Originally posted by PokeyJoe
Well I know that I am not a "unthinking drone" in any sense of the word, and I take great offense to that, but anyways....
They were supposed to be taken out of storage...they were being decommissioned...the warheads were supposed to be taken off before they were loaded on
the plane. There were 12 total, and 5 that were active...
I agree with you though, there were some very very deep security violations, and I am sure the whole squadron probably got an Article 15, at the
least. I already explained in a previous post the system that they follow, and more than one person dropped the ball....for some reason I want to
chalk this up to bored, careless Airmen, more than nefarious government plot to overthrow the world, but thats just me...
PokeyJoe, choose not to take offence. I myself spent 15 years as an unthinking drone - I didn't realise how much of an unthinking drone until long
after I left the services. It wasn't meant as an insult, merely a statement of fact. If people are not encouraged to think laterally, why should they
even consider the existence of the concept of lateral thinking? As far as I was concerned during my 15 years service the world was black and white -
and I was one of the more open-minded people I knew!
But to get back to the issue at hand. According to MSNBC the incident prompted
"...the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said Wednesday."
and
"In addition to the munitions squadron commander who was relieved of his duties, crews involved with the mistaken load — including ground crew
workers — have been temporarily decertified for handling munitions, one official said."
This, to my mind, is the purest of pure BS. There is no way on this earth that nuclear armed missiles can be MISTAKENLY loaded onto a plane. None at
all. The amount of authorisation needed to even LOOK at the damn' things, coupled with the reams of paperwork needed to even think about moving them,
means it is totally inconceivable that an unthinking "munitions squadron commander" could have authorised the loading of them onto a bomber -
without someone else further down the chain of command thinking "hang on a cotton-picking second here!" The amount of checks and balances involved
in the handling of nuclear weapons is crazy; the suggestion that "someone made a mistake" - ESPECIALLY in the USAF - is quite frankly absurd. The
only way those missiles ended up on a plane was because someone somewhere ordered them there. They then sacked someone further back down the chain of
command as a scapegoat.
The reason WHY someone ordered those missiles onto a plane is the only matter for conjecture, I would suggest. That SOMEONE ordered them onto a plane
is almost indisputable, as anyone who has ever had any dealings with the things will know if they are totally honest with themselves...
[edit on 11-9-2007 by franzbeckenbauer]