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

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

This shit does not happen by accident. I find it more than a little ironic that a B-52 is accidentally loaded with nukes, is being sent to a base that stages for the Middle East, and all this happens on the day or within days of a supposed attack on our largest European base.

Just a guess...This was either a message to would be terrorist that we will go nuclear the next time, or the attempt that was foiled in Germany was one hell of a lot closer to being pulled off than we are being told.

DBDB

How convenient that something of that magnitude could be fluffed off as a mistake. How could anyone possibly make that kind of a mistake?

has anyone in congress even mentioned this event in the past week?

<snip>

`The Democrats in charge of Congress, and the Republican minority, may not have the stomach to stand up to the Bush administration’s obsession to keep the bloodletting going in Iraq, and they may not have the courage even to put a stop to plans to attack Iran, but even the most reprehensible weasels and cowards among them should have the basic decency to know that this bizarre and suspicious flight needs to be investigated to the fullest to get to the bottom of what was going on.

Not except blogs and liberal radio shows . I have not heard one meantion of it by any rep either .

Good luck people , we will know when the bombs go off and then just maybe there will be investigations done from their bunkers while the rest of us will stand out here in the breeze .

ya think someone would be concerned

I think we should google NUKE the nuke story
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1769956&mesg_id=1769956


Nukes Over Amerika (Weekend Edition)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1765351

Was A Covert Attempt To Bomb Iran W/ Nuclear Weapons Foiled By A Military Leak?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=173147&mesg_id=173147

it was a false-flag operation that was disrupted on purpose. One that would have made 9/11/2001 look like a frat-boy prank. Who knows, maybe Karl Rove has a conscience after all.