GRAPHS & VIDEOS: Who exactly is a nuclear threat to us?

With the Bushies trotting out the same nuclear boogey man stories to sell the Iran War that they used in Iraq. The essence of the claim is that if some country gets a couple of dozens nukes or even one, they can blackmail us or even hold the whole world hostage.

We seem to be suffering from collective amnesia of some basic math about nuclear weapons most people, including our enemies, knew during the Cold War.

Here's a quick refresher:

These are the nuclear arsenals of most of the countries in the world.

Damn! They could do us some damage couldn't they?

But it looks a little different when you add us and Russia into the picture:

And if you throw in the extra nukes we and the Russians have in mothballs:

If some country nuked us or gave nukes to a terrorist who nuked us, we have enough nukes to burn that country off the map, and not even miss the warheads we used.

Here's a couple of 60 second videos that put it another way:

It’s worth noting that Israel has some nuclear missile submarines too, so if any of their neighbors nuke them, no matter how successfully, Israel could give them a very bad day.

Every world leader knows that not only do we have enough nukes to destroy the whole world several times over, we are the only country who has ever used them. They know that it would be suicidal to nuke us or give a nuke to terrorists to nuke us. That's why the Soviets never attacked us even when they had roughly as many or slightly more nukes than us.

Someone will say the threat of even one nuke going off here is too great. However, the leaders of countries are like chess players. They got into power by being able to accurately predict how their opponents would react to their actions. That's why there are few any examples in history of numerically, technologically, and economically inferior countries launching attacks on a superior country's home turf.

A nuclear attack on us even if successful in itself, would have zero chance of having positive political or economic results for the country that launched it.

You probably already knew this, but you can send it to your righty friends as Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Savage, and the other snake oil salesmen get their knickers in a knot about the threat from Iran.

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Once upon a time, an ideological enemy we had no diplomatic relations with, tested a nuke...

At the time, we were in a war with that country's neighbor, concerned that more people might be enslaved the ideology we didn't like.

They went on to develop a nuclear arsenal that is today relatively modest by US & Russian standards, but nonetheless far more than Iran or North Korea are likely to have any time soon.

Our president, who hated the very bad ideology, did a very odd thing. He went and made friends with them even though we were still fighting in the neighboring country.

Those who wanted us to be very afraid of the very bad ideology were sure that the country with the nukes would attack us or at least infect us with the very bad ideology.

Today, we don't worry about that country nuking or even attacking us in the near future because we owe them too much money and we buy too much of the stuff they make since they seem to have become infected with our ideology even though we haven't been infected with theirs at all.

Likewise, the neighboring country we fought in so long to convince them not to adopt the very bad ideology tried it for a while and decided they'd rather be like us.

We don't get to pick those countries leaders or have troops there, but for some reason they like us anyway.

With the other bad idea, there were countries we made friends with, countries we were a little friendly with, and one or two we shunned.

The ones we became friends with changed quickly, the ones we were a little friendly with changed a little less quickly, and the ones we shunned didn't seem to change at all.

Now some of the same people who said to be afraid of the very bad ideology want us to be afraid of a different very bad ideology and say we must fight a very long war to convince them the ideology is a very bad idea and that one of those countries may get a nuclear bomb.

Which method is likely to get the quickest results? Kill a lot of people or make friends?

Sometimes in history, making friends doesn't work so well. Hitler and Stalin probably would have taken other people's land and killed a lot of people no matter what. But those countries were roughly our equals. Today, maybe two countries in the world are our peers, and the rest are fleas on our ass militarily. They might be difficult for us to invade and occupy, but they would have absolutely no chance of invading and occupying us.

Therefore, there is little danger in making friends (except to the people who wanted to steal stuff while we were fighting and invading).

Our elected leaders like to make up very simple stories that are easy for us to understand. Why don't they tell this one more often? Maybe because it has a happy ending for us--but not for the people who matter.

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For opposing NUKING IRAN, Bush forced out BRITISH foreign secretary

To their credit, CBS News is covering this story, though it includes hedges that reduce to rumor what were more certain statements in the original Guardian piece.

For an action that the Bush administration claims is barely a remote possibility, nuking Iran, the Bushies are treating insider critics exactly like they did those in the run up to Iran War, just as they are doing the same diplomatic dance at the UN even though in the case of IraQ, the Downing Street Minutes of meetings with Bush before the war proved that was just a charade.

It seems likely that the Bush regime is coming to an end, and the prospect of a Bush clone succeeding him in the White House is at least as dim.

And yet Bush is not acting like a neutered lame duck. He continues to retaliate against political enemies, and threatened and browbeat friends and allies around the world, including asking Turkey to launch an invasion against Iran from there, just as they did before the Iraq War. War was a winner for both Bush and GOP in 2002 & 2004, Pentagon insiders have said the Bushies has a list of countries they would like to invade, and Iran has been on the neoconservative hit list since before Bush came into power.

How will the Bushies justify invading IraN when their 9/11 & WMD scare tactics are growing thin? Someone at the Pentagon leaked an order they got from Cheney to the American Conservative magazine last summer that had these elements:

1) terrorist attack here

2) air strikes on Iran with conventional and tactical nukes

3) air strikes will be done REGARDLESS of whether Iran is involved in the terrorist act.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005a/2005_08_01/article3.html

At the time, no one paid attention to the story because it would be insane to start a war with a bigger country when we are loser with a smaller one. It would still be insane, but the Bushies are moving toward it anyway.

It is possible that the CIA or Pentagon will throw a wrench in this scam that Pentagon wargaming indicated would spin out of control and escalate to a world war, or an even more distant possibility that used to happen back in the mists of history, Congress would exercise it's power to investigate, control the purse strings, and decide whether to declare war or NOT declare war.

Right now, it's more likely that the CIA or Pentagon will rebel, or even that the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz will take their kinsman Bush back to the Organ Grinder for retraining.

KEY EXCERPTS:





Did Bush Force British Minister Out?

May 7, 2006

(CBS/AP) The Independent suggests that a phone call from the U.S. president to British Prime Minister Tony Blair led to the removal of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Friday. [ A UK Guardian story is a little stronger than "suggests" http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1768840,00.html ]

The newspaper reports that friends of Straw believe Mr. Bush was extremely upset when Straw pronounced any use of nuclear weapons against Iran "nuts." [the parallel case of the previous foreign secretary has more evidence than a "belief," neocons complained about Robin Cook even before the election because of his criticism of US foreign policy http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1769722,00.html]

*****

The foreign secretary's reservations about invading Iraq featured prominently in the Downing Street memos, written in 2002 and leaked last year.

Straw wrote in a memo to Blair that he would have a tough time convincing the Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"We have also to answer the big question: what will this action achieve?" he wrote. "There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."


FULL TEXT:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/07/politics/printable1596108.shtml

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LBJ commercial on NUKE happy conservatives

(CLICK TO PLAY)

The current talk of using nuclear bunker busters in Iran reminded me of this commercial from the 1964 presidential race, when LBJ was running against uber-hawk Goldwater.

Rather than hollow me-tooism, this is how LBJ framed those eager to use our nuclear arsenal.

http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/196...

Another on nukes,

MERELY ANOTHER WEAPON?

Some of the outside groups might have done stuff this good, but most of the candidates including Kerry seemed to be in a contest to see whose commercials could be more bland, inoffensive, and forgetable.

People still talk about this one. What the hell happened? Are all the current Democratic consultants fifth columnists or retarded?


More LBJ commercials:

http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/1964b.html



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Letter on Bush plans to NUKE IRAN

To my elected representatives in Congress:


April 8, 2006

Rep. Waxman & Sen. Boxer & Feinstein,

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the New Yorker, is reporting that the Bush administration is planning pre-emptive air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Whatever Iran’s nuclear ambitions are, or weapons they have, they are not and will not be a threat to us given our arsenal of 10,000 nuclear warheads. It is nearly as unlikely that they would strike Israel given their arsenal of 200 or more and our close relationship with them. Anyone smart enough to gain political power in any country would remember MAD, mutually assured destruction, from the Cold War, and would know that the calculus would be even worse for anyone who used a nuke on us or gave a nuke to a terrorist group that used it on us—the country that did that would know he may harm us, but before the mushroom cloud cleared here, his country would no longer exist.

Last summer, Russia, China, and several former Soviet republics asked us when we were going to finish up our military operations in Asia and leave. I doubt that they would sit idly by while we invade another major oil producing country, effectively controlling the spigot for the whole world.

Before the Iraq War, in addition to the embarrassing, childish lies about ties to 9/11, WMD, and spreading democracy, a quieter argument was made that controlling Iraq’s oil was a way to break the back of OPEC, and lower the price of oil. Now BBC journalist Greg Palast has received State Department documents that indicate the purpose was to prop up the price of oil and keep Saddam from pumping more when the sanctions came off. This was verified in a portion of one of the Downing Street Memos recently that said Bush sent reassurances to Russia’s Putin that our invasion of Iraq would NOT drive down the price of oil.

So it appears that even that figleaf of a national security argument is a lie. We killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis and wasted the lives of our soldiers to pad the profits of oil companies, the defense industry, and a handful of other corporations.

America should not have to sacrifice so much of our blood and tax dollars so that so very, very few can profit.

As an elected representative of the people of California, you must do whatever you can to stop this. A good start would be telling America plainly why we invaded Iraq in the first place without referring to the insulting PR firm lies the Bush administration has fed us. Jack Murtha has done an admirable job telling us the truth about what’s going on in Iraq today. Now we need a Murtha to tell us how we got there.

You must stop Bush from attacking Iran.

Sincerely,




>

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Cheney plans to nuke Iran

Some variation of an attack on Iran was in the pipe, whether the administration had gotten into this embarrassment with Karl Rove and the Downing Street Minutes or not.

The only questions have been 1) how would they justify it, and 2) how would they do it with our troops tied up in Iraq, and the draft likely to cause an uncontrollable backlash.

This seems to imply the answers to both:

1) terrorist attack on US

2) use nukes on Iran, leaving fewer people left to fight there.

The American people would balk at using nuclear weapons unless the attack on the US was itself was nuclear. Neither Iran nor any other country has a motive to use nukes on the US, knowing that it would result in overwhelming retaliation and the destruction of their government and most of their people.

The last line of the excerpt from the American Conservative magazine is the only one that gives me hope, and has come up on other issues too: the military is uncomfortable with what they are being asked to do. This is how we know about Abu Ghraib. A soldier passed along those photos to Seymour Hersh because he thought what was transpiring was wrong, and when the torture policy and detainment policies were being written, Navy JAG officers were so alarmed, they contacted human rights lawyers in DC.

Eventually, we will come to a moment like the one that occurred in the Soviet Union when the hardliners attempted a coup against Gorbachev--the military refused to fire on or act against their own people. It would be better if our elected leaders corrected this problem, but if they do not, our last line of defense is the conscience of those in our military.

You should forward this to your congressman and senators and ask them to investigate and if they approve of allowing a terrorist attack in the US as a pretext for nuking and invading Iran.

http://firstgov.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

KEY EXCERPTS:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option.

As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.

Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

FULL TEXT:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005a/2005_08_01/article3.html





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