Oops, We Forgot - Part 2

That accidental carrying of nuclear warheads sounded just a little too bizarre, didn't it? Nukes "mistakenly" strapped to a plane, while not impossible (unfortunately) just smells a little off. Larry Johnson at TPM Cafe thinks so, too.

I called a old friend and retired B-52 [and he] 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.

[...]

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.

  TPM Cafe

Yes, I think it is.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: A couple of days ago at Common Dreams, Marjorie Cohn wrote this:

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out “pinprick strikes” against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military.”

  Common Dreams

Cohn also said:

It’s up to the people. As Noam Chomsky said, “The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war [on Iran] is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam.”

Cohn and Chomsky are much more optimistic than I. I think the only barrier is if the military itself refuses to make such an insane move.

And here's a clip from the UK Sunday Times:

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.

[...]

But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Times Online

But after the "Petraeus" report and Bush's hint that some troops could start coming out of Iraq in the face of proven success there, plus the idea that the plan for Iran would call for essentially just bombing the crap out of it - "taking out the entire Iranian military" - it's likely the architects of this insanity figure the resources will stretch just fine.