The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line

Actually, the US has not had "big nukes" for decades. The heyday of the "multi-megaton city busters" ended in the 1980's as more precise missiles negated the need of power over accuracy. The largest warhead we have in our inventory now is the 1.2MT B83. Most of our warheads are in the range of 10-100 kilotons.

Most do not realize that in the last 30 years, the quantity of warheads we have has actually decreased dramatically, as has the yield of those warheads. Gone since 1976 was the 25 megaton B41, and the last 9 megaton B53 was retired in 1987.

 

He did use them, there is almost no question as to that, even though most like to pretend it never happened.

https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/tucker43.pdf

And this is the biggest failure of MAD. It is not effective if the other side feels they have nothing left to loose.

 

I'm not aware of anyone finding them used against the US, and I was there.

We told them that if they did, we'd nuke them. They didn't use them to my knowledge.

 

The reason we ignored it officially is because we had already made that thread, but did not want to nuke him over that use.

Remember, the chemical alerts were going off almost constantly, and SCUD missiles that impacted by did not have an explosive payload were recovered. As far as I am aware, the only missile without an explosive payload is one for delivering chemical weapons.

Then you have the many cases of "Gulf War Syndrome". Something that started to plague a great many who deployed before they even came home, which most wrote off as some kind of environmental illness. But one that strangely happened in the 3 month Gulf War, but not in the decade long intervention in Iraq. And a syndrome where most of the symptoms are also that of sarin gas exposure.

https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/tucker43.pdf

 

Oh I know. I get tearfully nostalgic of Mopp 4 conditions.

And yes, we were constantly waking up and donning and clearing but regardless, there were never any reports before or after the war that chemical weapons were ever used by Saddam against US forces.

If you were in the military and deployed a lot, you know you got the "x Crud" wherever you went. Lot of guys were exposed to all kinds of things like depleted uranium and god knows what ancient diseases were blowing around in those stinking nasty deserts.

Oh that just reminded me. Talcum sand. Clings like talcum, rips like sand. That was pleasant too.

 

And yet nothing like Gulf War Syndrome has been common since 1991. Even though we have been there much longer. And I provided a reference with over 100 incidents, yet you say there was none reported?

 

I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but chemical weapons mounted in missiles aren't designed to kill you 15 years later.

There were zero official reports of any chemical warheads being used by Saddam against US forces.

Against the Kurds, yeah. Us, no.

 

No, no more than they were during WWI. But as we all know, distance and time from the impact affect how much of a dose an individual takes. And even incidental exposure can cause life-ling ailments and debilitation.

Not unlike the issues that the First Responders are now having after 9-11.

And funny, I posted an article detailing over 100 such incidents, many of which came directly from the Congressional hearing about these incidents. I did not just grab some conspiracy theory nutcase website, it is from a respected source and itself lists sources.

But fine, here are yet more sources. But I have a feeling that no matter what you are just going to reject them all.

But here is one, that you claim over and over never happened. So apparently these entries into the Congressional Record are not "official" enough for you.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt388/html/CRPT-105hrpt388.htm

Feel free to go through the original source material. And when going through these, realize that these hearings were held in 1997. At that time there were a lot of suspects for what could be causing "Gulf War Syndrome". That was our only real action in the region at that time, so there were many suspects.

Environmental factors, insect bites, vaccine reactions, depleted uranium exposure, just about everything other than the "bad air" theory of diseases.

But here is the funny thing. Every single one of those was present in the environment since we returned in force to the area in 2003. The only thing missing was the large number of SCUD launches, and the chemical alarms going off constantly. And most of the alarms used in 2003 were the exact same ones used in 1990-1991.

Yes, I am positive you will ignore this as well, and reject it because nothing will be "official" enough for you. But just because you reject it does not mean that official reports do not exist.

 

In fairness, Europeans did not protest the ground launched nuclear armed cruise missiles being based in Sicily.

Why?

Word was that companies controlled by the local mafia were the ones building the launch sites so they put out the word to the public to not protest or raise any kind of trouble which might get the missiles moved elsewhere.

 

Trump is not the left, we do not claim him, he is all yours

 

"Small" nukes have been around forever. In the 1980's I Commanded an M110A2 nuclear field artillery Battery in Germany. Our tubes could deliver nukes of four yields, depending on how you assembled them: 2.5kt, 5.0kt, 7.5kt and 15kt. (15kt is Hiroshima) M110A2 are affectionately called "8 inch". They are all retired now. But 155mm M109A6 artillery is still around. They can deliver 1.25kt and 2.5kt. Smaller "backpack nukes" can also be emplaced by Special Forces teams. All these smaller nukes have been around since the 1970's.

 

Indeed, the only President besides Truman to authorize the use of nukes was Carter. He authorized field commanders to use small, tactical nukes, at their discretion. The Soviets were poised to sweep across the ME and seize our oil supply, and we didn't have the conventional weapons in place to stop them,

Ironic eh? People tend to think of Carter as soft but he was ready to use the big hammer.

 

I Commanded a nuke Artillery Battery in the latter days of Carter. My mission, if the "balloon went up" my mission would be to take my six guns and my nukes to the border and wait for instructions. The very day that Reagan took over from Carter that changed and the mission called for me to lob two nukes into East Germany then wait for further orders.

No President has authorized the use of nukes but Truman. Approving plans and authorizing use are two very different things.

 

The way it was reported, he conceded the decision to field commanders because there wouldn't be time to react. As I said

 

This comes from the Carter Presidential Library. When I watched the documentary, this point stuck with me because I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

 

Ignoring the obvious:

The U.S. has never deployed nuclear weapons to the Middle East, even small ones.

 

Even in the days of Carter, nukes were only released by specific authority of the National Command Authority. Just like today.

 

I'm sorry but that is just not true. I was in the PRP (Personnel Reliability Program) during the Carter Administration. Only PRP cleared folks are allowed to be in the loop for nuke use. The authority must come from the National Command Authority... then... as now. You are just not correct.

 

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
President Carter, 23 January 1980

Now commonly known as the "Carter Doctrine". Where he pretty much threw down the gauntlet, telling the Soviets he would not tolerate what was done in Afghanistan into any of the Persian Gulf states.

I find it funny that most tend to forget that Carter was an Annapolis Graduate, and was planning on commanding a Nuclear Submarine before his father's death put an end to his military career.

I never really thought of him as "soft", to be honest. More "Indecisive". Or simply making the wrong choices. But I never thought of him as "soft". Very few who trained at the Naval Academy during WWII then served for 16 years afterwards are what I would call "soft".

 

I would argue against that, only because the US Navy has made it official policy since the first nukes went onto ships to never "confirm nor deny" the presence of nukes on any of their bases or ships. That was even my official line, when my daily job was guarding the damned things.

But I think it would be fair to call anybody who believed that none of our ships in the region ever had nukes on board would be a fool. Or that on the occasions when our submarines entered the Persian Gulf, they offloaded their nukes before sailing into those waters.

I would agree 100% that we never deployed nukes to anywhere near the region on land, other than Turkey. But I would bet dollars to doughnuts that we had them on ships in the region.

 

I had nukes in my Artillery Batter in Germany... well about three miles down the road in a holding area. Doesn't mean I used them.

 

I doubt anyone was thinking about ship based nuclear weapons.

 

One wonders if the China Virus vaccinations will result in preplanned deaths in the out years. (Just had to ask.)

 

These were developed in response to Russia developing them first. We had to be able to match them, tit for tat.