Six nukes "accidentally" flown across US by the Air Force. This story makes no sense. Or does it?
WaPo has a longer story. This is seriously screwed up. The "best" explanation - that this was some sort of mistake - is just incredibly frightening. Barksdale Air Force Base (where the missiles ended up) is one of the US bases where B-52s (the type of plane the nukes were accidently on) are staged for combat missions to the middle east. So you have to conclude that it's at least possible that we could drop a nuke on Iraq or Afghanistan without meaning to! "Sorry about that, we thought those were conventional missiles." And that's the best explanation!
Also, in what is probably just a reporting error, the original story said there were 5 missing nukes. But all later stories I have seen say that 6 missiles "accidently" left Minot AFB. In fact, even the original Military Times story has been updated (without note) to say 6. But the original story still lives in the Military Times forum version (first post in the thread is the original article.) And it says 5. Since the story broke out of Barksdale, and the original reporting said there were 5 missiles (5 missiles recovered at Barksdale,) this seems important (6 left, but only 5 were recovered?) Again, probably a reporting error, but it seems like kind of a big deal and something you would want to get right (and not change after publication with no correction.)
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- jim 9-06-2007 3:07 am
WaPo has a longer story. This is seriously screwed up. The "best" explanation - that this was some sort of mistake - is just incredibly frightening. Barksdale Air Force Base (where the missiles ended up) is one of the US bases where B-52s (the type of plane the nukes were accidently on) are staged for combat missions to the middle east. So you have to conclude that it's at least possible that we could drop a nuke on Iraq or Afghanistan without meaning to! "Sorry about that, we thought those were conventional missiles." And that's the best explanation!
Also, in what is probably just a reporting error, the original story said there were 5 missing nukes. But all later stories I have seen say that 6 missiles "accidently" left Minot AFB. In fact, even the original Military Times story has been updated (without note) to say 6. But the original story still lives in the Military Times forum version (first post in the thread is the original article.) And it says 5. Since the story broke out of Barksdale, and the original reporting said there were 5 missiles (5 missiles recovered at Barksdale,) this seems important (6 left, but only 5 were recovered?) Again, probably a reporting error, but it seems like kind of a big deal and something you would want to get right (and not change after publication with no correction.)
- jim 9-24-2007 11:43 pm