B-52s and Bush’s War Plans

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/vest09132007.html

September 13, 2007

The Barksdale Nukes
B-52s and Bush’s War Plans
By SCOTT VEST

former Air Force Captain at Minot AFB

There has been a great deal of speculation in recent days about the Air Force incident on August 30 in which six cruise missiles were transported from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana with nuclear warheads still attached. There are those who believe that the shipment, revealed to the Military Times by two unnamed Air Force officers, represents part of some nefarious plot by the Bush Administration to stage weapons for a nuclear attack on Iran.

Another article goes so far as to extend the scope of the plot to postulate stock market manipulation by rich administration insiders who are predicting huge near term stock market upheavals in the expected wake of such an attack and are poised to cash in.
In several articles, the authors state that there is no way that the shipment could have been an accident.

However, as much as I can relate to the mind set that the Bush Administration is up to no good, I have to say that it almost certainly had to be an accident, or if not an accident it was not a prelude to nuclear war with Iran or anyone else. The fact is that if a nuclear strike was planned out of Barksdale AFB using the B-52H aircraft stationed there, it could be accomplished without needing to ferry live weapons from North Dakota against long-standing policy on a combat aircraft.

I'm a former Air Force Captain and I was a munitions specialist in the very unit that erroneously shipped the weapons out of Minot AFB from '87 to '90. I am no Republican mouthpiece trying to cover for the administration. I'm a social liberal and fiscal conservative (basically the opposite philosophy of the administration), and I think Bush and especially Cheney are war criminals along with being the normal variety of criminals on a grand scale. I believed in our mission during the Cold War to make the cost of a Soviet nuclear strike too high to consider. After I left the service in 1992, I saw the military increasingly used for actions that had less and less to do with the defense of our nation When we invaded Kosovo in 1999, I resigned my commission in the reserves. Now that I see the horrible misuse of military power that this administration has perpetrated I am so glad that I can no longer get called up to serve in a war of aggression, yet so angry that so many people of honor are being misused.

[Parche]

1. Minot

Exactly What I said ...............I was station at Minot 1982-1985............

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. Of all the branches of the service, it's the Air Force that I....

distrust the most.
I think psychologically that they have an inferiority complex regarding the other services and that they will do, and go along with anything, anything to increase their importance.

[taterguy]

3. This would be a potent weapon against Iran