In mid-2003 the average American had grown isolated from the global community. A common attitude in many parts of the United States could be summarized thusly: “If someone doesn’t like America, fuck them. Fuck the French, fuck the U.N. and fuck those hippie scumbag protesters out in the streets.”
The Bush Administration’s policy of continuous war for continuous profit was criticized by many constituencies, but the “opposition” party fielded no fewer than nine candidates for the election in 2004. The Democratic party was plagued in the early primary season by the inability to organize the bulk of their membership behind a single candidate. This problem was solved by one candidate’s swift adoption of the Internet as a legitimate medium for serious political debate.
During that summer of
odd weather,
momentous discoveries, and
strange occurrences few people noticed the subtle games being played in the nation’s places of power.
The news had been flooded for months with stories of war and weapons of mass destruction. Every office in America had suddenly spawned pundits in the fields of International Law, Military Science, and Politics in general. The populace was numb with talk of precision strikes, the forced exile of foreign leaders, and the role of the American military around the globe.
In the lingering glow of Baghdad’s destruction, the United States made itself ready to lead the world into the greatest period of weapons proliferation ever recorded.
The United States had pioneered use of high-precision weaponry during the first Gulf War in 1993. Guided missiles were used to great effect in destroying specific buildings in a crowded city, and leveling bridges with a single shot. Forever gone were the days of carpet bombing.
After swift success in annihilating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with judicious use of precision weapons and special forces operations, the Bush Administration set its sights on the so-called “Axis of Evil.” According to George W. Bush, three nations comprised this axis: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. While Iran and North Korea were well-known to be engaged in nuclear research with the goal of producing a weapon, it is now generally agreed that Iraq had no such program following the destruction of its fledgling nuclear research facility by Israel in 1993.
President Bush, armed with doctored intelligence reports and a determination to go to war, falsely argued that Iraq not only had a nuclear weapons program, but also vast, uncounted stores of chemical and biological weapons. He erroneously claimed these weapons could be used against the United States if the Iraqi government sold them. To this day no such weapons have yet been found.
Gulf War II saw the first use of a super bomb known as a MOAB or Big Blue in combat. At that time, it was the largest, most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever conceived. Video of a test of the MOAB was distributed to the international media before the war. No public outcry beyond a growing global anti-war movement was generated by news that the weapon would likely be used in the war. Experimental thermobaric weapons used months earlier in Afghanistan similarly drew little public criticism.
The trend of public apathy towards U.S. production and use of weapons of mass destruction was also apparent in the lack of media coverage and public outcry concerning
Agent Orange and
Napalm; two weapons of mass destruction which once commanded extremely high buzz-factor in the United States
only a decade earlier.
The stage was set for the U.S. Department of Defense and its industry partners to re-kindle America’s love affair with nuclear weapons. With public outrage no-longer a factor in the United States nuclear policy, all that stood in the way was a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing declared in 1992. That moratorium was debated at the now historic
Offutt Conference in August 2003 on the anniversaries of the first and – until that point – only uses of nuclear weapons in combat; the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States of America.
The argument was made that the casualties of the second Gulf War could have been avoided had the first surgical strike of the war, known as the “decapitation” strategy, been successful. The Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, and his top advisers
had been tracked to a specific building in Baghdad. The building was destroy by precision bombs and missiles. Saddam and his inner circle escaped with there lives. Had the bombs and missiles been low-yield nuclear “bunker busters” instead of conventional weapons, the Generals claimed, the Iraqi regime would have crumbled instantly.
Their theories were tested in the next war. But that’s a different story for a different time.
Labels: bloggers, blogging, iraq, MOAB, Offutt Conference, thermobaric weapons
uicksilver workshop
