Police nab activists seeking Bush's nuke suitcase

Police nab activists seeking Bush's nuke suitcase
Sun May 8, 2005 6:14 AM ET

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (Reuters) - Dutch police arrested six activists on Sunday who said they wanted to enter President Bush's Netherlands hotel and look for the suitcase which allows him to activate nuclear weapons.

"We heard Bush carries a nuclear suitcase and can push the red button at any time to set off atomic weapons. We find this extremely shocking," said Leo de Groot, a spokesman for the activist group.

The activists, carrying binoculars and wearing signs that identified them as "citizen's inspectors," mimicking the International Atomic Energy Agency's weapons inspectors, were caught by Dutch soldiers as they approached Bush's hotel.

In a separate incident, an amateur photographer seriously hurt himself on Saturday by falling onto a spiked fence as he tried to photograph the tight security arrangements around the hotel, police said.
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-05-08T101509Z_01_N08634255_RTRIDST_0_POLITICS-BUSH-DUTCH-ARRESTS-DC.XML

You'd think they would do a bit of RESEARCH before going off on their suitcase quest! First, to be excessively technical, it is a large briefcase, not a suitcase, and it is commonly termed "the football." It is in the possession of a series of serious looking 0-4s, generally (branch of service rotates; the most boring duty in the world, unless something happens). It contains launch codes, paperwork, detailed targets, that sort of thing--not a button.



Great article on the subject of the football here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-05-nuclear-football_x.htm

I like protest as much as anyone else, but this street theater crap does not move me, especially when they don't do their research! I'd rather they get together, say, a half a million of their friends and fill the streets!!!

A sort of Street Guerilla schtick. Still, it was totally CLUELESS (and dangerous to boot). Even 40~50 years ago, ANY potentially "menacing" action aimed at ANY Chief of State, would quite likely be met with deadly force.

pnorman

like the idiots that were attempting to bring cups of water to Schiavo, even though it would have killed her.

Cheers
Drifter

But for idiots.

leaders are still in the mode to carry around something to destroy the entire world. Who are the fece morons? I'd trust these people more than I'd ever trust aWol, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Rice, Robertson, Falwell, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly...

(Not only do we pay our leaders salaries they also make 10,000 times more money when they're out of office because of the, mostly illegal, connections they made in office. Plus we have to take drug tests for employment but they don't. Who are morons?)