frist?

Smoke and mirrors

I have a pretty good idea how this happened because most military disaster starts out the same. Order come from up high about how such certain event has to take place by a certain time, in this case cruise missiles need to be delivered to Louisiana. For whatever reason, the officer finds himself in a time crunch. Maybe he wasn't prepared for this particular scenerio, or some person normally responsible isn't available or some piece of critical equipment is down. Whatever it is, crap flows downward and enlisted folk find themselves working overtime to meet some deadline, the reprecussions of which missing this deadline would be the end of said officers career. Important safety protocols are ignored to meet the deadline and suddenly you find out too late that you accidentally loaded 6 nuclear warheads onto the plane by accident.

Oops, look like the officer's military career is dead anyway.

They think nothing of playing with nukes. These people need to grow up and take responsibility. We can never get a straight story out of the Pentagon

i've got it. i know what happened. the plane is christine. she loaded the bombs herself.

Great way to keep people distracted isn't it?

Newsmen in bed with the forces they once disdained.

Sad

Reaction Man @ 4:

This is a non story. You don't think nukes were transported across the country during the Cold War? Everyday probably. I know there are nukes lost somewhere in the Pacific and Atlantic, off our coasts. There are far greater problems going on, Bush's war mongering than to worry about this. I wouldn't put it past them to create this story in an attempt to bury the leaked versions of the war reports. Concentrate on the reports not this red herring!

i reiterate yet again- this is NOT a non-story.

the us has thusly violated a treaty with russia, and not just any treaty but a nuclear arms treaty. pretty serious business in itself.

secondly, the cold war is over, and personally, i don't want nukes flown in my state (LLNOLA), or anywhere really- in the event of a crash, nuclear material can and will leak.

finally, there has to be something much bigger to this story. i am not distracted by it- i simply factor it in with all the other wacky stories coming out of washington, the sabre-rattling, the chest thumping...

And as you know, planes fall (Fossett) no matter how experienced the pilots are, those six nukes could have just been picked up by anyone or simply self-detonated (accident like that more likely if you have 6 of them) Total and Utter Craziness!!!

I have no idea what this nuke story is really about but I imagine there are a lot of questions being asked.

Hey, the good news is that River bend of Baghdad Burning and she has a new entry at her site. They are safe now in Syria.

There is no B-3 bomber...

There is no saftey

pinhead @ 13:

Reaction Man @ 4:

finally, there has to be something much bigger to this story. i am not distracted by it- i simply factor it in with all the other wacky stories coming out of washington, the sabre-rattling, the chest thumping...

If what happened wasn't an accident, I doubt we would have heard anything about it. Even as an accident, I'm surprised word got out about what went wrong.

It's possible that the President will be stupid enough to attack or bomb Iran, and it's even possible that the non nuclear warhead cruise missiles being transported were meant for that purpose. I just don't buy that nukes would be transported in such a way and then reported as an accident, or that nuclear warheads really factor into any Iran invasion plans for that matter.

First off - the tidbit about being able to detonate is crap - they may have set off the high explosive in the triggers but thats about it
Second - there is an entire protocol that has to be followed, from armed guards with deadly force authorization to specific trained personnel that have to accompany these things anywhere - there is no way imaginable that six of these things can be transported, let alone get loaded without a whole chain of authorizations and the ability to have access to specific locker combinations. There is no "mistake" involved - not being a conspiricy theorist I have to wonder exactly why a B52 is moving warheads - that is not a "usual" situation.

Snip . . . Clip

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me 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.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe 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.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is 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. We need some tough questions and clear answers.

What the hell is going on? 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.

Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.

the story is the same one. the one about us getting fucked by corporate criminals under the guise of incompetence.

Joementum @ 20:

I think I'd sleep better thinking that there was some diabolical scheme behind all this. But maybe it's exactly what it appears to be: gross incompetence.

You might want to stay away from the military so you sleep better at night, I've seen smaller example of gross incompetence in the military when I served all the time. My favorite is before I was deployed to Kosovo where everyone had to take psychological evaluations and sometime came up as being pretty much a nut case. They deployed him to Kosovo for six months anyway, except without a weapon since he wasn't allowed to carry a weapon due to his mental condition.

No, no accident. Something horrible is going to happen, and soon. These are the nukes we have heard about. My intuition says "tip of the iceberg."

I have been wondering of late, if Diane Feinstein were in a position to "stop" Hitler, would she? Would Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any of our "opposition leaders" do anything to stop WWIII? Will anyone stop GW Bush and Dick Cheney from using nukes on Iran?

With my heart breaking, I'm afraid my answer is no.

I'm in agreement with Larry Johnson. They probably loaded the nukes on the wrong plane. They should have been loaded on the plane going to the middle east.

I didn't know Barksdale was a jumping point for the Middle East - this puts the situation in a new light, IMO. Hmm...

yeah liberaltarian, i'm with you.

i have a few acquaintances who are conspiracy theory buffs, and really sport the tinfoil. i disregarded their dire warnings of an upcoming nuke attack on iran or possibly even a false flag on us soil, about a month ago, they were trembling as they spouted "within 90 days!! between now and november!!" no no no, no way. you guys are crazy, stop being so paranoid.

but i have to admit, this "incident" is making me squirm, thanks to my "friends" putting idears in my head. then i foolishly watched dr. strangelove before bed last night. needless to say, i did not sleep soundly.

"We need some tough questions and clear answers."

LOL!!! From this Administration??? Lots of luck.

"Mommy why is Iran growing giant mushrooms in the sky?"

Snip. . .Clip

There is no way the weapons would have moved without a top-level [in this case I would guess the Decider, since he has the football, but certainly no lower than SecDef] directive to do so, because of treaty obligations dating to the Cold War, because of the potential for really big problems in the wrong hands or if there’s a crash during transport. There are radiological reports needed because of the gamma activity inherent from the design of these things, dealing with where they went, who was exposed, how much dose, etc., which requires a monitored crew [not necessarily the next ones in the flight line]. As you probably already know, things like this are most vulnerable to interdiction in transit.

The “joy ride” or mistake scenarios would end the careers of every person even remotely attached to the weapons, because of the many layers of control and clearances even to remove them from storage. There are ways to ID these things IF you see them AND know what to look for. Hard to do as a casual observer hanging around inside a B-52 on either airbase, so this was what I’d call a “cry for help” leak (if it wasn’t orchestrated, see next para) like the GAO report was to highlight the WH “tweaking” to come.

This is at the least a shot across the Iranian bow to remind them we have the big boomers and will use them, saber rattling on steroids if you will. Or, W really means it. I don’t think either are very good options.

PYYYYLLLLLEEE!!!!

I think they were trying to launch a surprise attack on Louisianna- having failed to wipe out New Orleans a couple years back. Its the New 911 they've been wishing for so loudly.

Bud @ 42:

Scoppertop @ 10:

A link to the aol news story, which reports Air Command will conduct a command-wide stand down on September 14th. Reported through WRH.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/nuclear-bombs-mistakenly-fly-over-us/20070905121009990001

So on the 14th (next Friday), the Air Force stands down? WTF is up with that?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Standard procedure for the most part, I've heard of entire bases standing down because of one or two small arms that have gone missing. It's certainly more evidence that something went horribly wrong and the air-force didn't purposefully move those nukes on that bomber. Although to be fair I suppose the stand down could also be to deal with their information leak about the nukes being transported if you really wanted to believe they actually plan to use these nukes in the immediate future.

The tragedy is that the majority of Americans would have no problem with the concept of nuking anyone.

deezus @ 2:

and you know that if one of those cruise missles had mistakenly been fired, it woulda been Al Quaeda (sp?) flying the plane.

Or Iran.

Or Bill Clinton.

My guess would be Bill Clinton

L.A. Confidential @ 45:

Snip. . .Clip

The “joy ride” or mistake scenarios would end the careers of every person even remotely attached to the weapons, because of the many layers of control and clearances even to remove them from storage. There are ways to ID these things IF you see them AND know what to look for. Hard to do as a casual observer hanging around inside a B-52 on either airbase, so this was what I’d call a “cry for help” leak (if it wasn’t orchestrated, see next para) like the GAO report was to highlight the WH “tweaking” to come.

thanks for the snipclips.

i'm inclined to think that it has to be difficult to make a mistake of this caliber. the minute i read the article i just had a feeling it was BS- i could not fathom it being that easy to make that kind of mistake. there have to be protocols and measures and proceedures when talking nooks.

there is just no way- it's not like, oh the nukes are sitting right there, riiight next to the regular missiles, it was a simple mix-up.

Tim @ 58:

Being from New Orleans, I can't help paranoid (?) ideas that these were meant to finish us off as a false flag event. NOLA being the den of depravity it is, it's a perfect target for so called "religious extremists"

I just don't buy that six nukes found their way onto a bomber without the pilots even knowing.

hey dawlin- i'm from nola too, and i'm right there with ya- i'm scared, and i don't buy the "mistake" bit either.

deezus @ 2:

and you know that if one of those cruise missles had mistakenly been fired, it woulda been Al Quaeda (sp?) flying the plane.

Or Iran.

Or Bill Clinton.

Probably all three. (bushthink)

FWIW, Stan Goff--a 20 yr. army veteran until he had a Smedley Butler epiphany--doesn't think the U.S. will attack Iran. He says delusions of empire are over.

I don't know; men hold onto their dreams... probably most particularly desperate men.

hey lord of karma- forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is "command-wide?" does that encompass all afb? or just certain bases?

Don't kid yourselves this kind of event is undoubtedly COMMON. Chances are the only real difference is that the public KNOWS about it this time.

I have to agree - nukes are not stored like widgets at a Home Depot. At the very least, there were serious failures of procedure. And aren't there 'REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT' tags on live weapons?

The initial story is that these cruise missiles were part of the replacement program, and nobody noticed they were actually fitted with warheads. (Which still sounds fishy. If the warheads are loaded, the weapon should be marked accordingly. How long was this oversight actually the case, i.e. how long were the warheads someplace other than where people thought, or their status other than what people thought?)

But, dipping into the conspiracy theory kool-aid, it's not to ship off to the Gulf and attack Iran, as we already have carrier groups in the area, and they are likely to carry sufficient ordnance of this nature.

What if it's to get nuclear material off the radar so that a nuclear incident can be staged within the United States. We've heard more than enough of the 'what if They get nukes?' and 'what if They follow us here?' out of these clowns. Although the Air Force is assuring us that the warheads were in Air Force custody throughout, the fact remains that at some point, the Air Force thought the warheads were safely stored at Minott AFB.

It was a routine transfer. Six missiles, but only five warheads. The crew responsible has been relieved of duty pending disciplinary proceedings and/or additional training (so where are they?). If no one knew the warheads were equipped, there wouldn't be the usual attendant security.

And when was the error discovered? Did some airman on the tarmac at Barksdale go, "Whoa, dude, your missiles have red tags!" If the error was discovered back at Minott while the B-52 was midflight, why not turn it around? You're retiring the missiles, so what are you going to do, ship the warheads back on their own?

Like I said, crazy.

Until there's a convenient terrorist incident to whip up Homeland Security Fever just in time to tilt or otherwise alter an election.

So its SOP for the *entire* Air Command to power off??

Well I might be exaggerating here, I doubt the air force has that many screwups of this magnitude before, so there might not even be a SOP for this situation. I'm just saying if your going to close an large Army base for a couple of days to look for a couple of missing M-16 rifles, it is not unreasonable to shut down the entire Air Command for such a colossal blunder. If on the other hand, the nukes were moved on purpose, it would be a little unreasonable to take such an action.

I think we should be looking seriously at some people in the Military Industrial Complex (which we now have because of bush/cheney).
I was in Special Weapons in the Navy, and believe me, there is no way an "accident" like this could happen, someone had to allow this.
Weapons with Nuclear Warheads are kept completely separate from all other weaponry and there are many levels of signature required to get them out of the containment area,
I think that something like this may have been intended to lead to the "loss" of American Nuclear weapons to the hands of the enemy for perhaps a way to bring some cohesion to the GOP in their desparate bid to regain power.

We (the American people) need to take the country back. Our Democratic form of government is in serious trouble...

People,
This is NO mistake. Something is up, everytime Bush goes on vacation, something is up. Why is he making the circuit all of a sudden??? The Air Force does what it's told to do, it doesn't make mistakes.

Wrong thread.

What with all the high-flying nukes
The torture and chaos and spooks
I'd love to stand down
And head out of town
And get drunk in the woods til I pukes.

AirmanMa @ 75:

People,
This is NO mistake. Something is up, everytime Bush goes on vacation, something is up. Why is he making the circuit all of a sudden??? The Air Force does what it's told to do, it doesn't make mistakes.

Exactly, he's making the buddy circuit. Australia and such.

Somethings up. I can feel it.

AirmanMa @ 75:

The Air Force does what it's told to do, it doesn't make mistakes.

Believe that and I have this bridge in Brooklyn for a really good price available...

The Air Force, even the mighty USAF, is operated by humans and humans make mistakes all the goddamn time.

Think about what you're saying for a minute. If it was intentional, it was obviously supposed to be in secret, but it was found out, so isn't that a mistake in itself? Sheesh, critical thinking skills, people. Not everything in the world is a result of a devious plot by the Bush Administration.

Regarding the 'evangelical' factor in our military. As far as Pakistan's nukes go, I've always maintained it's not a regime-change we need to fear, it's one believer with a key.

"The problem with prophecy is that you cannot tell if it is true until the events are upon you. And then ... it is too late."

Why are we shifting nukes around? The cold war is supposedly over. (although somebody should tell gwb that.) So if they are not going to the middle east, where are they going?
I think this was supposed to be leaked so that Iran would hear about it. It's meant to gin up the threat and the rhetoric without actually saying anything.

AirmanMa @ 75:

People,
This is NO mistake. Something is up, everytime Bush goes on vacation, something is up. Why is he making the circuit all of a sudden??? The Air Force does what it's told to do, it doesn't make mistakes.

That it's impossible for mistakes to be made is the heart of almost every conspiracy theory out there. The government is incompetent, deal with it.

However unlikely the scenerio seems that this was an accident, the alternatives seem to me to be even less likely. As mentioned above, nuclear warheads wouldn't need to be moved to nuke Iran, nor does it seem to me a likely scenerio for an attack on Iran in the first place.

An attack on the homeland or even missing weapon materials would all implicate the government into gross incompetence anyway. The rethugs want the maintain the illusion that they are keeping the US safe, any of these incidents would completely contradict such a premise, not to mention the big risk of blowback from such an operation.

I have to go with the colossal accident here just because the alternatives that people bring up make even less sense.

At least five officials were warning us of something happening in August if they Fisa bill wasn't passed
Michael Chertoff, I have a gut feeling.

seatech1 @ 87:

Why are we shifting nukes around? The cold war is supposedly over.

The Lunatics have taken over the United States Government

veritas @ 92:

"loose nukes" happens because this country has taken it's eye off the ball. When you tend to other's back yards and not your own, you know that it becomes overgrown, unwieldy, and destroyed. This is precisely what we are doing to this country and everything in it.

Every department of this Bush administration is filled with sycophants & unqualified individuals - political paybacks mostly. It's no surprise that horrendous mistakes are being made. No one is minding the store.

"Bubble Boy" is crying in his bier(beer) in his psychological breakdown and Cheney is probably out doing his swiss miss. No one is home minding the store.

You can’t simply “accidentally” load nukes onto a B-2 bomber and fly them to another base.

Overheard in Australia, Bush tells minister ‘we’re kicking ass’ in Iraq

John Byrne
Raw Story
Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Things are going well in Iraq, according to President George W. Bush.

Upon his arrival in Sydney Wednesday, Deputy Australian Prime Minister Mark Vaile “inquired politely” about his stopover in the war-torn country.

“We’re kicking ass,” Bush said.

The remark was overheard by a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and caught by an Australian blog.

SCHRODINGER"S CAT @ 90:

AirmanMa @ 75

" It does not make mistakes " -ie the USAF

I am a big fan of the USAF but they have a long hstory of screw ups.

They allowed me in

NARF

Shadowgm @ 94:

Keith @ 83:

Believe that and I have this bridge in Brooklyn for a really good price available...

The Air Force, even the mighty USAF, is operated by humans and humans make mistakes all the goddamn time.

Think about what you're saying for a minute. If it was intentional, it was obviously supposed to be in secret, but it was found out, so isn't that a mistake in itself? Sheesh, critical thinking skills, people. Not everything in the world is a result of a devious plot by the Bush Administration.

Mistakes with nuclear warheads.

Look, forgetting my keys is a mistake. Mistyping a name is a mistake.

Losing track of five nuclear warheads by way of having them loaded into cruise missiles aboard a B-52 bomber is not a mistake.

It is a failure of procedure at multiple levels, one that may extend beyond the date of the incident. (That is, if the warheads were improperly stored/checked, how long were they in the wrong place before they got loaded onboard?)

The false-flag stuff is, for the moment, a thought exercise that I don't imagine will provide meaningful insight into the situation.

But I'm not buying 'hey, they move nukes all the time, so they screwed up' as an excuse, either.

This "mistake" requires a full investigation by Congress - pronto!

L.A. Confidential @ 97:

Overheard in Australia, Bush tells minister ‘we’re kicking ass’ in Iraq

John Byrne
Raw Story
Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Things are going well in Iraq, according to President George W. Bush.

Upon his arrival in Sydney Wednesday, Deputy Australian Prime Minister Mark Vaile “inquired politely” about his stopover in the war-torn country.

“We’re kicking ass,” Bush said.

The remark was overheard by a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and caught by an Australian blog.

"We're kicking ass"??? That was a Freudian slip for what he was thinking: I'm getting my ass kicked. That would be far more accurate.

hadenuf @ 88:

I wonder if the person who blew the whistle is the person[s] being investigated and/or relieved of duty.

I certainly hope so, this kind of news can make one be relieved of bladder.

I agree with the Larry johnson assessment that "there's a larger story here". Bush/Cheney just got caught with their nukes out.

Snip. . .Clip

"For me one key is that the Wing Commander has not been removed from his position yet.

Nuclear Surety rules require two person control at every stage of handling these weapons. They would have been stored in an alarmed bunker with two high security locks. Pulling them out would necessitate pre approvals with security forces. Moving them from secured storage to the flight line would be another great amount of coordination. I’d never say never but if this did happen the way it is being reported, it is a monumental failure of many AF and DOD rules concerning the handling of these munitions by several separate groups of people who are trained and tested annually in Nuclear Surety. For a Wing handling these weapons, this is a failure of the highest order. Lesser failures have resulted in the immediate removal of the Wing Commander at a minimum.

If this doesn’t call for immediate action by Congress, what does?"

Former AF flightline MX troop(pointy-head). I think the closest weapon decommissioning plant to Barksdale is located in the SE corner of Arkansas. I think located near Camden, Arkansas. I remember this because it made a lot of news when they ramped up their decommissioning capabilities in the early 00's (LRAFB 00-04). Who the hell caught the ER for this plane before flight? Whenever I would work on an aircraft with munitions on board, even something simple like chaff and flare, we knew. The forms that have to be accomplished when involved in even routine maintenance of an aircraft are uber important and scrutinized. When munitions are loaded there are many, many people in the know. The only alternative to GROSS malfeasance in this case, scares the shit outta me if true. WTF happened in the USAF to allow something this incompetent to happen?

veritas @ 101:

This "mistake" requires a full investigation by Congress - pronto!

IMHO, it also requires a full sight inventory (that is, you have to put eyes on the thing) to verify that all weapons are properly stored and marked. This is probably what is slated for the safety stop-down day.

"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because most people don't want to admit they don't have the courage to do anything about it. Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all"

When is Bush supposed to be back in the USA from his trip? Will he be back in the country by the 14th?

It seems to me, given the fact that no soldier is going to be able to just "check out" nuclear warheads from the armory without very specific authorization, that these warheads were intended for a different flight, most likely heading in another direction (Middle East).

That, or the people at the recieving end of the flight were never supposed to discover that they were actually live ammo.

One way or another, these warheads came out of the armory for a reason.

I once helped load some nukes onto recon planes (that war you never heard of The Six Day War); trust me you don't load nukes onto RF-C4's unless there is something serious going on. Btw, I was not qualified to load the bombs and didn't even know we had them on base, but I was a warm body and we were scrambling.

These bombs? A mistake. Nothing more. Nothing less. Working on the flightline is boring, tedious, and dangerous, and with the AF having to pick up more and more slack because of the Iraq mess, expect more. The troops on the front line are paying the greatest price, and that's where our attention should be, but the troops in the homeland are also catching it, having to work longer, harder, with less time off. Mistakes will happen. And btw, these people aren't paid all that well for 100 hour weeks.

I recall a nuke rolling out of a B-52 sometime in the 50's. Anybody else remember?

SonOfLiberty @ 120:

Nuclear warheads aren't nitroglycerine. They don't go off unless the mechanism is armed (not a simple process). They're not impact-detonated either. I'm not saying this wasn't about Iran, but I doubt they felt they could stage a nuclear accident like this

What about removing the fissile material from the warhead for use in a second device?

I don't think an incident like this is hard to fathom at all. As a matter of fact, I would bet the entire farm that this is NOT the first time something this potentially devastating has been carried out (and subsequently HUSHED) by the armed forces. This incident here just happened to have been leaked. The military is not exactly a beacon for much of anything except intimidation and totalitarian rule. It isn't like major corporations turn to the military for strategy... unless it involves clearing a hostile foreign land of natives that get in the way.

Shadowgm @ 123:

SonOfLiberty @ 120:

Nuclear warheads aren't nitroglycerine. They don't go off unless the mechanism is armed (not a simple process). They're not impact-detonated either. I'm not saying this wasn't about Iran, but I doubt they felt they could stage a nuclear accident like this

What about removing the fissile material from the warhead for use in a second device?

Bingo.

Mistakes do happen. And it is possible to intentionally set things up so that more mistakes happen...

Isn't 9/14 the day that Petreaus will got before the Senate and recite the Bush's Report on Iraq?

Isn't this also the time frame (according to that recent book) in which Bush plans to set events into motion that will guarantee that the next President will also be fighting a war in the Middle East?

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

Kinda makes you think.....hmmm..

Shadowgm @ 113:

veritas @ 101:

This "mistake" requires a full investigation by Congress - pronto!

IMHO, it also requires a full sight inventory (that is, you have to put eyes on the thing) to verify that all weapons are properly stored and marked. This is probably what is slated for the safety stop-down day.

Congress get back from vacation?

this is the kind of "accident" that might result in a private contractor getting nukes.

Larry Johnson is a fairly reliable source and he doesn't believe we hit ourselves on 9/11, but unfortunately his comments are being misconstrued by malcontents and sociopaths who so desperately want to believe in these nutty LIHOP and MIHOP conspiracies.

peacemaker @ 137:

Larry Johnson is a fairly reliable source and he doesn't believe we hit ourselves on 9/11, but unfortunately his comments are being misconstrued by malcontents and sociopaths who so desperately want to believe in these nutty LIHOP and MIHOP conspiracies.

The American public didn't know Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima until after the mission was done.

As a matter of fact The American public didn't even know we had these weapons of mass destruction.

trank @ 135:

this is the kind of "accident" that might result in a private contractor getting nukes.

Like Blackwater?

That was no "accident". That was a message. The message disturbs me a whole lot more than the fact that a B-52 with a nuclear load was in the sky.

SonOfLiberty @ 126:

This is like the first 20 minutes of a freakin' James Bond movie, why has it become reality?

SPECTRE hijacked two nuclear warheads on a NATO training flight in Thunderball; in Never Say Never, the story was updated to have Petacchi hack the security protocols to load active warheads.

So, big deal, right?

9/11 brought the idiotic excuse, "I don't think anyone could have imagined terrorists would use planes as missiles," and yet, authors Dale Brown and Tom Clancy had different antagonists fly a plane into the U.S. Capitol in books published well before 9/11 (Storming Heaven, Debt of Honor). The similarities even drew CNN to ask Clancy, "Do you think Osama bin Laden reads Tom Clancy?"

And now, with General Pervez Musharraf struggling to hold onto his power in Pakistan, presidential candidates have voiced a fear of what might happen to Pakistan's nukes in the confusion ... which would be, um, because of less stringent procedures than the good ol' USA?

Yeah, it's all just the plot for a bad novel. But isn't part of terrorism about shaking up the norm and shattering the illusion of safety?

So while a false-flag incident by persons within our own government sounds like a nutball conspiracy theory, it isn't so far off that

SAC (Strategic Air Command) flew cold war patrols war loaded for Bear out of Minot. Russia is resuming her strategic aircraft patrols.

The weapons were loaded on the plane for a reason and probably SOP. The chAir Force are famous for cutting corners and pretty good at covering their gaffes up. This time someone felt the breach was bad enough to shine a light on the problem. The loading in Minot was SOP, the transit to Barksdale with said weapons was a breach.

hadenuf @ 141:

trank @ 135:

this is the kind of "accident" that might result in a private contractor getting nukes.

Like Blackwater?

Hmm. How about a small country? One that desperately wants to attack Iran but doesn't have the capability of delivering their nukes?