A Spork in the Drawer

Those Wacky Brits

In the event of a nuclear war:

So much is the beverage bound up with the national character that recently declassified documents showed yesterday that British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

[...]

"The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and, with no system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even one ounce [28 grams] per head per week could be ensured," it said.

"No satisfactory solution has yet been found" said the memo, from the now defunct Ministry of Food.

Now, I don't know about you but if the Big One is dropped I'm going to be more worried about my hair falling out in clumps and fighting off the mutant zombies rather than asking, "Anybody for a cuppa?"

Assuming the 2km-wide fireball didn't vaporize me, natch.

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When Presidents Weren't Insane

Ike:

At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.

But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.

In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Washington University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.

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When informed that Eisenhower had insisted that first strikes be made with high explosives, Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the Pacific Air Forces commander, described "this idea of limited response as disastrous . . . and warned that the United States should either be ready to use its most effective weapons -- in his opinion nuclear bombs -- or stay out of the conflict," according to the history.

George & Dick:

Revelations that the Bush administration is developing new nuclear weapons to target Iraq, North Korea and others have been greeted with alarm as a radical departure from established U.S. policy.

In fairness:

A shift in this direction began in 1990 under Vice President Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense, and was accelerated after the Persian Gulf War. By the mid-1990s the Pentagon already was working to integrate the possible use of nuclear weapons to respond to biological or chemical attacks.

The difference between the current administration and the previous one is that BushCo™ would probably love to lob a few teeny-tiny nukes.

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Ooopsie!

Oy:

Instead of sending helicopter batteries, the United States shipped four electrical fuses for Minuteman nuclear missile warheads to Taiwan, a mistake that was discovered only last week — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment, Pentagon officials disclosed on Tuesday.

Officials said the nose-cone fuses contained no nuclear material, and were similar in function to the ones used for conventional munitions, although these were designed specifically to send an electrical signal to the trigger of the MK-12 nuclear warhead as it was approaching the ground.

The Pentagon sure seems to have a problem with nuke-related things these days.

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Wayward Nukes Redux

tristero has some good stuff about those things that make a big boom.

Even if this was a mistake it says something very bad. The plans to integrate nuclear and conventional weapons falls under the heading of A Very Bad Idea.

Atrios writes:

I have no idea if it really has anything to do with Iran, but the idea that nukes just happen to accidentally climb aboard a bomber is a wee bit absurd. There's some story here.

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Not Good At All

When I posted below about the live nukes that have caused a bit of a stir a thought crossed my mind but I decided not to pursue it.

Larry Johnson had the same thought, did some checking, and came up with some disturbing information.

Short version: Transporting nukes to Barksdale AFB is a very bad sign.

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UPDATE: Josh Marshall has has two sources who say that it was actually an accident.

Nonetheless, paranoia is a virtue these days.

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That's Nice To Know

While many worry about Iran's nuclear program and many worry about Pakistan losing control of its nukes what about the good ol' USA?

An Air Force squadron commander has been relieved of his command after five nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded aboard a B-52 and flown cross-country from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, NBC News reported.

Five 150-kiloton warheads were attached to cruise missiles that were flown from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to be dismantled, but they should have been removed, according to officials.

Military officials insist the warheads remained "under control" at all times and did not pose a danger.

The squadron commander, however, was immediately relieved of duty and is expected to lose his nuclear certification because "the Air Force has lost all confidence in his ability to handle nuclear weapons."

Just lovely.

[Via AMERICAblog.]

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The Revolution Eats It's Children

It would appear that the rightwing is none too happy with President Clinton's Bush's Agreed Framework deal with North Korea:

Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser, fired off e-mails expressing bewilderment over the agreement and demanding to know why North Korea would not have to first prove it had stopped sponsoring terrorism before being rewarded with removal from the list...John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the agreement -- in which North Korea would freeze its main nuclear facility in exchange for an initial supply of fuel oil -- "a bad deal" that violated principles that were closely held in the beginning of the Bush administration...And the National Review, a conservative bastion, yesterday slammed the agreement as essentially the same one negotiated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 -- a charge the Bush administration rejects. "When exactly did Kim Jong Il become trustworthy?" the magazine's editors asked. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, normally a Bush supporter, also condemned the accord yesterday as "faith-based nonproliferation."

They're turning on each other like a mass of rabid weasels.

What fun!

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Wheee!

Everybody must have nukes:

Jordan's King Abdullah II told an Israeli newspaper Friday that his country wants its own nuclear program.

In an interview with the daily Haaretz, Abdullah said his desert kingdom, which borders Israel and has a peace agreement with it, wanted nuclear power "for peaceful purposes" and was already discussing its plans with Western countries.

"The rules governing the nuclear issue have changed in the entire region," the Jordanian leader told Haaretz, noting that Egypt and several Gulf states have declared their desire for a nuclear program. Though Jordan would rather see a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, he said, "every desire we had on this issue has changed."

Boom!

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Oops

Loose lips:

For decades, military censors have struggled to defend Israel's worst-kept secret — that the country possesses atomic weapons.

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So why does it appear that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert finally spilled the beans?

In an interview on German television late Monday, the Israeli leader seemed to list Israel among the world's nuclear club, raising an outcry across the political spectrum here and questions about whether the long-standing policy had been abandoned.

Asked by the interviewer about Iran's calls for the destruction of Israel, Olmert replied that Israel had never threatened to annihilate anyone.

"Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map," Olmert said. "Can you say that this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"

[...]

Since 1969, the United States has accepted Israel's status as a nuclear power and not pressed it to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which subjects its adherents to inspections and sanctions aimed at stopping the spread of weapons.

The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community and among outside experts is that Israel has 100 to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons, making it the region's sole nuclear power.

That Israel has nukes comes as a surprise to approximately no one. But its refusal to sign the NPT, and the US's refusal to press Israel on the issue, makes a mockery of the treaty and undermines the position of the US and Europe in stopping Iran and North Korea from acquiring nukes.

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