House defenses. Neither a shoot-down nor an attempted shoot-down occurred, and since Mineta does not speak of a last-second change in orders by Cheney, the only supportable conclusion is that Cheney’s order was NOT to defend the Pentagon, an order so contrary to both common sense and military defense that it, and it alone, explains the questioning by the young man.
There are several reasons why Cheney’s behavior matters, but first and foremost is that Vice President Dick Cheney is in the command position in defending the Pentagon as the airliner approaches. To appreciate the significance of this fact it helps to return to the basics of producing 911 as a USG Intelligence Community domestic covert operation. One essential component of the plan is to gain control of the commercial airliners and to have a reliable means of guiding them to their targets. 3 Another essential component is to make sure that nothing interferes with the airliners reaching their targets.