Even if the US does bomb Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is closed to oil shipments, your president has taken steps to ensure you will still have enough gas to drive to the mall and shop.
Big U.S. oil supply to offset Mideast Gulf disruptionWed Mar 28, 2007 11:53am ET160
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States could use its large Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter a short-term disruption in Middle East Gulf oil shipments caused by tensions with Iran, the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday.
"We have substantial emergency supplies" of oil to offset problems in Gulf shipping," EIA's Guy Caruso told reporters.
Oil prices shot up this week as traders worried that a dispute the West has with Iran's nuclear program and Iran's continued holding of U.K. Royal Navy personnel could escalate and result in disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles about a third of the world's seaborne oil shipments.
"There is no need to panic" among oil traders over possible Gulf oil shipping disruptions, Caruso said.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2007-03-28T155312Z_01_N28302785_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-OIL-SUPPLIES.xml&src=rss&rpc=22 Now while the US forces might well end up using nuclear bombs (not to mention the more "conventional" depleted uranium laden bunker busters and cruise missiles) in the attacks, what's a little increase in background radiation and maybe some toxic heavy metal poisoning (mainly to just another bunch of brown skinned folks) compared to the knowledge that the USA gave another rogue, terrorist state a good shit kicking and got control of all their oil to boot, a real two fer one deal.
Military planners are said to favor the use of conventional weapons. The use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now part of the Middle East war theater arsenal, are not explicitly contemplated, at least in the first round of the US sponsored Blitzkrieg. However, the fact that nuclear weapons are acknowledged as a possible choice in the conventional war theater is indicative that their use is an integral part of military planning.
SNIP
CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'
'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.' (According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)
The use of tactical nuclear weapons is contemplated under CONPLAN 8022 alongside conventional weapons, as part of the Bush administration's preemptive war doctrine. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20070221&articleId=4888Uranium Wars:
The Pentagon Steps Up
its Use of
Radioactive Munitions
by Marc W. Herold
SNIP
The widely-used Lockheed Martin GBU-28 5,000 lb. 'bunker-buster' bomb with a BLU-109 penetrator head carried only by the Air Force's F-15E's and B-2s, contains 1.5 metric tons of depleted uranium, compared to only five kilograms in the 120 mm shell. According to the GBU-28 Bunker Buster animation on USA Today the warhead is "classified".6 The 30 mm PGU-14 armor-piercing cannon shell contains 4,650 grains <0.66 pounds > of extruded DU, alloyed with 0.75 weight percent titanium.7 The Olin Corporation is the sole maker in the U.S. of DU antitank rounds, and its foundation funds "research" which purports to show that DU has no harmful health effects.
An "improved" version of this bomb - the GBU-37B, made by Northrop Grumman - with a BLU-113 warhead also contains DU. Another bunker-penetrating munition dropped on caves and tunnels in Afghanistan is the AGM-130 - widely used in the Tora Bora campaign - which is a 2,900 pound, rocket-propelled bomb fired by helicopters and F-15E's up to 40 miles away from its target.8 Other earlier versions of bunker-penetrating bombs include the GBU-15, GBU-24, GBU-27 and GBU-31.
The $231,000 GBU-37B bomb began being dropped upon Afghanistan on October 10, 2001 by B-2s flying out of Missouri. On October 22, Abdul Hemat of the Taliban's Bakhtar News Agency, announced that doctors in both Herat and Kandahar were reporting patients showing unusual toxic sickness symptoms which could not be identified.9 Two or three of the patients died mysteriously.10
http://www.cursor.org/stories/uranium.htm
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