Who Put the Bomb in the Bomb-she-Bomb?

Who put the “Blam!” in the blow-us-all-to-hell?

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
3/29/08

...And now, the latest from the BBC.

Pentagon orders nuclear inventory

BBC
Friday, March 28, 2008

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a full inventory of US nuclear arms after parts of ballistic missiles were mistakenly sent to Taiwan.

He said a report, that would also include checks of related materials, should be completed within 60 days.

The US sent nuclear fuse triggers to Taiwan instead of helicopter batteries in 2006. The mistake was only discovered last week.

The arms issue is sensitive as China regards Taiwan as a renegade province.

Beijing vehemently opposes US arms sales to Taiwan and has threatened to attack the island if it declares independence.

OK. Hold it right there.

An inventory. An inventory of nuclear arms.

That’s the latest term for atomic bombs. “Nuclear arms.” Presumably the same sort of arms covered by the second amendment, which says any psychotic has the right to enough firepower to take out a city block.

The US just admitted it doesn’t know exactly how many atomic bombs it has, or where they are.

That’s not very reassuring. Lord knows we don’t expect competence from nutball ideologues who sleazed their way into public office on a platform that government cannot work (the technical term for that is “self-fulfilling prophecy”) but there’s this little problem with “nuclear arms.”

When used as directed, they can cause a hell of a mess. The better ones can wipe out entire cities, and even the little ones can vaporize Enid, Oklahoma. Not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing, mind you. I’m just saying.

Now, ever since 1945, the government has said that they recognized that atomic bombs were the sort of thing you should keep close tabs on, what with their potential for destruction, and the propensity of certain parties to want to destroy things. Mostly they had in mind the Russians, because the Russians didn’t recognize the supremacy of the free market, but most people figured out, communist or not, that atomic bombs weren’t the sort of thing you wanted to leave lying about for the neighborhood kids to play with. There was a pretty big uproar when a plane with four bombs aboard crashed into water several miles deep. Both the USSR and the US put in years trying to figure out how to get at that plane.

What nobody counted on was that the country would lose its mind and decide to make someone president who was so fucking stupid everyone wanted to have a beer with him. Think about the last guy you had a beer with; he probably thought Scooter Libby was framed and that George W. was a genius. He blew his wad betting on the Cleveland Indians last year. A beer, sure, but would you trust that knucklehead with atomic bombs?

So it wasn’t entirely surprising that a plane accidently overflew the country last year, with nobody involved with the flight aware that it was carrying nuclear weapons. They were defused, at least, but in the event of a crash, would still have scattered embarrassing amounts of plutonium and national secrets around. Ooops.

Now they say they have to do an inventory.

OK. So they count all the bombs. There are anywhere between 8,000 and 20,000, depending on whether you count multiple warheads as one or several. The admin, despite their track record, actually hires people who can count, and they are there to double check every staff sergeant who barks “all present and accounted for, SUH!” and you just know his greatest ambition in all the world is to avoid excess paperwork and problems with the colonel. If he knows how many bombs there are supposed to be, that’s the answer he is going to be most happy giving.

Say they actually manage an accurate inventory in just six months, and they haven’t hired Halliburton to fuck it all up and steal a few nukes for themselves. The counting is all done, and they compare their number with what’s on the wish-sheet.

And they discover they are a half a dozen short.

Now, half a dozen out of 20,000 doesn’t sound like many, so let’s give them names: New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. Washington, DC. London. Tel Aviv.

Why those names? Oh, no particular reason. If I had six nukes, I wouldn’t want to harm any of those cities, but that’s just me.

Chances are the government won’t even tell us about it. This is, after all, a very secretive regime, and it’s actually kind of amazing that they would publically disclose that they were doing an inventory in the first place. Maybe it was meant to reassure us, but I don’t feel particularly reassured.

They would probably even come out and say they weren’t disclosing the results of the inventory, because if they did and it showed bombs missing and in the hands of terrorists, the terrorists might realize they have bombs and do something with them. It’s not like the “reporters” at CNN are going to ask them for clarification or anything.

Better just take it as a given that the government probably really doesn’t know how many nukes they have, or where they have them.

And if it turns out that any are actually missing, let’s just hope that if bad guys have them, they have the same level of competence as the GOP in Washington.