Showing posts with label Atomic Weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atomic Weapons. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
SHOCKED! Shocked I Say! US Documents on Iran Nukes Forged? (Juan Cole)
Monday, November 10, 2008
US Documents on Iran Nukes Forged?
I'm shocked, shocked that allegations are emerging at the International Atomic Energy Agency that US-supplied "documents" from a laptop acquired in 2004 indicating a secret Iranian weapons program were probably forgeries.The IAEA clearly hopes that the Obama administration will end the previous administration's attempts to undermine it and will stop the Washington habit of using forged documents as a basis for aggressive military responses to nuclear programs and instead will opt for diplomacy.
Source
Since I've got your attention... A comparison is in order... to those Colombian FARC laptops the CIA and the Colombian military killed a number of people over (including a hostage negotiator and a number of Mexican college students) in a high tech (beyond the capabilities of the Colombian military) raid earlier in 2008:
"Using their forensic tools, they (the Interpol experts) found a total of 48,055 files for which the timestamps indicated that they had either been created, accessed, modified or deleted as a result of the direct access to the eight seized exhibits by Colombian authorities between the time of their seizure on 1 March 2008 and 3 March 2008 at 11:45 a.m.Or, to put it graphically:
"The actual seizure of the eight computer exhibits occurred between 5:50 a.m. and 7:50 a.m. (local time at the place of seizure, GMT -5:00) on Saturday, 1 March. However, it was not until more than 48 hours later that the eight seized exhibits were given to the computer forensic specialists of the Colombian Judicial Police," the report goes on to say.
"Access to the data contained in the eight FARC computer exhibits between 1 March 2008, when they were seized by Colombian authorities, and 3 March 2008 at 11:45 a.m., when they were turned over to…the Colombian Judicial Police, did not conform to internationally recognised principles for handling electronic evidence by law enforcement.
Source, IPS News
Saturday, April 19, 2008
"peace is our profession," "war is our hobby." - Leaving (but never REALLY leaving) Cheyenne Mountain - William Astore, War Games
Gee Whiz! Wish I Had One Of Those!
posted April 17, 2008 11:04 am
Tomgram:
William Astore, War GamesWilliam J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.In 1986, the year President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev teetered on the brink of eliminating superpower nuclear weapons at their summit meeting in Reykjavik, I participated in a computerized war game inside Cheyenne Mountain. It ended in a simulated nuclear attack against the United States.
By today's standards, our computers were primitive leviathans: IBM mainframes with old-fashioned tape drives -- roughly the size of jumbo, sub-zero refrigerators in today's McMansions; they had disc drives or "packs" roughly the size of dishwashers. Our computer screens were a monochromatic green. From a Hollywood special-effects perspective, they were poorly lit and relentlessly boring -- not at all like the glitzy nuclear war room in the 1983 film WarGames that starred a fresh-faced Matthew Broderick.
As those monochromatic missile tracks crossed the Arctic Circle and began to terminate at various U.S. cities, the mood among the battle staff grew reflective. Yes, it was only a game, but everyone present knew that nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union was possible, and that it would kill tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people in both countries. That day, in that command center, we were virtual witnesses to our worst nightmare: a nuclear holocaust that might not only destroy our country and the Soviet Union, but perhaps civilization as we knew it.
How We Never Left Cheyenne Mountain
When the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in 1989, few people were more surprised than our intelligence agencies and our military (myself included). After putting decades of thought and planning into mutually assured destruction, after planning not just to fight but to win nuclear wars, we now faced a brighter, potentially less nuclear, or even non-nuclear future. And all this had come about -- under the shadow of true global terror -- without a Department of Homeland Security, or an Orwellian "Patriot Act," or so many of the other accoutrements of our present homeland security moment. (Without, in fact, even the emotive, vaguely un-American word "homeland" being in use.) Indeed, when it was over, we claimed victory on the very basis that our freedoms -- and our political system -- were stronger than our rival's...
In Full @ Tomgram: William Astore, War Games
This piece is a shared venture of Tomdispatch on-line and the Nation magazine in print. Tom
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