POLICE STATE / MILITARY - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Nuclear War in ... Alabama: Code Name of the Week: Global Lightning |
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by William M. Arkin The Washington Post Entered into the database on Friday, October 28th, 2005 @ 20:23:11 MST |
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When Alabama gets the bomb... I don't know about you, but when I was growing
up, Tom Lehrer's song "Who's
Next" always brought a smile to my face. Next month, Alabama gets the bomb. Well, Alabama gets bombed. It's North Korea who's next. They get nuked. It’s all part of a classified military exercise slated to begin
November 1, an exercise that, with the inclusion of North Korea and a terrorist
attack in the United States, suggests up-to-the-minute relevance. In truth,
though, the exercise replays the same tired Cold War global nuclear war game
that has been the bread and butter of the U.S. military for decades. The dastardly country of Purple, or maybe it's a terrorist organization aligned
with Purple -- the script doesn't say for sure -- detonates a radiological dispersal
device (or "dirty" nuclear bomb) onboard a merchant ship located on
the Mobile waterfront. The President is in Mobile, leading a summit of world
leaders addressing a tense escalation of global tensions. The Alabama nuclear "event" kicks off the scenario for Vigilant
Shield, a U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) exercise that is one in a series
of national military exercises scheduled for the first ten days of November.
The nuclear warfare component of these exercises -- called Global Lightning,
and sponsored by U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha -- runs at the same
time and will rehearse a nuclear war with North Korea. In the exercise, Purple is a Northeast Asian nation thinly veiled as
North Korea. According to military documents and sources involved in the classified scenario
writing for Vigilant Shield and Global Lightning, North Korea, which is posited
to possess nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, becomes embroiled
in the worldwide crisis, eventually launching a first strike attack against
the United States with a number of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). Though Vigilant Shield is officially a "homeland security" exercise,
the focus is military and federal government "consequence management"
after spectacular terrorist and North Korea nuclear strikes, and the resulting,
not kidding, global nuclear war. I've already written
about how NORTHCOM will do just about anything to be relevant to the "global
war on terrorism" and not dirty itself in the pedestrian missions associated
with natural disasters. Scratch the surface of Vigilant Shield and it's clear that fighting the war
on terrorism domestically is only fun when it is part of the senior varsity
of administration interest: global nuclear war. In addition to the North Korean
missile attack, as best I can piece together, the Vigilant Shield scenario includes
the administration and Rumsfeld favorite ballistic missile defenses (trying
to) shoot down incoming missiles, implementation of continuity of operations
plans and evacuation to alternative command posts, mobilization of the 18-wheeler
mobile command center to test emergency Presidential communications, the intercept
of Soviet-like long-range bombers entering U.S. and Canadian airspace, and military
"consequence management" after missiles land on Washington. There
are a few modern day twists -- terrorist attacks, cyber warfare or what the
military calls "information operations." Global Lightning practices the American nuclear retaliation after Vigilant
Shield. This year's is the second of an annual exercise series allowing the
Omaha-based command to flex bigger muscles assigned by President Bush.
In 2003, the President assigned STRATCOM overarching responsibility for missile
defenses, "strategic" information
warfare in support of national operations, and global
strike missions -- nuclear and conventional. Global Lightning exercises, according to STRATCOM documents, practices "nuclear
combat readiness, proficiency and training" and "provides a bridging
exercise between nuclear and non-nuclear forces." In other words, it practices
escalation from conventional to nuclear war and implementation of the Bush administration's
new global strike war plan, named CONPLAN 8022. When the first Global Lightning was held in October 2004, The Shreveport Times
reported
B-52 bombers from nearby Barksdale air force base practicing minimum-interval
take-offs, where 13 bombers took off within a minute or less of one another.
Emergency launches of bombers held on 24/7 alert were once quite common during
the Cold War, but ever since the first Iraq war in 1991, when bombers were enlisted
as the centerpiece of U.S. conventional bombing, the practice of "flushing"
bombers to fight make believe nuclear wars became more and more infrequent.
Now the Bush administration has revived the old practice, building the capacity
for the military to respond to an instant order to conduct a preemptive strike.
(Next week, no kidding: How Ukraine Starts World War III) See from Looking Glass News |