Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Terrifying

Just when you think they can't get any worse:
At this point, I think I need to bring up what one might call the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time. This story came to me last week from an anonymous individual who I would say is in a position to know about such things. According to this person, the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran. The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent. By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying. In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so. Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we'd just hit.
Does it not occur to them that maybe, just maybe, other people will have observers in Iran? I know they say it will be "small" nuclear weapons, but even a small atomic fireball is pretty distinctive.

God. Remember when the people planning pre-emptive nuclear war were the people we were supposed to hate?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does it not occur to them that maybe, just maybe, other people will have observers in Iran? I know they say it will be "small" nuclear weapons, but even a small atomic fireball is pretty distinctive.

If the detonation is underground, the "flash" will be hidden; big FAE bombs make a fireball and a mushroom cloud. That's enough to hang a big lie on.

Even after hearing this proposal, if the US claimed we hadn't used nukes and someone else claimed we had, I think I'd be afraid to believe that we had.

AJSomerset said...

That can't possibly be credible.

The initial story might well be that any radiation was attributable to the fact that these were nuclear sites, but that surely wouldn't stand up to any followup investigation.

If this were true, the White House would have to have taken leave of its senses, and somehow become utterly convinced of its ability to lie its way out of anything simply by repeating the lie....

Oh my God. It's probably true!

Mike said...

You hear this stuff and then look at the Yank's Second Amendment, just lying there, waiting to be used...

Anonymous said...

I believe the US has developed bunker busting "mini" nukes that they are dying to try out. I would think they'd be referring to those rather the armageddon types.

Regardless, this is scary stuff. I wouldn't put anything past that evil old fart pushing the buttons from some undisclosed location.