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2004-12-20 Afghanistan/South Asia

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Posted by Paul Moloney 2004-12-20 5:39:34 AM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Saudi Arabia,....., enjoys a privileged position in the Pakistani nuclear establishment,
The Saudis outsourced their nuclear program to Pakistan. Pakistan takes the heat, and the Saudis were hoping to quietly get a warhead for their chinese missiles.

Posted by Steve 2004-12-20 8:38:52 AM|| 2004-12-20 8:38:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 "...A.Q.Khan and other scientists involved have to be taken out of Pakistan and interrogated..."
You've got about as much chance of that as taking the bombs out.

Posted by Tom 2004-12-20 8:49:38 AM|| 2004-12-20 8:49:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 "to counter the Christian, Jewish and Hindu bombs" - somehow that just sums it up for me.

Well then, welcome to the club. It's a select club, and it has certain dues that need to be paid. Mainly that all your population centres, industrial areas, ports and dams are now being targetted by other countries bombs - and bearing in mind the people you've been selling them too, I think you'll find that it's more than one country that's targetting those areas.

The way things are going, Pakistan is likely to have a very short life for a country (not even 60 years old).

Damnit! - did none of these morons watch Dr Strangelove? - black humour yes, but all those phrases 'we lose 10-20 million tops' are based on real work by the RAND corporation and other thinktanks. Mega-death was not always the name of a metal band...

Posted by Tony (UK) 2004-12-20 11:14:55 AM|| 2004-12-20 11:14:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 black humour yes,
You needed black humor to survive a tour on a SAC base. Waking up every day with the sure knowledge you were a first strike target. Counting the number of alert tankers that scrambled, knowing anything over three (not counting ORI's) meant it was for real. Knowing those crews would not be coming back, not that there would have been a base to come back to.

Keeping one eye on the flat Kansas horizon, watching for the rising plumes of the Titans that meant you had 30 minutes before the incoming missiles hit. Knowing that while the Titan force was past it's prime, they still carried the big city busters. The USSR knew it too, that's why the silos would have received a massive counter-strike. That's why the AF kept them for so long, as a RV sink. Every one that was assigned to them was one less for another target.

There's another bit of black humor, RV - meaning re-entry vehicle. Official AF policy, we never confirm or deny that there are nuclear warheads on the missiles, just "re-entry vehicles".

Posted by Steve 2004-12-20 2:14:59 PM|| 2004-12-20 2:14:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Steve, Tony: Tim Blair's site seems to be down right now (I think he got Instaswamped), but he has a very interesting link to a story about a Russian missile controller who "saved the world" in 1984. His computer told him "for sure" that the US had launched an attack, but he was able to think through the facts, decide that the US wouldn't launch a mere five missiles, and overrode the command for the Soviet counter-attack.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-12-20 2:35:02 PM|| 2004-12-20 2:35:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Update: Tim's back. Here's the link.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-12-20 2:38:29 PM|| 2004-12-20 2:38:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Mmmmmmm.... Titans! Gotta love 'em. Got the happy storable liquid propellant that smells like dog food..... or so it is said.

Posted by Shipman 2004-12-20 3:07:10 PM|| 2004-12-20 3:07:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 that smells like dog food or so it is said.
Yup, of course the next sentence in that safety briefing goes something like "..of course, if it reaches a high enough level that you can smell it, your eyeballs will melt and your lungs dissolve, so don't worry about it.."

Posted by Steve 2004-12-20 4:12:36 PM|| 2004-12-20 4:12:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Steve, that's a very interesting comment, it certainly puts things into perspective. Which is what your comment does as well Seafarious. By that I mean that by reading them, you get an understanding for the fact that although the US and the USSR had huge numbers of missiles pointed at each other, there was a certain 'scorpion dance' going on that both sides knew the rules to.

The difference with todays 'religiously motivated' bomb owners is that they're just looking at simple outcomes, eg "we've got a bomb now, aren't we cool - let's give one to our friends in Hezbollah. They can kill the Zionists and we'll deny it!" and aren't looking at what the consequences would be.

Basically, they're playing a very dangerous game - and the people they've started playing with, play for keeps.

Wretchard's "The Three Conjectures" is a good dissection of what might happen if Iran (or indeed any Islamic state) starts dishing out bombs...

Posted by Tony (UK) 2004-12-20 6:23:14 PM|| 2004-12-20 6:23:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 What Tony said. Soviet marxism was not a death cult. There was no place in soviet doctrine for self-slaughter.

However, suicide is an essential part of military success in the eyes of the islamist totalitarians. The logic of MAD does not apply here.

Posted by lex 2004-12-20 6:41:58 PM|| 2004-12-20 6:41:58 PM|| Front Page Top

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