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New Special Double Issue on the War Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: The US vs. Iraq: the Thirteen Year War; The Sanctions That Killed; Bombing Iraq Every 3 Days Since the Ceasefire of 1991; What Would Gore Have Done?; The Rise of the Neocons; Israel's Proxy War Plan; Why Did It End So Quickly?; The Coming Occupation; Re-educating Iraqis, American-style; Those Reconstruction Contracts; Media Hawks; Christian Crusaders; Democratic Candidates and the War; Smart Bombs Go Haywire; Inside the Mind of Santorum; Gore Vidal on John Kerry; Thomas Pickering: the Bad Seed. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Recent Stories May 1, 2003 Jeffrey St. Clair Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole Iain Boal A May Day Message to the FCC: "We Are Many; They are Few" Diana Johnstone About Cuba Sam Hamod Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Intelligence Fiasco Lee Sustar Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff Their Pockets Peter Linebaugh May Day at Kut and Kenthal Stew Albert Straight Shooters Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 5/01 Website of the Day South Bay Mobilization   April 30, 2003 Ashley Smith Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History of Washington's Occupations Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/30 Gary Leupp Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre Robert Jensen Fighting Alienation in the USA Wayne Madsen The Four Horsemen of Propaganda Ahmad Faruqui Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East Gabriel Kolko Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition Adolfo Perez Esquivel A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush: "You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"     April 29, 2003 Gary Leupp Disorder and Opportunity: the Results of the Iraq War Uri Avnery Don't Envy Abu-Mazen Anthony Gancarski Brush with the Law Mickey Z. POWs: Then and Now CounterPunch Wire How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents Robert Fisk Did the US Murder Journalists? Chris Floyd Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria Wayne Madsen About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents Wallace Gagne Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby? Eliot Katz Playing Catch with Cracked Globes Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/29   April 28, 2003 Ann Harrison Fighting Back: Medical Marijuana Patients Sue Ashcroft Robert Jensen Lack of WMD Kills the Case for War Peter Phillips Total Information Control Ron Jacobs Get the US Out of Iraq and Its Military Out of Our Minds Mark Hand Peace Park: The Pentagon Solution to a Baseball Stadium Dilemma Linda S. Heard Repeat After Me: Iraq is Weapons Free Kurt Nimmo US Military Bases: the Spoils and Deceptions of War Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/28   April 26 / 27, 2003 Elaine Cassel The Other War: Bush, Ashcroft and the End of Civil Liberties Saul Landau Iraq War: a Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism William A. Cook Sharon Recruits US as Mercenaries Against Syria William S. Lind Now the Real War Starts John Chuckman In Jesus's Name: Franklin Graham's Christian Empire David MacMichael and Ray McGovern Ex-CIA Analysts on WMD: Where? Find? Plant? Gary Leupp Why the War on Iraq was (and Remains) Wrong Robert Sandels Cuba Crackdown: a Revolt Against Bush's National Security Strategy? CounterPunch Wire An Open Letter to Jerry Brown on Oakland Police Violence Against Peace Activists and Dock Workers Mickey Z. Our Ba'athists Anthony Gancarski Nader Plays Pullman Scott Handleman The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case in Its True Colors Claud Cockburn Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet Poets' Basement Matt Simon, Sam Hamod, Hammond Guthrie and Stew Albert Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/26   April 25, 2003 David Vest It's Not the Oil; It's the Art! Steven Higgs All About Tucker Carlson Walt Brasch The Shock and Awe of American Ignorance Alexander Cockburn The Decline of American Journalism: the Case of Judy Miller Zeynep Toufe A Letter to the People of Iraq from an Anti-War Activist CounterPunch Wire Season of the Witch: Jeane Kirkpatrick Unbound Hammond Guthrie Springtime in Iraq Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/25 Website of the Day Having a Great Time, Wish You Were Here: Postcards from a War   April 24, 2003 Lois Whitman An Open Letter to Rumsfeld on the Child Detainees at Guantanamo Uri Avnery Abu vs. Abu: It's Not About Egos David Lindorff Day Care in the Name of National Security? About Those Kids in Camp X-Ray John Grebe Rev. Pat Robertson's Message in the Temple Dokhi Fassihian Monster.Com: Ethnic Cleansing on the Web? CounterPunch Wire Israeli Army Chief Threatens Peace Activists Sam Hamod Our Man in Baghdad Annie C. Higgins Do You Regret Being an American? Harold A. Gould Will They Hate Us Forever? Stew Albert Big Brother in Bed Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/24 Website of the Day Muscles Abroad   April 23, 2003 Anthony Gancarski When Young Mothers Die in Combat Chris Floyd Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach by Example Marjorie Cohn Tax the War Profiteers William Lind The Fourth Generation of Modern War Dave Marsh Nina Simone: Freedom Singer Binoy Kampmark Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq David Vest Who's Looting Whom? Standard Shaefer Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson Andrew Rodman Lawn Poem Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/23 Website of the Day Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East   April 22, 2003 Edward Said The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq War are Now Clear Sam Hamod What's the Deal with This War? Kurt Nimmo Shi'a Will to Power Gary Leupp At last! The Necessary Evidence Carl Estabrook Oblivious Americans: They Distort, We Subside John Stanton Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel? Ramzy Baroud What Else Hasn't Israel Told America? Steven Sherman About That Cuba Letter Wayne Madsen Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult Stew Albert Creep Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/22 Website of the Day Critical Media Literacy in Times of War   April 21, 2003 Elaine Cassel An Administration in Contempt Gary Leupp Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus and Kanaka WaiWai Roger Witherspoon Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action Uri Avnery At Midnight, a Knock on the Door Col. Dan Smith Early Lessons from Iraq Jo Freeman After the Protest Comes Politics Michael Berry The Friedman Absurdities Gray Brechin Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss Bob Riedel The Taliban from Texas Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 4/21   April 19, 2003 Gary Leupp The Rape of History Saul Landau Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's War, Wait for Armageddon Michael J. Fellows Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia Pablo Mukherjee Roadmap to Resistance Omar Barghouti Sharon's Bloody Beat Anthony Gancarski Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World Mickey Z. Animals: the Other Collateral Damage Will Potter When Police Attack Journalists William MacDougall America's In-Bedded Journalism Neve Gordon Haunted by History Adam Engel Wal-Mart and Peace Dr. Susan Block Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace Poets' Basement Albert, Buono, Guthrie Steve Perry War Web Log 4/19 Song of the Weekend Baghdad to Basra   April 18, 2003 Uri Avnery Operation "Syrian Freedom": This One's Not About Oil Jorge Mariscal "They Died Trying to Become Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation Mickey Z: Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes Hussein Ibish Syria and the Road to World War IV Reza Ladjevardian Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles Matania Ben-Artzi You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President of Israel's Supreme Court Bruce Jackson Jews Like Us Joe Allen My Lai Revisited Carl Estabrook Support Our Euphemism Steve Perry War Web Log 4/18 Website of the Day Meet the Victims of War   April 17, 2003 Jeffrey St. Clair Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in the Patriot Missile System Joanne Mariner Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications for the Pentagon Issam Nashashibi Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad Wayne Madsen Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism Robert Fisk The Army of Occupation Boris Kagarlitsky Virtual Saddam Takes Aim Biljana Vankovska A Personal View of Iraq: Where is the Truth? Dan Brook Oil War: Fueling the Empire Stanley Heller Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like Tim Robbins A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation Harold A. Gould Iraq After the War Steve Perry War Web Log 4/17   Hot Stories Elaine Cassel Civil Liberties Watch Michel Guerrin Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" Uzma Aslam Khan The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go Paul de Rooij Arrogant Propaganda Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.   Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

May 3, 2003 The New Nuclear Threat Hair-Trigger Missiles Risk Catastrophic Terrorism By Dr. BRUCE G. BLAIR Center for Defense Information While the efforts of the U.S. government to assist Russia in preventing the theft of nuclear materials from storage sites and research institutes have been inadequate, the opportunities for nuclear terrorism presented by U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert represent an even greater peril that receives even less attention and effort. In an era of potential nuclear terrorism, the theft of a nuclear weapon from a storage site could spell an eventual disaster for an American city, but the seizure of a strategic missile or group of missiles ready for immediate firing could be apocalyptic for entire nations. Our two governments have not yet overcome the mutual suspicion that is severely impeding their cooperation in preventing nuclear materials theft. They had better leap this hurdle soon, because even greater cooperation is necessary to protect their populations against the multitude of potential terrorist threats to launch-ready nuclear forces. The distrust stems partially from disputes such as the Iraq war, but it persists in large part because the United States and Russia remain in each other's nuclear cross-hairs. War planners in both countries remain, believe it or not, preoccupied with preparing to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other on short notice. Both sides keep thousands of weapons aimed at each other and poised for immediate launch. U.S. spy planes still routinely lurk off the Russian border looking for holes in the air defense network through which U.S. heavy bombers and cruise missiles could fly to drop nuclear bombs on Russia in wartime. Russian missile submarines still find themselves trailed by U.S. submarines as soon as they leave port on patrol. Two massive leadership posts inside mountains in the Urals built to withstand a U.S. nuclear strike are just coming online. Russia is equipping the one at Kozvinsky Mountain with an underground antenna for radioing a launch order to a "dead hand" communications rocket designed to ensure quasi-automatic Russian missile retaliation in the event of a U.S. strike that decapitates the nuclear chain of command. It behooves the former enemies to kick these old habits and stand down their obsolete confrontation. Nuclear terrorism is the real enemy, and fostering cooperation in tackling it requires that both countries move away from their nuclear confrontation. Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off of hair-trigger alert, moreover, would itself automatically reduce if not remove many of the biggest terrorist threats--which stem largely stem from the extremely high launch-readiness of strategic missiles. Both U.S. and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles remain fueled, targeted, and waiting for a couple of computer signals to fire. They fly the instant they receive these signals, which can be sent with a few keystrokes on a launch console. What kind of terrorist threats? The most obvious is the loss of physical control over such missiles. If scores of armed Chechen rebels could slip into the heart of Moscow and hold a packed theater hostage for days, could terrorists infiltrate missile fields in rural Russia, seize control over a nuclear-armed mobile rocket roaming the countryside, and launch it at Europe or America? It's an open question that warrants candid bilateral discussion of the prospects of terrorists capturing rockets and circumventing the safeguards designed to foil their illicit firing. Another specter concerns terrorists spoofing radar or satellite sensors, or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. Could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in 'retaliation?' False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are allowed, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and decide whether to retaliate. Russia's deteriorating early warning network coupled to terrorist plotting against it only heightens the risks. Russia is not the only crucible of risk. The early warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India, and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute. As these nations move toward hair-trigger stances for their nuclear missiles, the terrorist threat to them will grow in parallel. In addition, U.S. nuclear control is also far from fool-proof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery--terrorist hackers might be able to gain back-door electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically over radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given elaborate new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject a firing order that previously would have been immediately carried out. If Russian and U.S. experts could instill trust in each other, then they could identify the real deficiencies in the system of early warning and control over nuclear forces on high combat alert. They could also allay unwarranted fears. The value of trust was illustrated two years ago when Russian scientists at the renowned Kurchatov Institute alerted their American counterparts in the Department of Energy to software flaws they feared had compromised the U.S. computer system used to keep track of the U.S. inventory of nuclear materials. The stakes today are too high to let old habits of mind and obsolete practices of nuclear confrontation stand in the way of protecting ourselves against the biggest threat faced by both the United States and Russia. Washington and Moscow need to stop playing Cold War-like games and confront nuclear terrorism instead. Both need ironclad safeguards against the terrorist exploitation of their hair-trigger arsenals. They should each stand down, and work together not only to protect their own arsenals but also to keep other nations off of high alert, before it's too late. Dr. Bruce Blair is president of the Center for Defense Information, where this article originally appeared. Yesterday's Features Jeffrey St. Clair Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole Iain Boal A May Day Message to the FCC: "We Are Many; They are Few" Diana Johnstone About Cuba Sam Hamod Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Intelligence Fiasco Lee Sustar Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff Their Pockets Peter Linebaugh May Day at Kut and Kenthal Stew Albert Straight Shooters Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 5/01 Website of the Day South Bay Mobilization   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /