Thanks Butler for the Vigilant Shield post. Scroll down a bit to read this:
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.
The wargame is a paranoid lunatic’s fantasy — basically, every evil person in the world decides to attack the US at the same time; nuclear missiles, bombers, terrorist bombs, the works. It’s like out of a really bad novel. Am I the only person who is depressed that, 15 years after the USSR called it quits, we’re still practicing for all-out nuclear war? Who, exactly, are we supposed t be fighting this time? I mean, besides the whole damn world?
1:47 pm on October 25, 2005
