at-Largely

Bush "manifesting the Zionist vision"

Posted By Cernig

Yesterday, I wrote that while a by-blow of Bush's Knesset speech may well have been to attack Obama and other Democratic rivals, the main purpose was to give a "wink and a nod" to Israeli hardliners that in the closing days of his presidency they can do no wrong - including attack Iran, should Israel wish to, or scuppering any chance of a Palestinian peace process.

Reports in the Israeli media say that Israel got Bush's message, loud and clear.

"We are on the same page. We both see the threat ... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said.

Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive", but added: "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken".

Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said: "Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."

Senior officials in Jerusalem said Thursday that Israel is fully satisfied with the results of Bush's visit, including policy on Iran's nuclear program.

"In talks with the president of the United States during his visit it was made clear that Bush's statements on the subject of Iran's nuclear program are fully backed in practice," a senior official said.

One Zionist member of the Knesset even suggested Bush's next job should be to replace Olmert as Israeli PM.

As a former Knesset speaker, MK Reuven Rivlin, put it Thursday, "I wish our leaders would make speeches like this." Rivlin described Bush as "manifesting the Zionist vision."

Contrary to the applause Bush received for his address, the speech by Prime Minister Olmert was less popular and stirred considerable controversy.

Olmert promised that when there is a peace agreement it "will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and it will be supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public."

Two MKs from the National Union, Zvi Hendel and Uri Ariel, left the plenum in protest, complaining that the event was "used to promote a political agenda that is opposed by most of the Israeli public."
Hendel issued a statement calling on Olmert "to learn from the president of the United States what Zionism is."

MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called out during Olmert's speech, "in your dreams."

He later proposed that Bush should replace Olmert.

Olmert mainly drew criticism for parts of his speech concerning the Palestinian peace process, saying that "we will bring before the Knesset an agreement that is based on the vision of two states for two peoples. This agreement will be approved by a large majority in the Knesset and the entire nation." That's when Hendel and Ariel walked out.

Perhaps they should have been more patient. Today Olmert made it clear he wanted no peace process at all, as he denied to Palestinians what Israeli Jews have held themselves had all these years - a right of return.

Six months into negotiations sponsored by Bush in the hope of a deal before he leaves the White House, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman used some of the toughest Israeli language yet to insist that President Mahmoud Abbas abandon 60-year-old refugee claims if he wants to establish a Palestinian state.

"This demand, which does not exist under international law, for right of return, is the ultimate deal breaker. You cannot have peace and this demand at the same time," Mark Regev said.

Some 700,000 people, half the Arab population of Palestine in May 1948, fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created. Letting them and their families live in Israel now would undermine its nature as a Jewish state, Israel argues.

It also disputes the legal basis of the right of the return first set out in a United Nations resolution of December 1948.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bush's speech - which described Israel "the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses, and David - a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael," has given Olmert all the political cover he needs to torpedo the Bush administration's own hopes for a deal. Needless to say, Palestinians are not happy.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters: "He should have told the Israelis that, 1 mile from where he was speaking, there is a nation that has lived in disaster for 60 years. He should have told the Israelis no one can be free at the expense of others. He missed this opportunity and we are disappointed."

...In the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, columnist Samih Shabib wrote: "Bush is blind to the right of return.

"The U.S. administration's attitude towards Israel inherently promotes hostility and deepens hatred towards the United States and its policy. Is this hostility, and its consequences, in America's interest? I don't think so."

You can see why Bush likes to think that diplomacy and negotiation are weak and "appeasing" - he's so bloody bad at them. He's much better at bringing violence and war through tough talk and ill-judged adventures.

Chess, Poker, Global Thermonuclear War?

Um, folks, this is a bit disturbing via Wired:

"The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online.  The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative."  That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks.  "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes.  "Now, all you need is an Internet connection."

Meddlers!

By Cernig

We've heard a lot recently about US allegations that Iran is interfering in Iraq, aiding insurgents with weaponry and training, but Iran has also long said that both the US and Britain back insurgents inside Iran and we hear rather less about that.

That might change if Iran goes ahead with a lawsuits, as it claimed today, against both nations for aiding terrorists who allegedly blew up a mosque.

Iran's judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran's intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz. Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza Jamshidi told state television the terrorists behind the bombing were agents of the U.S. and British governments in Iran. "The relationship of those who planted the bombs in Shiraz with the U.S. and Britain was identified and they were being financially supported and in fact they acted as foreign agents in Iran," he said. "In view of the documents obtained the judiciary in cooperation with the government and the Foreign Ministry will file lawsuits with international authorities against their supporters, who on the one hand claim to fight terrorists and on the other hand provide them with equipment," he said.

He was clearly referring to Britain and the United States, but did not give details on how Tehran would take legal action against them. Iran has in the past accused the two countries of trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic by supporting rebels, mainly those in sensitive border areas.

The British government recently failed to prevent judges from ordering the removal of the main suspect in foreign-backed meddling in Iran, the MeK, from being removed from the UK's terror list. Iran isn't too happy about that, summoning the British ambassador to protest the removal - and in truth the British government didn't try too hard to keep the MeK on the list. Neoconservatives and rightwing regime-change advocates have given the MeK heavy political backing in the last few years in both the US and UK and it seems likley that the US State Department will follow suit when it next reviews the MeK's inclusion in October.

"CounterProductive," I Respectfully Disagree

My good friend Jeff Huber, a retired military man and author whom I respect and who blogs here, has in his recent post compared Andrew Cockburn's piece in CounterPunch to the propaganda of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of The New York Times. I must very respectfully disagree. Jeff writes:

At least one high profile war critic sounds alarmed by a recent revelation that Mr. Bush signed a “secret finding” against “the Iranian regime” six weeks ago.  I’m frankly less than agog about it.

In a May 2 CounterPunch article, Andrew Cockburn wrote that Bush has launched a “covert offensive” on Iran that is "unprecedented in its scope."  The “directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan.”  The directive, according to Cockburn, also permits an expanded range of actions, “up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.

<snip>

Cockburn seems to want us to get excited that this Lebanon-to-Afghanistan offensive may involve assassination.  H.G. Wells’ bells, fellow citizens, we’re already assassinating people in Somalia with freaking cruise missiles.  We’re doing the same thing in Pakistan with Hellfire missiles fired from pilotless spy planes; the folks who pickle off the missles are dweebs sitting at consoles in an Air Force base in Nevada. "

Let's go to my reporting on Iran (which has been on hold while I have been covering selective prosecution):

Massive Propaganda Laundry at the Wall Street Journal...

This may or may not be related to why the Wall Street Journal's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, quit yesterday, but it sure looks to be connected. The "this" that I am referring to is the propaganda piece published in the WSJ - now owned by propaganda magnate, R. Murdoch -  today on what went down in Syria last year:

"North Korea was helping Syria build a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor before Israel bombed the site last September, the Bush administration is set to tell Congress.

The new information could increase the position of hard-liners in Congress and the administration who have argued against a deal being negotiated to dismantle North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. The hard-liners say Pyongyang hasn't provided enough assurances it will dismantle its atomic arsenal in return for economic and diplomatic incentives.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. has made public information about the strike in Syria, though speculation has been widespread that the targeted site was a nascent nuclear reactor. Some Republicans have charged that the U.S. is playing down the matter to avoid hurting talks with North Korea.

<snip>

This week, the Central Intelligence Agency is expected to begin briefing members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on the Israeli strike, according to congressional and administration officials. The briefings will be based in part on intelligence provided by the Israeli government, they said.       

The CIA is expected to say it believes North Korea was helping Syria develop a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor similar to the Yongbyon facility North Korea built north of Pyongyang, said an official familiar with the deliberations. It also is likely to say North Korean workers were active at the Syrian site at the time of the Israeli attack.      

It isn't clear what specific evidence the U.S. officials will present to support their allegations. They are likely to acknowledge uncertainty about whether the alleged Syrian reactor was designed solely to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes or also to make fissile material for a nuclear weapon, according to the U.S. official.      

Syrian officials have denied that they have sought to develop a nuclear capability of any kind and say the Bush administration is hyping the issue as a means to pursue an aggressive policy against both Iran and Syria.      

"We have seen in the past that this administration doesn't require evidence, but will use false pretexts" to pursue its agenda, said Ahmed Salkini, a spokesman at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. "We hope the administration doesn't take a miscalculated step that could cause even more chaos in our region."'

The claims regarding a Syrian nuclear facility are patently false. How do I know? Because I was on the story for months.  It is not true that North Korea is helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. What is true, however, is that Syria has a chemical weapons program - that for some reason no one seems much interested in. But I suppose for the Cheney mechanism to move forward, introducing a whole new type of  WMD to the mix  might confuse the propaganda.

Furthermore, anyone from the CIA who testifies to Congress that Israel bombed a nuclear facility in Syria last year will be all-out lying. Let's go back to my first article on the bombing of Syria by the Israeli military:

"Israel did not strike a nuclear weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 6, instead striking a cache of North Korean missiles, current and former intelligence officials say.

American intelligence sources familiar with key events leading up to the Israeli air raid tell RAW STORY that what the Syrians actually had were North Korean No-Dong missiles, possibly located at a site in either the city of Musalmiya in the northern part of Syria or further south around the city of Hama.

While reports have alleged the US provided intelligence to Israel or that Israel shared their intelligence with the US, sources interviewed for this article believe that neither is accurate.

By most accounts of intelligence officials, both former and current, Israel and the US both were well aware of the activities of North Korea and Syria and their attempts to chemically weaponize the No-Dong missile (above right). It therefore remains unclear why an intricate story involving evidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons program and/or enriched uranium was put out to press organizations.

The North Korean missiles  -- described as "legacy" by one source and "older generation" by another -- were not nuclear arms."

You want on the record sourcing kids? Here you go, from my same article:

"Vincent Cannistraro, Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan and Chief of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center under President George H. W. Bush, said Sunday that what the Israelis hit was "absolutely not a nuclear weapons facility."

"Syria has a small nuclear research facility and has had it for several years," Cannistraro said. "It is not capable of enriching uranium to weapons capability levels. Some Israelis speculated that the Syrians had succeeded in doing just that, but according to the US intelligence experts that is simply not true."'

Let's go to another article I did on this:

"Allegations that a Syrian envoy admitted during a United Nations meeting Oct. 17 that an Israeli air strike hit a nuclear facility in September are inaccurate and have raised the ire of some in the US intelligence community, who see the Vice President’s hand as allegedly being behind the disinformation.

A United Nations press release discussing the General Assembly’s Disarmament Committee meeting mistranslated comments ascribed to an unnamed Syrian diplomat as saying that Israel had on various occasions “taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria.”

The UN has since gone through the tape recordings of the meeting and found that there was no mention of the word “nuclear” at all. According to the UN, the error was one of translation, involving several interpreters translating the same meeting.

Recent news articles, however, continue to make allegations and suggest that a nuclear weapons facility was hit -- something that the Syrian government has denied, the Israeli government has not officially confirmed and US intelligence does not show.

<snip>

According to current and former intelligence sources, the US intelligence community has seen no evidence of a nuclear facility being hit.

US intelligence “found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there was no uranium or plutonium present,” said one official, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.

“We don't have any independent intelligence that it was a nuclear facility -- only the assertions by the Israelis and some ambiguous satellite photography from them that shows a building, which the Syrians admitted was a military facility.”

Their statements come as officials claim Syria has begun to 'disassemble' the site. An article today quotes former Administration hawk and onetime Bush United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, who links Syria's alleged action with Iran.

Israel has not spoken publicly about the air raid, other than to confirm that it happened. The confirmation came nearly a month after the Sept. 6 bombing, and provided only that “Israeli officials said the strike took place deep inside Syria.”

Want a nuclear arms expert? You got one, from my same article:

'Radiation signatures' are just the particular type of radiation that some activity would give off," Dr. Ivan Oelrich, a nuclear weapons expert at the Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told RAW STORY. "For example, a nuclear bomb would produce a lot of radioactivity and a nuclear reactor explosion would produce a lot of radioactivity but if you measure it carefully so you can tell, not just that it is radioactive, but exactly what particular isotopes are contributing, then it is easy to tell the difference.

"If a reactor explodes or is blown up then I can, with careful measurements of the particular types of radiation, tell what the fuel was for the reactor and how long the reactor had been running when it was hit," Oelrich added. "It gets complicated because you have to take into account how different species are transported in the air, how fast they decay, etc. but it can be done."

"U.S. lacks counterterror plan in Pakistan," no, say it ain't so...

Before we delve into the GAO's report on Bush-Cheney's lack of interest in our national security (otherwise known as the war OF terror FOR profit), just remember these 10 most important facts about Pakistan:

1. Major training center for terrorists
2. Gives safe passage to a number of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban
3. Was directly involved in financing the attacks of September 11
4. Its major military intelligence organization, ISI, deeply rooted in support for terrorist activities
5. Was directly involved in training the terrorists involved in attacking Britain on July 7
6. Is the major proliferator of WMD to terrorist groups and countries extremely hostile to the US
7. Is the major supplier of weapons to North Korea, Iran, etc.
8. Its ISI assassinates its own political leaders
9. Its ISI is involved in the assassinations of Western journalists, including reporter Danny Pearl.
10. Is heavily involved in the drug trade, specifically the heroin trade

As you all well know, the Bush administration chose - AFTER 9/11 - to partner with Pakistan in order to attack Iraq... m'kay? Now for the GAO report:

"The Bush administration has failed to develop a government-wide plan to combat terrorism in the unruly tribal areas of Pakistan, even though top American officials concede that Al Qaeda has regenerated its ability to attack the United States and established safe havens in that border region, government auditors said Thursday.

In a searing report, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, sharply criticized the administration for relying too heavily on the Pakistani military to achieve American counterterrorism goals while paying only token attention to economic development and improving governance.

Nearly $6 billion of the $10.5 billion in aid that Washington has provided Pakistan since 2001 has been directed toward combating terrorism in the tribal areas, the report said. But about 96 percent of that assistance has gone to reimbursing Pakistan for its use of 120,000 troops in counterterrorism missions that have shown little success.

In a rare acknowledgment, senior officials at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad told the government auditors that they had received no strategic guidance from Washington on designing, carrying out, financing and monitoring a government-wide strategy, the report said."

War on terror? What war on terror?

The Liberty City Seven: Mistrial

Apparently Alberto Gonzales - the former US Attorney General (who will hopefully someday soon be standing with John Yoo at the Hague) - did not think anyone would notice his hyped up terra arrests before the elections or before important anti-civil liberties measures were to be passed by the Bush cabal.  But as with all of the cases that Gonzo helped push and his underlings helped deliver (with the exception of Jose Padilla), the case of the Miami six, does not hold up in court as today's mistrial has demonstrated. Remember, all six men were whisked into harsh detention and their arrest so hyped up in the media that the government's case should have been a slam dunk, right? Wrong!

"MIAMI, April 16 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday for six men accused of joining forces with al Qaeda to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago as part of an Islamic jihad against the United States.

The decision was a setback for U.S. prosecutors. It was the second mistrial declared by District Court Judge Joan Lenard in the case involving the men from Miami's impoverished Liberty City neighborhood."

Shall we wager that the DOJ will now target Judge Lenard, the way they have with other judges not to their liking (Teel, Whitfield, Diaz, etc.)? Any bets?

"U.S. authorities had billed the arrest of the men as a breakthrough in their efforts to detect and smash home-grown terrorism plots in their earliest stages, and said the defendants conspired to bomb America's tallest skyscraper, the Sears Tower, the FBI's Miami office and other federal buildings."

The operative word here is "billed."

"But after 13 days of deliberations, and three notes from the jury members to the judge saying they were unable to reach a verdict, Lenard declared a mistrial.

The defendants were filmed swearing an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden's militant al Qaeda group, but their lawyers argued that they were only playing along in the hope of getting money out of a man claiming to have links to al Qaeda but who was actually an FBI informant."

Entrapment anyone?

"Lenard scheduled a status conference for next Wednesday to decide whether there will be another trial for the men, who faced four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carried a combined maximum of 70 years in prison.

The first trial in the so-called "Liberty City Seven" case ended in a mistrial in December when jurors said they were unable to reach a verdict for the same six defendants. A seventh man won acquittal at that trial.

At the time of their arrests in June 2006, federal agents said the men, who operated out of a ramshackle warehouse in Liberty City, had terrorist plans that were "aspirational rather than operational" because they had neither al Qaeda contacts nor the means of carrying out actual attacks."

Thought crime, oh my.

"Nevertheless, the arrests were presented as a major blow against terrorism. U.S. officials denied there was any political link between the Miami case and the midterm U.S. congressional election in November 2006."

They can deny it all they want to, the evidence - or lack there of - speaks for itself. Think about this, would you put so much effort in "billing" a case entirely based on a trap you set where the crime to be committed was one of "aspiration?"

Bush pushes for Ukraine MAPs...

Normally, I would be pleased that a US president would be pushing so hard for Ukraine to be brought into NATO. But as with all things Cheney - and his marionette, Bush - I doubt very much that the reasons for such "freedom marching" will in any way ultimately benefit Ukraine.  I have two  words for you: Black Sea. Seems to me that the energy industry will be pleased, as will those who favor a new Cold War. Now, here is the news on Bush's visit to Ukraine:

"KIEV, Ukraine, April 1 -- President Bush championed expansion of NATO further into the former Soviet Union on Tuesday and declared that Russia "will not have a veto" over the alliance's decision this week about whether to put Ukraine and Georgia on a path to membership.

Appearing alongside President Viktor Yushchenko, Bush portrayed NATO membership for the two former Soviet republics as part of a new security architecture for Europe and not a threat to Moscow, which has threatened to target missiles against its former territories if they join. Bush rejected Russian suggestions that he soft-pedal the issue in exchange for a deal on missile defense or Afghanistan.

"I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAPs," he said, referring to "membership action plans," a process for NATO candidates. "And there's no tradeoffs. Period. And I told that to President Putin." Recounting a recent telephone conversation, Bush said he told Vladimir Putin: "You shouldn't fear that, Mr. President. After all, NATO is an organization that is peaceful."'

Um, NATO is peaceful? So how does he explain (does he even know?) Gladio,  for example?

"But the issue is highly sensitive for the Kremlin, which over the past decade has watched with increasing irritation as a Western alliance formed to oppose it during the Cold War has reached closer and closer to its borders. Over the past decade, NATO first admitted several Eastern European nations that were once satellites of Moscow and then, six years ago, gave membership to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three Baltic states that were part of the Soviet Union until its breakup in 1991.

Ukraine, in particular, has historically been a much more central part of the Russian sense of empire, which is why both nations consider this a critical moment in their mutual history. Yushchenko, the Western-oriented banker who was elected president after leading the Orange Revolution that toppled a pro-Russian government in late 2004, stressed that Ukraine needs NATO to ensure its final break from Moscow."

All of you  know by now that I am no fan of Putin. The problem is that I am also not a fan of a new Cold War, especially in this reality - one in which Cheney-Bush are at the helm of our sinking ship. The Bush administration is playing with fire. 

Speaking of Iran Contra (and apparently Miami, yet again)...

Um, why is this not the lead story everywhere? The New York Times delivers a Pulitzer-worthy piece on US arms shipments to Afghanistan, while everyone else is busy with Hillary and/or Obama hysteria:

"But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

<snip>

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation."

Like I said... where the hell is the 24/7 coverage of this story? Consider that in one week we learn that the Pentagon sent (by accident) to Taiwan and now we learn about this, and neither story is getting the attention it needs. Why? Read the whole thing, all seven pages of this fine piece of reporting.

Air Force Mistakenly Sent Nuke Triggers To Taiwan

Posted By Cernig

Back in 2006 the Air Force mistakenly shipped "four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs" intended for Minuteman missiles to Taiwan thinking they were helicopter batteries. They had originally been mis-labelled in 2005 during a transfer between two USAF bases, then sent on to Taiwan the following year. The items have now been returned to the U.S. but the breach of nuclear security and threat to non-proliferation was deemed serious enough that SecDef Gate's number two - Ryan Henry - described it as "intolerable" and said Bush had been personally briefed. The Pentagon are stressing that no nuclear materials were involved rather than that top-secret technology was sent to another nation and that the U.S. still wouldn't have known if the Taiwanese hadn't sent the damn things back!

"Pale Rider" and Blue Girl" at the Blue Girl, Red State blog have done a great job tracking down this story and have all the details. Blue Girl writes:

Without saying anything that I shouldn't - my husband spent his career working on electronics systems of ICBMs, so please believe me when I tell you this...it isn't about the nuclear material, and stressing that fissibles were not compromised, move along, nothing to see here...is a headfake.

These fuses are not what civilians think of when they hear the word "fuse." They are top-secret components in the electrical systems of ICBMs. The warhead is the easy part of a missile system. The hard part is the delivery vehicle - you don't deliver a nuclear payload by oxcart, you know. Compromising the electronics is possibly providing the final piece of information to a rogue state like North Korea that is openly developing missile technology to allow them to finally have a weapon that will reach the west coast. This is a big god-damned deal, and careers need to end over it.

So which careers are ending? None, so far, although the Pentagon are investigating. Congress might be too, after Blue Girl spoke to Senator Levin's staff on the Armed Services committee and got them to understand the seriousness of this security breach - especially after revelations a few months back about the Air Force blithely flying nuclear weapons around the country without knowing it. The SASC staffer said "I can assure you something will come of this."