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POLICE STATE / MILITARY -
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Nuclear War in ... Alabama: Code Name of the Week: Global Lightning

Posted in the database on Friday, October 28th, 2005 @ 20:23:11 MST (1574 views)
by William M. Arkin    The Washington Post  

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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
Vigilant Warrior: Will Mobile 'drill' go live?

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=3203



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