Feeling Safer Yet?
Sep 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 am by Susie
It’s gotten to the point where I don’t especially trust the official version of anything in this administration, but here’s their explanation of what happened with those nuclear warheads that ended up in Louisiana:
Three weeks after word of the incident leaked to the public, new details obtained by The Washington Post point to security failures at multiple levels in North Dakota and Louisiana, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials briefed on the initial results of an Air Force investigation of the incident.
The warheads were attached to the plane in Minot without special guard for more than 15 hours, and they remained on the plane in Louisiana for nearly nine hours more before being discovered. In total, the warheads slipped from the Air Force’s nuclear safety net for more than a day without anyone’s knowledge.
“I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing,” retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, who served as U.S. Strategic Command chief from 1996 to 1998, said in an interview.
A simple error in a missile storage room led to missteps at every turn, as ground crews failed to notice the warheads, and as security teams and flight crew members failed to provide adequate oversight and check the cargo thoroughly. An elaborate nuclear safeguard system, nurtured during the Cold War and infused with rigorous accounting and command procedures, was utterly debased, the investigation’s early results show.
(From Washington Post 9-23 story about nuclear-tipped cruise missiles being flown from Minot to Barksdale):
“The incident came on the heels of multiple warnings — some of which went to the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the National Security Council — of security problems at Air Force installations where nuclear weapons are kept.”
Hmmm, where have I heard something before about “multiple warnings — some of which went to the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the National Security Council,” warnings involving national security that were blown off by top Bush officials?
Oh, that’s right, in 2001 before the 9/11 attacks that killed close to 3,000 people.
“Multiple warnings” about an impending, imminent terrorist attack inside the United States.
An Aug. 6th, 2001 PDB given in person to President Bush stating “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the U.S.” which was so alarming to President Bush that he immediately decided to stay on vacation for another three weeks.
Around the same time, a Muslim was arrested at a flight school in the Midwest who only wanted to learn how to fly 747s, not learn how to land or take off. Top Bush FBI officials blew off repeated, urgent requests from FBI field agents to do something, anything to check this out.
One week before the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration held its one and only cabinet-level counter-terrorism principal’s meeting (compared to the three per each week that top intelligence officials in the Clinton administration had held to address the al Qaeda terrorist threat).
And now this nuclear incident.
Last year, per this Washington Post article, the U.S. government office charged with keeping track of our nuclear weapons, a job that this office had handled for decades, was folded into the space program. I’m certain that this probably saved U.S. taxpayers a few bucks, but look at what just happened.
Hmmm, deja vu again. FEMA, which was a separate agency before the Bush administration got their hands on it, was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Political hacks with no emergency management experience were then put in charge of FEMA.
This probably also saved U.S. taxpayers a few bucks due to overlapping bureacracies and the cutting of jobs, but Hurricane Katrina, both before the storm and now years after, has once again showed us all what happens when the Bush administration starts fiddling with highly successful and professional agencies.
Ergo, the Republicans are lying when they claim they are strong on national security, or even domestic security. Their obvious incompetence has endangered all of us, including our nation’s children. The only solution is to kick as many these dangerous Republican fools out of public office as soon as possible. Otherwise, the next disaster may just take your life, as well as the lives of people you love.
Maybe it will be a bridge collapsing, or another category 5 hurricane? Maybe it will be nuclear weapons or material falling into the hands of terrorists? The attack on our federal government’s funding by cut-cut-cut-taxes right-wingers, who at the same time give massive tax breaks to their incredibly wealthy corporate crony pals, is endangering every one of us.
Anything this administration touches collapses into utter incompetence, so yes, I buy their story. If this administration sucked any worse, Washington D.C. would vanish into a sucking black hole of incompetence.
With 10,000 Nuclear Warheads you can’t expect us to know where every one is all of the time…