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Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 13, 2007 The Barksdale Nukes B-52s and Bush’s War Plans By SCOTT VEST former Air Force Captain at Minot AFB There has been a great deal of speculation in recent days about the Air Force incident on August 30 in which six cruise missiles were transported from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana with nuclear warheads still attached.  There are those who believe that the shipment, revealed to the Military Times by two unnamed Air Force officers, represents part of some nefarious plot by the Bush Administration to stage weapons for a nuclear attack on Iran. Another article goes so far as to extend the scope of the plot to postulate stock market manipulation by rich administration insiders who are predicting huge near term stock market upheavals in the expected wake of such an attack and are poised to cash in.     In several articles, the authors state that there is no way that the shipment could have been an accident. However, as much as I can relate to the mind set that the Bush Administration is up to no good, I have to say that it almost certainly had to be an accident, or if not an accident it was not a prelude to nuclear war with Iran or anyone else. The fact is that if a nuclear strike was planned out of Barksdale AFB using the B-52H aircraft stationed there, it could be accomplished without needing to ferry live weapons from North Dakota against long-standing policy on a combat aircraft. I'm a former Air Force Captain and I was a munitions specialist in the very unit that erroneously shipped the weapons out of Minot AFB from '87 to '90.  I am no Republican mouthpiece trying to cover for the administration.  I'm a social liberal and fiscal conservative (basically the opposite philosophy of the administration), and I think Bush and especially Cheney are war criminals along with being the normal variety of criminals on a grand scale.  I believed in our mission during the Cold War to make the cost of a Soviet nuclear strike too high to consider.  After I left the service in 1992, I saw the military increasingly used for actions that had less and less to do with the defense of our nation When we invaded Kosovo in 1999, I resigned my commission in the reserves.  Now that I see the horrible misuse of military power that this administration has perpetrated I am so glad that I can no longer get called up to serve in a war of aggression, yet so angry that so many people of honor are being misused.  The key to the matter here is that Barksdale AFB and Minot AFB are both hosts to strategic bomb wings flying B-52H aircraft.  The B-52H is designed as a primarily nuclear bomber yet still capable of delivering conventional explosives as has been seen in our imperial adventures in recent years.  The two former Strategic Air Command bases both support the same mission when it comes to their nuclear capabilities. Although I can neither confirm nor deny the definite presence of nuclear weapons at any given location (I do value what freedom I still retain under this government), doesn't it stand to reason that if Minot has nukes, as they allegedly do to be able to fly them to Louisiana, then Barksdale is likely to have an inventory of its own?    The fact that warheads were flown between Air Force locations is not unusual.  Only the fact that they were flown on a B-52 is.  Warheads are routinely transported by air as it's much more secure than traveling over the roads or rail.  They are typically flown on transport aircraft inside of drums that are designed to survive a crash.  Obviously, the security and secrecy of these missions is higher than what occurred on the B-52 flight in question and this is what caused the unnamed officers to speak out.  Breaches of safety, security, or reliability on nuclear weapons is a big deal to anyone who works with them, and this was a major screw-up. The six advanced cruise missiles (ACMs) were being sent to Barksdale to get decommissioned (destroyed).  The fact is that the 5th Munitions Squadron at Minot AFB (my old unit) in North Dakota should have scheduled the six warheads to get 'demated'  from the missiles prior to loading them on the jet. They failed to do this, and it was inexcusable.  The squadron commander (generally a Lt Col) was fired.  There are three levels of nuclear incident reporting that you may have heard of.  The most severe is a 'Broken Arrow' where a weapon is lost, stolen, or detonated.  The next level is 'Bent Spear' and covers serious breaches of nuclear surety (safety, security, reliability). The last is 'Dull Sword' which covers minor issues or infractions.  This incident most likely would have fallen into the 'Bent Spear' category. These are very rare.  For 10 hours, Minot didn't know where six of their warheads were.  This is shocking to the Air Force, and they've been on it like white on rice. It's not terribly obvious when looking at a cruise missile whether it carries a warhead or not because these missiles are like small unmanned aircraft and the warhead is enclosed within.  However, there are supposed to be red indicators on live missiles that apparently went unnoticed by the transportation and load crews.  They have been decertified.  There are several steps in the normal processes where this infraction should have been caught, but it wasn't.  This indicates poor training and attention to detail, and this was never tolerated when I worked with these weapons, and has not been tolerated now.  There may be some contributing factors pertaining to personnel turnover, short handedness, or fatigue related to the ongoing war effort, but I have no such knowledge.  Regardless of any of that the incident was still absolutely inexcusable. Do I think that the administration is drawing up serious plans to attack Iran?  I do.  Do I think that neocon whack jobs and particularly Dick Cheney are considering the use of nuclear weapons?  I do.  But the facts are scarier than the conspiracy theories swirling around this B-52 incident.  If a decision is made to launch nuclear strikes from US bases using B-52s, it can be done without any telltale unusual movements of assets.  A single B-52H can put over 6 megatons of nuclear power on target anywhere on the planet within 30 hours from the time the order is received.   Scott Vest can be reached at vestsa@comcast.net       Your Ad Here

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