David Lindorff: Was That Nuclear-Armed B-52 Destined for Iran?

[babylonsister]

Was That Nuclear-Armed B-52 Destined for Iran?
Submitted by dlindorff on Sat, 2007-09-08 18:24. Activism

There’s something definitely screwy about the August 30 incident in which a B-52 bomber flew from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana carrying five fully armed Advanced Cruise Missiles, each equipped with nuclear bombs capable of exploding at anything from 5 kilotons to 150 kilotons.

The government has been quick to say that the flight, which violated a number of long-standing orders regarding shipment of nuclear weapons in US airspace, was a “mistake.”

But was it a mistake?

The biggest question is why a B-52 armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles would fly to Barksdale AFB. If, as reported, the weapons were being transported to be decommissioned, which supposedly is the destination for 400 of these doomsday weapons, then they should have been destined for Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, near the Pantex plant outside Amarillo, TX, where they would be dismantled. As Michael Salla writes in a disturbing piece in Saturday’s edition of OpEdNews (http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070907_was_a_covert_attempt.htm), the weapons should also not have been flown at all on a B-52, as there have been standing orders for 40 years against such flights over US soil, following several accidents in which bombs or nuclear-armed rockets were lost because “broken arrow” incidents including inadvertent bomb drops or crashes. A second order, issued in 1991 at the end of the Cold War by George Bush’s father, barred the loading of nuclear weapons on any bomber. Any pilot would have known this, as would any ground support people loading the missiles on the B-52.

According to Salla, if these five cruise missiles were really being transported by air to Texas for decommissioning, they should have been disarmed and flown in specially designed transport planes that are built to resist nuclear leakage in the event of a crash. They would never be transported under the wings of a B-52.

What makes the incident even more suspicious is that Barksdale AFB is a staging area for B-52s being sent to the Middle East for combat duty. As the website GlobalSecurity.org (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/barksdale.htm)reports: “Barksdale Air Force Base is headquarters for the 2d Bomb Wing, Eighth Air Force and 917th Wing. The 2d Bomb Wing provides global combat capability and trains all B-52 combat crews.”

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/26598