Oops…! So, maybe the dinosaurs had a Pentagon as well.
So, you’re sick and tired of hearing about the horrors of the Iraq war, or the failed wars on drugs & terror, the venality and stupidity of politicians – and, while we’re at it, the depressing shenanigans of the Celeb Anonymous crowd?
Fear not. There is, occasionally, other and maybe even more depressing news:
The Pentagon is investigating how a B52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads last week and allowed to fly 1,500 miles across America before anyone noticed the weapons were missing.
A squadron commander in charge of the warheads, each of which has up to ten times the destructive power of the Hiroshima atom bomb, has been relieved of his duties while crews responsible for the error have been banned from handling munitions.
Not to worry though.
Enter Air Force spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Thomas:
“Standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling. All evidence we have seen so far points to an isolated mistake.
It is important to note that munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times. The error was discovered by airmen during internal Air Force checks.”
Ah yes, nothing to worry about then.
Dream on:
The history of U.S. nuclear weapon accidents is as old as their introduction into the American military arsenal. The first known, officially acknowledged accident occurred in February 1950, when an American B-36 bomber jettisoned a bomb into the Pacific Ocean. The record of these accidents, however, has been beset with mysteries and inconsistencies due to a lack of documentation available to the public. The paucity of publicly available data is largely the result of the highly classified nature of information regarding nuclear weapons and their location. To maintain this opacity, the U.S. military’s policy is to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons in most accidents.
Despite claims that the U.S. nuclear stockpile is safe and reliable, the number of accidents involving America’s atomic arsenal is a matter of concern. The Department of Defense (DoD) first published a list of nuclear weapon accidents in1968 which detailed 13 serious nuclear weapon accidents between 1950-1968. An updated and revised list released in 1980 catalogued 32 accidents between1950-1980. However, this second compilation failed to include some of the accidents covered in the 1968 list.
Even the updated estimate does not tell the entire story, for no additional list of nuclear weapon accidents acknowledged by the Pentagon has been released since 1980. Moreover, the list included only those instances that were judged severe enough to fit the Pentagon’s conservative definition of a nuclear weapon “accident.” Many more mishaps which could have been catastrophic were excluded as “nuclear weapons incidents.”
Still, it’s almost a comfort to realize that it could well be that our short-sighted greed and things like global warming won’t kill us – and that, in the end, it doesn’t matter how stupid the straw men are that we elect as presidents and whatever mad wars they decide to wage on ouija board based evidence.
It might still be that we do as Samson did and bring down the whole bloody temple on ourselves – by accident.
And wouldn’t that be a truly fitting end?
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