Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

[Rajiv]

Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

On August 30, a B-52 bomber armed with five nuclear-tipped Advanced Cruise missiles traveled from Minot Air Force base, North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force base, Louisiana. Each missile had an adjustable yield between five and 150 kilotons of TNT which is at the lower end of the destructive capacities of U.S. nuclear weapons. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13 kilotons, while the Bravo Hydrogen bomb test of 1954 had a yield of 15,000 kilotons. The B-52 story was first covered in the Army Times on September 5 after the nuclear armed aircraft was discovered by Airmen. What made this a very significant event was that it was a violation of U.S. Air Force regulations concerning the transportation of nuclear weapons by air. Nuclear weapons are normally transported by air in specially constructed planes designed to prevent radioactive pollution in case of a crash. Such transport planes are not equipped to launch the nuclear weapons they routinely carry around the U.S. and the world for servicing or positioning.
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Why were the nuclear weapons sent to Barksdale AFB? If initial reports that the weapons were being decommissioned, but were mistakenly transported by a B-52 bomber, then the weapons should have been taken to Kirtland Air Force Base. According to Kristensen, this is "where the warheads are separated from the rest of the weapon and shipped to the Energy Department's Pantex dismantlement facility near Amarillo, Texas." However, it has been revealed by a reliable source that Barksdale AFB is used as a staging base for operations in the Middle East. This is circumstantial evidence that the weapons were being deployed for possible use in the Middle East.

There has been recent speculation concerning a possible attack against Iran given reports that the Pentagon has completed plans for a three day bombing blitz of Iran according to a Sunday Times report. The Report claims that 1200 targets have been selected and this will destroy much of Iran's military infrastructure. Such an attack will devastate Iran's economy, create greater political instability in the region, and stop the oil supply. A disruption of the oil supply from the Persian Gulf could trigger a global economic recession and lead to the collapse of financial markets.
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Consequently, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to argue that the nuclear armed B-52 was part of a covert operation, outside the regular chain of military command. The most plausible authority responsible for this was Vice President Cheney. He very likely used the Secret Service to take charge of a contrived National Special Security Event involving a nuclear armed B-52 that would be flown from Minot AFB. The B-52 was directed to Barksdale Air Force base where it would have conducted a covert mission to the Middle East involving the detonation of one or more nuclear weapons most likely in or in the vicinity of Iran. This could either have occurred during a conventional military strike against Iran, or a False Flag operation in the Persian Gulf region.

The leaking and discovery of the nuclear armed B-52 at Barksdale was not part of the script. According to a confidential source of Larry Johnson, a former counter-terrorism official from the State Department and CIA, the discovery of the nuclear armed B-52 was leaked. Johnson concludes: "Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don't know, but it is a question worth asking."

Dr. Michael Salla is an internationally recognized scholar in international politics, conflict resolution, US foreign policy and the new field of 'exopolitics'. He is author/editor of five books; and held academic appointments in the School of International Service& the Center for Global Peace, American University, Washington DC (1996-2004); the Department of Political Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (1994-96); and the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington D.C., (2002). He has a Ph.D in Government from the University of Queensland, Australia, and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has conducted research and fieldwork in the ethnic conflicts in East Timor, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Sri Lanka, and organized peacemaking initiatives involving mid to high level participants from these conflicts.

[Guest]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

Rajiv -

Please accept my comments as in no way a rebuke of you personally - however I must rebuke this Professors idea.

It's just my opinion but this PHD professor's thesis seems utterly absurd. A level headed teenager would know better than to arrive at these conclusions and actually publish as a serious thesis that Vice President Cheney was attempting a nuclear attack on any nation as a stealth action.

Why go to elaborate lengths to guard the nuclear bombing initiative from the American electorate when you'd only have to answer to them fully (face the music) immediately after the event? Stealth to disguise this from the American electorate? Stealth for what, to surprise the international community, or the Iranians themselves? The action is plastered in every news headline in the world immediately after the fact.

Any president (and most assuredly, any Vice President, with no executive power!!) who attempted a nuclear attack on another state without getting an explicit sign-off from the joint chiefs of staff would face immediate impeachment and a resounding public clamor for their direct accountability, simply for having initiated an act of irrevocable war inviting nuclear response from other nuclear powers!

They'd be summarily impeached simply for blatantly usurping the war powers authority while not even being the chief executive! A Vice President has no vestige of such authority unless the sitting president is dead at the time they take such decisions! If ever the War Powers Act could summarily dismiss a man from office, it's a sitting Vice President attempting this. Don't kid yourself, for a stealth nuclear explosion, they would frog march him out of office in 24 hours.

This would be so direct a usurpation of the President's (and Joint Chiefs!) authorities that it would result automatically in even the majority within his own party moving to immediately remove him from office and put him under arrest. If this Professor thinks differently he must have a present perception of the machinery of constitutional authority in DC which borders on the hallucinatory. This guy is running a high fever.

A nuclear weapon, if events ever escalated in Iran, would logically only be used AFTER conventional bombing had proved ineffective. Pentagon strategists may be scary, but they absolutely are not stupid, much less stupid to this sublime degree - a nuclear weapon has not been used since WWII, and it's well understood in the military intelligence community, that there is no such thing as a pure military target.

There are political costs to every action, and they are actively evaluated by the Pentagon on a sliding scale relative to all military action. Use of even the smallest tactical nuke carries such a prohibitive political cost that it's viability is compromised to the point of being useless in all but the clearest and most compelling of circumstances.

For an academic to speculate a Vice President is sneaking around attempting to deliver nukes to a country in the middle east without the knowledge or vetting of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the President himself, or Congress and the Senate calls his good judgement into question, to say the least.

Tensions between conservatives and liberals have escalated drastically in recent years, it's understood. But to put about such theories seems to me the height of folly in that all it accomplishes is to ratchet up hysteria to dangerous levels - don't kid yourself - the above very real executive authority limits are still very much in force in Washington.

It would be hallucinatory to imagine any president detonating a nuke without being able to trot out at very least the joint chiefs afterward to show the minutes of a meeting where they expressly approved it - to imagine a Vice President undertaking that in complete stealth with no concern for that eventuality or the consequences is laughable.

Either this is a true wider conspiracy, a hermetically sealed consensus by the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon, and the President himself is signing off on it, or the speculation this was a preamble to an actual nuclear bombing run initiated by the Vice President on his own private initiative is the biggest pile of BS I've come across since the start of the Iraq war.

Cheney is a notably creepy guy - but this is nonsense. Unfortunately, the suspension of disbelief required to believe this story has a real basis as conjectured, leading to an actual nuclear attack will rope in a lot of credulous people.

Of course your Prof. can conclude Cheney was planning a coup d'etat and was going to throw Dubya into chains while he took power over a police state and the Senate, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the docile American electorate went along meekly - If that's your Professor's view he is welcome to it, but frankly there are probably more worthwhile things to preoccupy yourself with once you've gone to the trouble to obtain a Doctorate.

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I just checked out the website you retrieved this from. What are you doing messing around with this dredge Rajiv?

<< Political Implications of the Extra Terrestrial Presence?>>

Are you posting this as a prank? All your previous commentary is of the highest critical caliber - maybe a (completely understandable) strong antipathy for our current administration is affecting your usual steely good judgement?

[Arnric62]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

An attack on Iran is a very real possibility - but not, in my judgment, before early next year. By then there is likely to have been a limited draw-down of US troops in Iraq, and a re-deployment of most of the remainder to a small number of secure permanent bases, where they will be less vulnerable to an Iraqi uprising or Iranian-inspired retaliation.

I would regard the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs against Iranian nuclear facilities as unlikely. I have little doubt that the option has been considered, along with myriad other options, but my understanding is that specialised conventional weapons could probably achieve the objective of destroying Natanz and the other known facilities without crossing that particular Rubicon.

I should say that I regard the prospect of an unprovoked American attack on Iran with horror, whatever the targets are, and whatever weapons are used. However, this article strikes me as hysterical nonsense.

[c1ue]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

I am in agreement with Lukester :eek: and Arn - a nuclear explosion in Iran is simply too obvious.

Furthermore I don't see why 5 bombs would be needed - I'd think only 1 would be sufficient to either create a provocation or simulate an 'accident'.

Sometimes a screwup is just a screwup.

But I vote we take up a collection to send a limited edition Leadite(TM) tin foil hat to the Professor.

[Spartacus]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

(my insertion is <<< beteeen >>>

Rajiv -

Why go to elaborate lengths <<< to knowingly lie about WMD in Iraq, and suppress proove they had no WMD - LIE, LIE, LIE >>> to the American electorate when you'd only have to answer to them fully (face the music) immediately after the event?

Indeed, why ??

Cause he'll get away with it, like he did just a few short years ago.

If the US nukes Iran, who's going to report it in the US? The same media that's been helping the US government paint Iran as a rogue state for 40 years? FOX?

I sincerely doubt that ANY standard US outlet will report it. IF, (a big IF IMHO) they report it, they'll say "Iran is claiming ...".
No interviews with Iranians.
No credibility given

then they'll have 30 minutes of interviews with USGOV officials (decorated generals, decorated ex-CIA .. whatever, former swift-boat captains ... )
And anyone who questions this administration will be branded anti-US, anti-"support-the-troops".

If this administration does it, they WILL get away with it, at least internally - COUNT ON IT. Bush/Cheney WILL get away with it.

[Spartacus]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

US citizens will never accept that their government would nuke Iran. There will be an automatic public revulsion to accepting the idea.

There will be an automatic backlash against anyone who reports such attacks, anyone who demands investigations ...

The Dems are scared to death to demand withdrawal from Iraq. Do you think that they don't know what will happen (the automatic "we didn't do it" from the US public) if they push for investigations?

If they try to push the story to the front pages?

Which US media would report it?

Which US media would push it to the forefront?

When Cheney attacked Amnesty International, it seemed to me a good 1/3 of US media (lots of columnists) took that as marching orders to spew all the hatred they could at AI.

The other media just didn't do much about it. Report the story once or twice, then forget about it.

I am in agreement with Lukester :eek: and Arn - a nuclear explosion in Iran is simply too obvious.

Furthermore I don't see why 5 bombs would be needed - I'd think only 1 would be sufficient to either create a provocation or simulate an 'accident'.

Sometimes a screwup is just a screwup.

But I vote we take up a collection to send a limited edition Leadite(TM) tin foil hat to the Professor.

[Guest]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

Spartacus -

I disagree. If even the smallest tactical nuke is used anywhere in the world by any nation it will be front and center on every newspaper and blog in the world. Count on it. There is a vast network of news outlets in the US. A few are good, many are less good, many more are disreputable. But they are many.

But anyone suggesting Americans cannot source multiple outlets for all the news in the world is dreaming. We are inundated with news of every ideological color. The much rarer news outlets are those that toe the fine line providing news of no ideological color.

Americans have absolutely no shortage of news sources, both incountry and out, and you may be greatly underestimating the numbers of those that would be actively searching multiple news sources in the event any nuclear bomb went off anywhere in the world. If it was even remotely linked to the US - 100 Million + people in this country would be all over that story in hours.

[Mega]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

They are going Bankupt and they have all but lost the war in Iraq........They are panic mode and don't know what to do.

We British have a saying "When your in a hole, stop digging!"
Mike

[Guest]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

Mega - You wrote:

<< We British have a saying "When you're in a hole - stop digging!" >>

Hey! Stop taking a leaf out of our freaking book! That's an American saying, not British! We invented it when you Brits were still wet behind the ears on this topic!

We freaking pioneered < how to dig holes without knowing when to stop digging > [TM] , so it stands to reason we have first dibs on any wise old saws about it!

As for all the rest of your abominable running down of our fine nation, (clears throat, assumes a talk show host's pleasant persuasive baritone, and ... )

[ We are all US patriots here ... even our warm-hearted Canadian cousins !! See them cheering ??? ].

Audience erupts into catcalls ("throw the mother****rs out!" and "yo' momma can kiss my ***!", etc). Overripe vegetables with strategically ripened skins fly through the air, splattering colorful tropical patterns on the talk show host's spotless Banana Republic khaki shirt ...

[Rajiv]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

Here is another article from a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His political and military analyses have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine.

Loose Nukes Looming Near

This week we learned that on August 30 the United States Air Force flew a B-52, locked and loaded with nuclear warheads, from North Dakota to Louisiana. This broke a military policy going back to the 1960s against such flights.

"I just can't imagine how all of this happened," said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information. "The procedures are so rigid; this is the last thing that's supposed to happen."

But it did happen, and we would not know about it at all had it not been for three Air Force officers, speaking under condition of anonymity, who Informed The Military Times about the event. And of course, everyone is trying to "get to the bottom of it."

So says the White House, which has lied about everything from 9/11 to Iraq to lead us into a global war for which the Neocons were planning well before the presidency of George W. Bush.

So says the Air Force, which just violated 40 years of policy without explanation, and states that it had no idea of the nukes were in the air over the United States for the duration of their flight.

So says Congress. "These reports are deeply disturbing," said Congressman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "The American people, our friends, and our potential adversaries must be confident that the highest standards are in place when it comes to our nuclear arsenal." Everyone would be much more confident, I believe, if the Congress now promising to investigate the loose nukes were anything but the quislings that they have shown themselves to be, both before and after the Democratic election successes of 2006. They have made it apparent that there is really only one party in power: the War Party.
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To take a single M-16 rifle from the arms room of a stateside military unit requires the permission of several military officials, along with numerous keys, combinations and codes. It is inconceivable to me, and to every other military veteran with whom I have spoken this week, that the loose nukes were a mere accident of oversight, or that the order to fly them came from any source other than the White House.

The official account of a slip up, parroted by the official media, is a transparent lie. The task for thoughtful and patriotic American citizens is to fathom the "why" behind the lie, and it comes down to a simple question: was the White House threatening to use the nukes or preparing to use the nukes?
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It's fine to wish that our own government were not such a threat to us, but anyone who thinks the loose nukes in our skies are not a threat to us is only engaging in wishful thinking.

[WDCRob]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

I have no idea why those nukes were moved, but it wasn't an accident.

[c1ue]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

I would be more believing that this incident was not an accident if there I had a clearer understanding of the differences between conventional and nuclear weapons bombs.

After all, the argument presented above

To take a single M-16 rifle from the arms room of a stateside military unit requires the permission of several military officials, along with numerous keys, combinations and codes.

actually reinforces the possibility that a simple screwup occurred. If you have to move heaven and earth to do even simple things, then the difficult things are the same effort.

As I've mentioned before - this is the 2 peasants deciding to revolt joke:

2 peasants in China are conscripted into standing guard instead of farming.

One peasant says to the other: "What's the penalty for falling asleep while on watch?"?

The other says: "Death".

The first one then asks: "What's the penalty for starting a revolution?"

The other says: "Death"

The first peasant says: "Well heck, we might as well start the revolution!"

If you need a ridiculous amount of approval to move a rifle, I posit that every step along the chain has a ridiculous amount of paperwork to do anything. Thus each link is conditioned to bureaucracy. With so much to sign, it is very possible the actual details are no longer important so much as the act of approval.

Thus if someone goofs and starts the whole Rube Goldberg process, I could see how everyone along the chain just rubber stamps it.

Another possibility is that if the nuclear bombs and regular bunker busters are stored in the same area - 2000 lb hardened explosives vs. nukes are both equally hazardous from the storage point of view - maybe someone just loaded the wrong bombs.

Note that transportation is different than use: I'm certain that usage requires an entirely different chain of approvals - likely including civilian government oversight.

[Rajiv]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

C1ue,

My read on this is as follows -

1) The paper trail on the five nuclear tipped cruise missiles says that they were to be sent to be dismantled.
2) When these missiles are "normally" shipped for dismantling, they are shipped in special C-130 cargo planes and not B-52 Bombers
3) These missiles were supposedly "locked and loaded" on to B-52 Bombers, and went to an air base that does not do dismantling.

A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week.
The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber’s wings.

4) This was so egregious that 3 USAF officers on condition of anonimity went to the "Military Times"

[Guest]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

Rajiv -

You may prefer replying to others here rather than me, although I had addressed you directly in my posts - so out of deference to your wishes, I'll post this further down the thread for you.

The multiple sign offs that are required to move a nuke suggest multiple different officers have to sign off jointly and simultaneously at each stage of such a move of live nuclear warheads. At very least they are certainly more than two or three officers signing off - probably multiples of that number.

There is a vanishingly small probability that this chain of command could be formed and would execute this order while excluding any or all officers who directly report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and directly to the President, and expressly do not report to the Vice President who has no executive power.

The above two entities (President and Joint Chiefs) are the active authorized participants in any nuclear deployment. The Vice President, although he has a lot of power in consultation and influence with the President, does not have any executive power within this chain of command. He would therefore have to artfully contrive this by subterfuge.

This was my whole point - not that Nukes could not possibly be transported (quite evidently they were!), but that any Vice President performing this sleight of hand could possibly assemble a chain of authorized personnel who do not report to the Chiefs of Staff and the President in the process.

Hence if this was a stealth move of live nukes, it was accomplished by the Joint Chiefs and the President, not by the Vice President - who is a figurehead with potential, but no actual, executive power to order military actions. He has very broad executive powers, indeed all the powers of the Presidency, but they are strictly neutralized unless and until the US President is incapacitated or dead. This is why I found the theory of Cheney's initiative so wildly improbable.

Further, nuclear warheads to be delivered anywhere worldwide do not have to be moved to deploy them internationally. You bring the long range flight-ready B52 bomber to the bombs, not the bombs to the B52 bomber. This package can then go anywhere in the world to detonate them far more discreetly than lugging the bombs through a dozen military sign-offs in transit.

If there was a stealthy deployment of nukes, by the Joint Chiefs and the President, with a plan to ready them for a bombing, they would not need to laboriously and very visibly move the bombs from one air base to another - you just get a B52 bomber mission ready, fly it to where the bombs are, obtain far less sign-offs to get the bombs out of lock up, and go directly into international airspace to lose the US related military oversight quickly.

Another thought - if you wanted to accomplish true stealth in deployment planning to detonate these nukes in a far away country, why use a 50 year old prop driven B52 that takes the better part of a day to fly to the Middle East, rather than a supersonic stealth enabled B2?

The speculations of a Vice President acting as a rogue agent in planning for a stealthy nuclear attack have a hole in the logic. The Vice President's place in the chain of command makes the plausibility remote. The quite public movement of the bombs between one US base and another, and the ease with which 3 Air Force officers stepped forward to discuss it puts another dent in the logic of any government planned stealthy move. Stealthy moves are designed to be stealthy.

Moving nukes on a bomber from one US base to another is a giant invitation card for some Air Force personnel to step forward and leak it somewhere along that chain of events. Why would the Joint Chiefs or the President be so supremely clumsy attempting to ready Nukes for any real deployment? Once a provisional movement of nukes is leaked out like this, actually deploying them days or months later for a final real bombing run becomes far more difficult to conceal. The logic seems to have multiple holes.

[Rajiv]

Re: Was a Covert Attempt to Bomb Iran with Nuclear Weapons foiled by a Military Leak?

old prop driven B52.

B-52s are not prop driven

The USAF has had B-52s in active service since 1955, first with Strategic Air Command, and since 1991, with the Air Combat Command. Its superior performance at high subsonic speeds and low operating costs, compared to other USAF strategic bombers, have kept the B-52 in service despite proposals to replace it with the Mach 3 XB-70 Valkyrie, supersonic B-1B Lancer, and stealth B-2 Spirit. In January 2005, it became the second aircraft, after the English Electric Canberra, to mark 50 years of continuous service with its original primary operator.
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In 1991 the B-52Gs from bases in England and on the island of Diego Garcia flew low level bombing missions until Coalition forces completed air superiority and were able to suppress any air defense systems capable of reaching bombers at a higher altitude. B-52s were an important part of the air war during Operation Desert Storm as they could be employed with impunity. Though less destructive than more advanced weapons such as cluster bombs or precision guided projectiles, the conventional strikes were used because they were economical, and it was hoped that by demoralizing the defending Iraqi troops, they could be induced to surrender rather than be destroyed.[citation needed] During the Gulf War the B-52 suffered only one aircraft loss, with several receiving minor damage from enemy action.

The B-52 also contributed to the US success in Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 (Afghanistan/Southwest Asia), providing the ability to loiter high above the battlefield and provide Close Air Support (CAS) through the use of precision guided munitions, a mission that had been restricted to fighter and ground attack aircraft. B-52s also played a key role in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which commenced in 2003 (Iraq/Southwest Asia), where they provided close air support and bombing

Lukester, it is immaterial to me whether the orders came from the Vice President, the President, the Joint Chiefs, or the "proverbial "Horse's Ass" The fact that they were "Armed and loaded" on to the wing pylons of a B-52 is the real question. What was the real destination, or was it a test run to see if a similarly"sourced" operation could work is immaterial. Multiple sources from the USAF are totally mind blown by this event. To me and to them, it is inconceivable that this could have occurred without White House complicity. The fact that it is being portrayed as an accident or a "Breakdown" in the "Chain of Command" are the lies very similar to those that have been fed to us for the last 50+ years -- I am including Korea, North Vietnam, and the various other shenanigans done in the name of the People of the United Sates of America.