And in even more good news

[lapsedmodernist]

Draft U.S. paper allows commanders to seek preemptive nuke strikes:

(Kyodo) _ The U.S. military plans to allow regional combatant commanders to request the president for approval to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against possible attacks on the United States or its allies with weapons of mass destruction, according to a draft new nuclear operations paper.
The paper, drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, also revealed that submarines which make port calls in Yokosuka, Sasebo and Okinawa in Japan are prepared for reloading nuclear warheads if necessary to deal with a crisis.

The March 15 draft paper, a copy of which was made available, is titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" providing "guidelines for the joint employment of forces in nuclear operations...for the employment of U.S. nuclear forces, command and control relationships, and weapons effect considerations."

"There are numerous nonstate organizations (terrorist, criminal) and about 30 nations with WMD programs, including many regional states," the paper says in allowing combatant commanders in the Pacific and other theaters to maintain an option of preemptive strikes against "rogue" states and terrorists and "request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons" under set conditions.

The paper identifies nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as requiring preemptive strikes to prevent their use.

Goshdarnit, if only this had been possible two years ago, we could have simply nuked Baghdad and all the stockpiles of the WMDs there would have been destroyed forever in the atomic blast.

Comments

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

Yeesh.

truth in misreading

[amadea.livejournal.com]

I thought at first that said daft U.S. paper allows...

Re: truth in misreading

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Truth in misreading, indeed.

We need occasional reminders that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity
is finally over

w

[mark40e.livejournal.com]

well - it's a good thing that the terrorists
who rammed planes in to buildings
and blew up the train in spain didn't have nuclear
weaponry. who can tell what mayhem and murderous
destruction they'd enjoy if they had 'em. same goes
for the terrorists blowing up themselves and others
in egypt, etc...

M

Re: w

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Right, the only training the terrorists had on hand was the one they received from the CIA when Bin Laden was on the US payroll during the war in Afghanistan.

And it's awesome that the administration who publicized their need for "a new Pearl Harbor" and allowed 9/11 on purpose b/c that would enable them to start on their global agenda is going to play with nukes.

Re: w

[mark40e.livejournal.com]

that's a bit of a far fetched idea - the one that states the U.S. knew the day and time of the 9/11 attacks.

and regardless of where the terrorists have been trained, or whose payroll they were on, the fact remains that they stand ready today, to engage in nuclear attacks, but are settling for bombings and beheadings for the moment. they'll get hungrier for more massive methods of destruction.

M

Re: w

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Not really:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline_advance_info;kind

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline_advance_info;time

Why don't you take a look at these sources. This is not conspiracy theory or conjecture, this is just information from news sources around the world arranged into a detailed timeline.

Re: w

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

This also means that the US can say "they have WMDs" and launch a nuclear strike or enable their allies to do so.

This is great, because the US credibility record is stellar, what with all those WMDs Iraq turned out to have.

Re: w

[mark40e.livejournal.com]

it's quite unlikely that the US would launch a nuclear missle. very, very unlikely. but
i'd like to know that the country i live in is ready to defend itself when challenged in such a a way. i love it here,
to tell you the truth. i love life
in the USA - and i've travelled to quite a number of places. i don't necessarily like Americans, but i do love it in America.

M

Re: w

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

The only time that America needed to physically defend itself, on its own soil, ever, was on 9/11/2001 when for "mysterious" reasons NORAD was prevented from doing so. As the sun rose on September 11, 2001, NORAD was already taking part in the Vigilant Guardian war game, which had begun a few days before. [Newhouse News, 1/25/02, Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/02, Code One Magazine, 1/02] As a result, NORAD was in peak form. It was fully staffed and alert, and senior officers were manning stations throughout the US when the first hijacking was reported. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02] Because of the war game, NORAD “had extra fighter planes on alert.” [ABC News, 9/14/02] Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NORAD's Northeastern US sector, said, “We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board.” [ABC News, 9/11/02]

Everything that has happened since then that has been spun as "we are defending ourselves against terrorists" has endangered America further and ensured an ever-worsening future for the world and for the United States.

Re: w

[0mniscient.livejournal.com]

"it's quite unlikely that the US would launch a nuclear missle. very, very unlikely."

Yes, but it's very likely that someone in the chain of command would have a knee-jerk reaction and want to launch the things. A good deal of the way the system is currently set up is to avoid that, and have checks to ensure that weapons are only deployed in extreme circumstances. Does that prevent their deployment if a prescient individual knew that firing them right then and there was the only way to prevent catastrophe? Yes. But if you ask me, that's far less common than someone thinking catastrophe was nigh, but was actually on the verge of making a huge mistake.

"but i'd like to know that the country i live in is ready to defend itself when challenged in such a a way."

True, to a degree. With the increased threat of nuclear action, I'd have no problem with equipping some of our subs with missiles to ensure retaliation against whoever seems to have attacked us.

But as Bush&Co seem to fondly point out without realizing it, we're mostly on guard against non-state actors now. Non-state actors can happily up stakes and move to a non-irradiated area. (As a matter of fact, they'd be quite happy getting the U.S. embroiled in all the fallout over that, pun not intended.) If the big minds behind our military machine want us to be protected, they'd be much better off trying to revise our military outlook instead of boning up on tricks for an outdated model. (Trust me: Next time we have the mano-a-mano war the administration seems so fond of, everyone even tangentially involved is going to be fucked.)

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

whatever. i mean...this isn't some sort of "dodgy" thing. north korea is crowing over its nukes. no shit america got on top of that. besides- i don't disagree with the notion of preemptive strikes. it is a logical response to the treaties against nuclear defense. any fucker can doom huge chunks of the world with bio & nuke (fuck chem weapons...they are a hold over from wwii) weapons. i mean, back in the cold war, the reason mutal assured destruction was the order of the day was that with only about 5 minutes response time, there wasn't any other option.

also, i'm kind of drunk.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

NK has been screaming about its nukes for over a year now and the US does not give a shit because there is no oil there. Kim Jong Il is a crazy motherfucker who abused the Sunshine policy and starves his miserable gymnastics-performing peoples, but Bush was the one who renegged on the energy-supply deal that was instituted under Clinton and that was working fine as a deterrent throughout the Clinton administration.

Mutually assured destruction is a Cold War model, featuring two supernations with equivalent fully loaded arsenals that does not work for a diaspora of extremist groups and local rebellions and clusters of people who don't care if they die.

Also this would give a card blanche to an administration that has an impressive track record for outright lying to nuke the next nation they decide has "hidden" WMDs.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

n.k doesn't have oil, i agree...so fuck 'em. except japan is basically our off-shore state. fuck 80's era doom-sayers who thought japan would go mega-corp. hegemony still has strength. so okay! we'll show our dicks, & north korea will know who not to fuck with. true, clinton had bribed him, but i'm not sure which policy i support. if n.k. made nikes, it'd be easier.

i agree mutally assured destruction doesn't work anymore. that is why i support pre-empting fuckers. aka "dude, do you see the size of our fucking gun?" that said, i have diverging opinions about how governments should be handled. this is my idea for the current state only--

the emeging model of distributed goverment versus world wide fascism...that is the real issue.

also, fuck this administration. presidents are always shitty. this one sucks a lot, but man, whatever.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

are there any examples of n. korea attacking anyone since the "end" of the korean war (it's still not officially over)? if you were n. korea, and the shrub-ites and neocons were threatening you, what would you do? what makes you think that they have ever had any intention of fucking with anyone? it's not clear to me that they're doing anything but saying "don't try to fuck with us. don't try any of that iraq bullshit over here."

some people think that n. korea is a threat to the u.s. they might be right. let's see some evidence.

some people think that communist dictatorships are horrible and threats to the u.s. sometimes those same people look at the same form of gov't. and say, "we can do business with them." can you say "cuba?" can you say "china?"

administrations have used puny, inconsequential countries for political purposes to scare voters in the u.s. can you say "n. vietnam?" once upon a time, n. vietnam was going to take over southeast asia.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

i haven't seen enough detail about the causes of the n. korean starvation, but one perspective that i've seen recently is through the peak oil filter: namely, here (n. korea) is an example of what happens to food production when there is not enough (petroleum-based) fertilizer. it could be an example of what will be coming to many other countries soon.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, in the case of North Korea population starvation the blame lies pretty much directly with Kim Jong Il appropriating all human relief funds and investing them in his own luxury and the local military-industrial complex. There was an excellent article on the subject in The New Yorker in early September of 2003, if memory serves. I don't know how easy it would be to find it.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

in case you missed it, here's toles on the nuclear "bunker buster":

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20050502/stt050501.gif

Morons abound

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Wow, you've got some real asshats in this discussion who apparently think dropping a nuke on a toxic weapons site would be magically clean and only the air and water of bad people would be poisoned. Meanwhile, we in the real world have first hand experience that it doesn't work this way:

Health officials in Iraq say the number of babies born with deformities has increased 20 percent since 2003. Some researchers suggest that polluted water containing radiation, which was absorbed by mothers, may be the primary cause.

Health officials say most cases are being reported in southern Iraq, particularly the cities of Basra and Najaf. The United States military used weapons that contained depleted uranium (DU), a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal, in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War and again in the 2003 invasion.

There's all sorts of studies about how burning oil wells affect the health and weather; can you imagine what a burning chemical or bioweapons site would do?

This, of course, assumes the weapons are actually there. The US tends to lie and make mistakes. And it's not just W. who has screwed up pre-emptive strikes. Clinton did it too, bombing an asprin factory in Sudan. Does anyone think there weren't additional environmental and economic repercussions from that? Have these asshats ever studied basic environmental facts?

Meanwhile, I had a surreal dream about you and Che G.

Re: Morons abound

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Me and Che? Oh ew. Please tell me we weren't...you know. Unless Che was played by Gael Garcia Bernal in your dream, in which case, scratch that previous objection.

Yes, there are asshats on this thread, this is really annoying me. If this discussion was happening at Democratic Underground I'd probably delete a bunch of messages and lock the thread, which makes me wonder why I am tolerating this on my own journal.

Re: Morons abound

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Oh no, it was part of a series of comic daydreams about LiveJournal you can see here. You are a far more tolerant sort than I when it comes to comments.

Re: Morons abound

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, not really seeing as I just did a f-list cleansing, deciding that if there is shit I don't put up with on a forum I moderate, I sure as hell don't want to put up with it within the context of my own cyberbaby.

Not only does he know a lot about US foreign policy, he knows a lot about women.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

[I think you know who I mean]

THE MATH AND THE SYMPHONY OF WOMEN

the mind of the female
is a jumble of mathematical
formulas.

they have complex systems
within their symphony
which crescendo and become quiet,

almost without notice.

colors take on new meanings,
words are twisted to suit their whims

and even the days of the month become
a countdown,

12 times a year.

leap years, travel to new time zones
and daylight savings time
have no affect on the mathematical cycles.

because
there are formulas within the system
which correct abberations.

no matter what,
the female forges on.

in the face of the storm,
sunrises,
sunsets,
13 hour sales,
"free gift with purchase",
and
midnight cigarette runs,
she marches onward and upward,

taking a detour now and then
to hit new lows.

no matter. history tells us she rises
again and again.

someone once said
that there are many faces
but only one woman.

as evil as she can be sweet.

the river of math and emotion
that runs underneath the exterior
is a maze of passion,
depth, excitement...and terror.

after all,
without notice
the river may reverse course
with a tidal of fury,
drowning you like the silence beneath the sea

but i like them anyways...the women.

tall, short,
long hair, short hair.

if a woman is charming, attractive,
and well dispositioned,
she is like a rare and exotic bird.

she may fly now and then,
but smile about it...she comes back again

there are moments where the math of a woman
will seem more like division by subtraction.

but there will also be moments
that tell you everything you need to know.

if you keep in mind
that every experience counts in adding up,
the numbers
and the symphony
never end.

i'd like to meet a new one
here in the dead of winter

but that too
is a mathematical forumla hanging out there.

i've taken my ticket

now i daydream
while standing in line.

oh yes...that rare
and exotic bird...

she'll be back again.

[boymaenad.livejournal.com]

bleh, all. *sighs* it's just ... I get the feeling that BushCo wants the power to be wretched but doesn't necessarily intend to actually use it; they don't necessarily groove on the actual destruction of the earth, they just want to know that if it's going to be done, they have the #1 best seat in the house and prettiest manicured finger on the biggest button.

have you heard about, and what do you think of, this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/kawika/223917.html)?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I think this is nothing new, this is just an open statement of their agenda, they kind of have these moments of sociopathic Cartmanesque honesty among all the Orwellian doublespeak. If with the help of the Diebold machines Bush acquires a congress that is not just nominally Republican, he won't even need this provision. Also after the midterm elections he is going to be a lame duck, so I shudder to think of what legistlation he will push through that that point, legally or "legally."