Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Notes from the Prayer Warrior | Ron Paul Takes in More Than $4... »

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Nuclear Warfare a GoGo

posted by on November 6 at 9:20 AM

Posted by Ryan S. Jackson

In retrospect, the Iraq war would seem to have been one of the more subtle touches of foreign policy to come out of the Bush White House in 2003, as the all-purpose Plan B appeared to be nuclear strikes against the majority of the Arab world:

Via the increasingly invaluable Spencer Ackerman:

Despite years of denials, a secret planning document issued by the U.S. military’s nuclear-weapons command in 2003 ordered preparations for nuclear strikes on countries seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including Iran, Saddam Hussein-era Iraq, Libya and Syria.

A briefing on the document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, showed that the document itself was created to flesh out a 2001 Bush administration revision of long-standing nuclear-weapons policy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review.

It’s not entirely easy to tell from the planning document what WMD-desiring countries are listed as targets for a possible U.S. nuclear attack. (See page 11 for all the redactions on this crucial point.) But the FAS hazards an educated guess based on photography included in the briefing document: Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria.

The briefing document also references a “target base” for prospective elimination with nuclear weapons. However, the actual document redacts what that target base might be. FAS contends it probably refers to either the stockpiles of WMD themselves or the command center for any state seeking to deploy WMD. And that’s a further sign of specific planning for a full-blown nuclear conflict, the FAS writes: “The creation of a ‘target base’ indicates that the planning went further than simple retaliatory punishment with one or a few weapons, but envisioned actual nuclear warfighting intended to annihilate a wide range of facilities in order to deprive the states the ability to launch and fight with WMD.”

RSS icon Comments

1

Well, so long as no oil fields, refineries, or shipping facilities were targeted, what's the problem?

I mean, all the rest of it is just so much window dressing anyway, right?

Posted by COMTE | November 6, 2007 1:28 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).