Re: [OT]Nukes... tunnels.... boom....

>On Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Tomb wrote:
>
>> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-030902bombs.story

>As one of the people quoted in the article said, "Dr. Strangelove is
alive

>and well in the Pentagon." Wow.
>
>First that 'axis of evil' goofiness, and now this. Is Prez Shrub
*trying*
>to get the entire world polarized against the States?

OK, donning my analyst hat with Tom Swift Magic Decoder Ring:

a) This is a "secret" document. Most countries, my own included, have
laws that
get positively medieval when it comes to people, *any* people, revealing
data
that will "endanger national security". There's freedom of the press,
and there's
treachery. In the US, this incident is interpreted as the former. I
rather think
that in Oz it would be the latter (though a forgiveable one if done with
good
intent rather than just to sell papers). Given the contents, the only
reason
this would be labelled "secret" is so as not to say harsh truths in an
undiplomatic
manner, there's no chance of it hurting national security as such.

b) Following on from the above, how did this guy get a copy? If I were
paranoid,
I'd say that someone did a deliberate leak, with full knowledge from
higher
up. There's no point in having a deterent force if the other side
doesn't know
of its existence. But as Sept 11th proved, some people can't be
deterred. You
have to get your retaliation in first if you want to defend yourself
rather
than merely extract revenge. So this is a good way of preparing the US
public
for the slim possibility of having to Nuke parts of Iraq. Bio or Nuke
warheads
on Tel Aviv -> underground 10kt Bunker-busters near Baghdad if there's
no other
way.

c) Having looked at the article, it just seems to say what's been fairly
obvious
to anyone who cared to give the issue some thought. Of course most
don't, no
sane person is comfy with thinking about Nukes. Some of us have to
though.

>I think some people *still* don't know what they're dealing with, Tom.

Actually the one thing that quite surprised me is that the US didn't use
some
clean Nukes in Afganistan. And before someone goes off at me for the
designation
"clean", I mean "clean as in as clean as an underground test in Nevada"
which
they would resemble. As the thread says, Nukes...tunnels...boom. From
the looks
of this paper, the warheads in the arsenal weren't up to it (too big,
too dirty),
so they're going to have to develop some more.

"The Bush administration, in a secret policy review completed early this
year,
has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of
nuclear weapons
against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the "axis
of evil"--Iraq,
Iran, and North Korea--but also China, Libya and Syria."

These are Contingency Plans. Like the ones the US has in the 1930s
against war
with Japan, war with Britain, war with Canada, war with Australia. Just
do a
search on "Warplan Scarlet", "Warplan Crimson", "Warplan Red" etc.

And the ones that Canada has today to intervene cross-border in case of
civil
insurrection in the USA. (Whew! Finally steered this back on-topic....)