from the it's-"talk-softly-and-CARRY-a-big-stick" dept.
Oder Aderet reports at Haaretz that the United States considered using nuclear weapons against Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attack according to Michael Steiner, who served as a political advisor to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, as reported in Der Spiegel. "The papers were written," Steiner said when asked whether the U.S. had considered using nuclear weapons in response to the attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, in which almost 3,000 people were killed. "They had really played through all possibilities." Steiner added that Schröder feared that the US, which was in a state of shock following the attacks, would overreact. "After Sept. 11, the entire administration positively dug in. We no longer had access to Rice, much less to the president. It wasn't just our experience, but also that of the French and British as well. Of course that made us enormously worried."
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Touché) by isostatic on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:19AM
Over 90 minutes of jaw dropping TV the American psyche was destroyed. No longer was it land of the brave, from now on it was "bogeyman behind every corner"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:22AM
and that's why the terrorists won
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:10PM
Yes but, steel beams?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:21PM
jet fuel can't melt STEEL MEMES
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:25AM
In the old days, the bogeymen were were foreigners from a foreign land. These days, the bad guy is you! That's right, you. You could be a terrorist and not even know it, until one day you find yourself on a list.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:19PM
To be fair, for a long time it was "commies" everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:46AM
And before that it was the facists, then the socialists, then the facists again, then the anarchists, the confederates, the savages, and then those loyal to the crown.
There has always been boogeyman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:26PM
Quite right too! That is the real reason for the rapid development of face-tracking technology, never again will we need to worry about those evil facists and their belief that everyone is entitled to their own unique face! Now we can quickly locate them, follow their movements and take them and their personalised visages out of circulation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:47AM
And finally a reason to start deploying the authoritarian / police state. At least in Europe as far as I can see. Since 9/11, governments here finally found a stick to beat the dog with and populist, extreme right wing political parties have gained enormously, as has islamophobia. It seems not only the US have the terrorists won, but around the globe. What worries me most is that we may have the wrong idea who the terrorists really are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:50AM
No it wasn't. The American psyche had already been slowly eroded in the preceding decades. The war on terror simply formalized it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:15AM
You mean in contrast to the red commie plague eroding our freedoms around every corner scare of the cold war?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:46PM
> Over 90 minutes of jaw dropping TV the American psyche was destroyed.
It wasn't the 90 minutes. It was the weeks and months of constant and pervasive replaying that followed.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday September 02 2015, @02:19AM
9/11 was also the start of the endless use of the marquee text scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:21AM
Things will only get better after World War Three. By delaying inevitable nuclear war, Bush held back progress. Because Bush is a goddamn pussy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:47AM
Yes, things will get better for the cockroaches and other invertebrates after WWIII.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by That_Dude on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:16PM
And don't forget the cnidarians, (jellyfish - etc...), have always thrived in the oceans - even through drastic environmental changes.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by zugedneb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:46AM
Also, did we ever get answers to the strange behaviour of the buildings?
Many out there think it was a bit too much and strange burning going on...
Why did other buildings around it collapsed?
Not even in WW2 bombing of europe did we see such brittleness...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:55AM
Were many buildings burned down using jet fuel during WW2?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zugedneb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:09AM
jet fuel burned up in the explosion.
it does not hang around and burn for 5-6 hours.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:13AM
Tell us how you did it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:11AM
jet fuel can't melt steel beams maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zugedneb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:19PM
Generally for something burning in air to give of max energy, there has to be an abundance of O2.
In those circumstances, I can not see how there was abundance of O2.
Many think, jet fuel behaves like the flame coming out of jets, but there is compressed and enormous amounts of fucking air in jet engine.
Crevice and shaft in wall NOT same as jet engine.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:04AM
Many out there think the earth a fly, or that a magical sky being controls their destiny.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:11AM
Well you can't live without the Sun, so it certainly controls your destiny, it's up there in the sky, and the Sun performs nuclear fusion which counts as magic because you can't build a fusion reactor yourself. Who exactly are you belittling here?
(Score: 1) by That_Dude on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:20PM
That should have been one of the options on these funky polls we get periodically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:29AM
Building/maintenance cost cutting.... scratch that, it is called the efficiency of the free market
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:32AM
The dotcom collapse fuelled the demise of the trade centre buildings?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:36AM
I had no idea that guy was so fat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:31AM
Well, literally *any* peer-reviewed paper's that's ever been written on the subject will clear things up, but you probably don't want to hear that.
It's a unique situation, because no 100+ story modern skyscrapers have been hit by a modern loaded jet before or since. Fortunately for your inquisitive mind, the twin towers' destruction has been studied by mechanical engineers more than any other building collapse, and now we know that it looks like a "controlled demolition" because that's what skyscrapers look like when they're falling down. WW2 Europe is a poor comparison; that was before the jet engine, and those cities, despite the recency, looked more like something from the 19th century (no skyscrapers, mostly brick and wood construction) than the late 20th. It's because of WW2's complete destruction that Europe was able to rebuild and look like modern American cities.
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:58PM
> modern american cities
Like Detroit?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:54PM
Also, did we ever get answers to the strange behaviour of the buildings?
On September 10, 2001, US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, gave a speech covering plans to privatize much of the US Military:
"The topic today is an adversary that posses a threat. A serious threat to the security of the Unite States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating 5 year plans. Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone. This adversary is closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Today we declare war on bureaucracy."
The following day there was a large military training exercise which occupied US fighter jets. At 9:37 A.M., the Pentagon was attacked. This was 51 minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The controlled demolition of the WTC probably had something to do with the elevator modernization that went on for quite some time. There were no permits produced for the modernization and the government denies the elevators were updated, yet many workers there remember the armed guards posted for the "construction" effort. The new elevators and sky lobbies of the Twin Towers were featured in Elevator World magazine. So, if they say there was no modernization, then the government is either delusional or covering something up.
NYC building inspectors / engineers petitioned the government to reinspect every building in NY because there is no way they should have just collapsed like that. The petition was denied. Of course every building didn't need reinspection because they weren't rigged to blow like the WTC buildings were. These structures are designed to burn to a husk and remain standing in hurricane force winds. In the entire history of mankind only three such concrete and steel buildings have ever "self-demolished" like this: The Twin Towers and WTC building 7 -- The latter was not hit by a plane; Sorry "super jet fuel" apologists.
Though the US government remains aloof, independent researchers essentially know what happened. The elevator modernization efforts were apparently cover for weakening the primary structures of the towers (which were designed to be able accessible demolished via elevator access only). During the fire thermite seems to have been used to finish weakening the structures (hence the molten steel seen in the videos dripping from the side prior to the collapse). This also explains the abnormally intense heat, twisted steel and melting of bumpers nearby (rather than outlandish claims of space based energy weapons). The secondary explosion heard by witnesses was likely the final demolition charges which brought the buildings down on themselves -- note, they didn't tip over, or face any resistance from lower floors that weren't on fire yet, the tops were practically in free-fall all the way to the ground as they crashed through the remaining weakened structure of the buildings. People should really just go watch the videos again rather than dismissing the controlled demolition claims out of hand. Two planes took out three buildings via textbook building implosion, not once, not twice, but three times in a row? Yeah, right.
That 9/11 was a conspiracy is not surprising to anyone who's really studied recent history. Just look the sacrifice at Pearl Harbor which polarized Americans into being pro-war. Likely to privatize the economy, CIA staged a covert military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, and US involvement was similarly covered up for decades (but revealed in FOIA requests today). These sorts of large scale coverups are normal in today's shadow wars. The real question is "why", and the answer is likely not what you think. Allegedly, the only records of the ongoing misappropriation of funds investigation into the Pentagon were stored in the Pentagon and Wold Trade Center building 7 (which inexplicably caught fire and collapsed on 9/11). Prior to 9/11 there was an interesting insurance policy taken out by the then recent purchaser of the WTC real estate (which was foretasted to continue depreciating in value). Some point to the fact that the events are still being used in media to manufacture consent for war and increased surveillance state powers.
However, despite the US's historical propensity for subterfuge and all the evidence available of the strange surrounding circumstances, I think it's safe to dismiss all of these grand conspiratorial claims. Clearly there is "NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS!" Instead, I'd like to present a different, more mundane, picture: Flying a plane into a building and blaming terrorists for it was such a well known covert operation scenario (initially to be used against Cuba) that 9/11 is basically playing out the plot to The Lone Gunman's "Pilot" episode [youtube.com] (a spinoff of The X Files involving its conspiracy theorist hackers):
While The Lone Gunmen are thwarted in their attempt to steal a computer chip by Yves Adele Harlow, John Fitzgerald Byers receives news of his father's death and the trio soon find themselves unravelling a government conspiracy concerning an attempt to fly a commercial aircraft into the Twin Towers
The fictitious plot to fly the passenger jet by remote control into the World Trade Center aired on March 4, 2001, 6 (months prior to the plot being carried out IRL).
I think it's plainly obvious to everyone that 9/11 was just a building demolition PR stunt to bolster viewership for the failing X Files spinoff, and things got a little out of hand. That the post-9/11 power grabs and scaremongering are still effective today is simply a testament to the power of TV advertising and state control of the mainstream news media.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
- Rahm Israel Emanuel, 55th Mayor of Chicago.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:32PM
There was a really good documentary on British TV that explained everything rationally using scientific evidence. Occam's razor and everything!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:54PM
> On September 10, 2001, US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, gave a speech covering plans to privatize much of the US Military
Publicly announcing your plans for a conspiracy and then implementing it the very next day in the biggest, most attention getting way the world has seen since Hiroshima would be the course of idiots. So criminal masterminds who planned for months, if not years, just decided to risk it all with a completely unnecessary public declaration of their plans right before the most critical step. Right.
The thing about conspiracy theorists is that everything can be twisted to 'prove' the conspiracy because its all just back-fitting.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:08PM
When I was a teen, I was immature. Nobody wanted to have sex with me.
The ones that had sex, behaved in a very mature way.
Even today, I believe that those who have sex, are very mature and responsible people.
Since the population is growing, a lot of people have sex.
But that means, there are a lot of responsible, mature people around.
Then, who is doing all the bad things, and how can they get away with it?
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:25PM
Watch an episode of Teen Moms and tell us about sex and maturity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @07:59PM
Fascist religions that stigmatise sex and reduce women to baby factories have a lot to do with the world's problems.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:32AM
Meh. There was a Tom Clancy novel where an airline pilot crashed his plane into the Capitol building, during the State of the Union or something. Of course it was a setup for Clancy's protagonist to become president.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:48AM
and then they put together an "unbiased" 'Warren Commission' to put forward the 'evidence' that supports what Bush, etc, wanted.
You americans have been scammed again (and again) and you will again if you keep eating this sh*t.
Stand up and be heard: don't let (strike> your government /strike) people in your government get away with killing people in order to fulfill their agendas.
(Damn... bring back the strike HTML!)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:58AM
Air Force didn't do jack shit to defend the World Trade Center. Why should anyone trust USAF not to get lost and drop the nukes on American soil?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gravis on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:06AM
one interesting thought experiment is how things would be if we had nuked Afghanistan. how would things be different today? how would the body count be vary of all sides of the conflict? would we still invade Iraq? would we still have armed drones? would the series of revolutions in the middle east still occur? who would hate us less and who would hate us even more?
i don't think many people appreciate how restrained the US response has been. sure we have mistakenly killed plenty of civilians in pakistan with drone strikes but the number is in the thousands over years when it could easily be millions in seconds.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:09AM
We all live on one planet, we'll all go up in smoke.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:11AM
That argument is exactly the same as a serial killer would use: "I'm the good guy, because I didn't kill even more people! You have to believe me!"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:15AM
i don't think many people appreciate how restrained the US response has been.
Maybe for a funny definition of "restrained".
Al Qaeda was a terrorist group hiding in the hills of Afghanistan. Building on the political impetus of 9/11, the US ultimately attacked and destroyed the governments of no less than three independent countries: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Plus substantial forays into other countries as well. The result of those massive incursions was to destabilize the entire area. Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
On 9/11, around 3000 people died. In the course of the various wars, the US has inflicted around 100 times as many casualties. Add in the deaths caused indirectly by the US (for example, fighting ISIS), and it's quite the butcher's bill.
The US had the entire world's sympathy after 9/11. Making good use of that, it should have been possible to turn the terrorists, and the nations supporting them, into pariahs. Cut them off from the rest of the world, and let the wither.
Instead, the US decided to whack the hornet's nest with a stick, over and over again. Great tactic. Sure, using nuclear weapons would have made it worse, but that's about the only way it would have been possible to snatch even more defeat from the jaws of victory. Frankly, Bush, Cheney and the rest should have been sent up for war crimes.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:35PM
Boo-yah, and Bingo! Spot on, my man. It seems that the U.S. likes using sticks where diplomacy would help more (and yes, i think 911 was their Pearl Harbour for entering into a war they wanted to enter... let it happen (even possibly cause it to happen), then you have plausible reason for going to war.
They go to war unilaterally and without diplomacy, and they end up with multiple stings to their asses. They need to stop being so damn 'Bushy'.
Architects for 911 truth http://www.ae911truth.org/ [ae911truth.org]
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/29_Structural-Civil_Engineers_2009-06-17.pdf [ae911truth.org]
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/NIST_Analyses_Brookman.pdf [ae911truth.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xif0jIT_ZM [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:09PM
let it happen (even possibly cause it to happen)
I think they found out about the plan to hit the Twin Towers with airplanes because they had moles planted in Al-Qaeda.
Then they weakened the buildings themselves and planted thermite and explosives in time so that they would collapse when the planes hit. They also made sure that the buildings would not collapse by earthquakes, strong winds, fires or under their own weight before they were hit by planes.
...or maybe the planes were remote controlled.
Then there was the thing with the Pentagon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:33PM
While I mostly agree with your sentiment....
...it's sent down. "Sent up" means you take the piss out of them. They have been sent up, repeatedly and often, but sadly they haven't been sent down.
Posted AC as I don't want a reputation as a pedant.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:38PM
Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
Indeed. But don't forget the rest of the anti-Iranian block - Saudi Arabia and the rest sending arms to "moderate Syrian opposition". Syria is a proxy war with Iran and everyone involved can thank those involved for ISIS. Somehow politicians still think that "war will be over by Christmas" (or Ramadan or whatever yearly even you want to pick).
Libya and Syria and Iraq wars are now causing refugee problems in Europe. I guess you reap what you sow? But hey, why call them what they are - refugees - while you can just label these people with more derogatory terms like "migrants". Hello BBC? People don't leave war zones because they want a better job - they leave war zones because they don't want to die.
And then we have the Internet to thank for allowing all the nutters to talk to each other. If there is 1 ISIS-thinking-nut in a population of 10,000, that's not much of a problem because they are isolated. But today, 1 out of 10,000 can be 1,000,000 total, which is a sizable problem. Even if only 10% will actually go into war for ISIS, that's still quite a large army. And no, I'm not advocating people start censoring the Internet or shutting things down - that will NOT help but make things worse. The solution is NOT TO DESTABILIZE A NATION WITH PROXY WARS in the first place. Looking at you, Russia and US - why can't you be a little bit more like China instead when it comes to foreign relations? Less army more politik.
As to nutters - it's not a movement if you need Twitter or Facebook to "communicate". If more than half of your *neighbors* and their neighbors and so on are not willing to join in your movement to overthrow some government, then you are not part of a movement. You are part of a crazy Twitter/Facebook group.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:26PM
Maybe for a funny definition of "restrained".
...
Sure, using nuclear weapons would have made it worse
worse? WORSE?! you have no idea about the shear devastation that a nuclear attack would unleash. you are complaining that an angry gorilla gave people paper cuts when it could have just as easily torn them limb from limb!
The result of those massive incursions was to destabilize the entire area. Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
if we nuked Afghanistan, how do you know we would even bother with the other countries? how do you know how other countries would respond after such a complete annihilation?
On 9/11, around 3000 people died. In the course of the various wars, the US has inflicted around 100 times as many casualties. Add in the deaths caused indirectly by the US (for example, fighting ISIS), and it's quite the butcher's bill.
it would have been easier to nuke them resulting in a 100 times more death.
it should have been possible to turn the terrorists, and the nations supporting them, into pariahs. Cut them off from the rest of the world, and let the wither.
Pakistan has done that but it has done nothing to slow them down. Why do you think doing the same would render a different result?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:32PM
I was recently reading an article [counterpunch.org] that mentions how poor an understanding most people have of the destructive capability of a nuclear warhead. [google.com]
(Thanks, corrupt bureaucrats for making up the lies and thanks corrupt Lamestream Media for repeating the soft-pedaled crap.)
The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 13 kilotons.
It obliterated a city and killed 140,000 people (mostly civilians, a third of them children).
Modern weapons dwarf that weapon by orders of magnitude.
...and these heinous modern weapons are actually smaller than the multi-megaton weapons of an earlier generation.
Additionally, Chernobyl was a -steam- explosion and it caused increased cancer rates in northern Sweden--hundreds of miles away.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:13PM
Of course, that still leaves the issue of whether a protracted conventional war in Iraq and Afghanistan vs. a single tactical nuke in Afghanistan would have resulted in more or less fallout of the non-nuclear kind. Certainly the political ramifications would have been huge, but how that might have impacted on the Arab Spring and its own repercussions, the rise of all the various Al Qaeda off-shoots, Boko Haram, Daesh, and so on is anyone's guess.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:22AM
Still, the chances are pretty good that a tactical nuke in the right area (actually finding that area with sufficient degree of confidence being another matter) would have met the US' stated objective of bringing Osama to justtice
And, would have created a martyr in such a spectacular event that the entire Musilim world could be mobilized against the Great Satan. Your analysis is spot on the kind that led us into Iraq, Afganastan, etc. in the first place (besides the whaky Christian Crusade and revenge for daddy motivations of Baby Bush, and the self-serving motivations of the rich parasites who advised him). Those with power in the administration, military etc. in the US knew fuck all about the region, and didn't listen to anybody who did, nor even read *recent* history of such escapades by Brittain, and then Russia. "Afganastan, where empires go to die."
Of course, that is just the immediate fallout, assuming it didn't trigger WWIII. Decades later, the entire world will be a nuclear armed hell-hole on hair trigger alert because the only countries safe from US aggression are ones that can send a nuke back at em.
(Score: 2) by miljo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:28PM
"War, war never changes..."
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:59PM
Well, detonating a nuclear bomb quite close to Russia would certainly have not improved the American-Russian relations. Also the relation to the allies would have suffered. Well, maybe there would not have been a war in Iraq because no one would have been willing to fight with the mad Americans. Or maybe the war would have happened anyway, just with the USA as only aggressor.
Terrorist groups would have had far more convincing arguments to get more followers. There probably would have been a dramatic increase of terror attacks to the US and its allies; possibly causing some allies reacting by ceasing to be allies (it would be more easily justified, too, as America threw the bomb). And the USA would then have gotten much less solidarity, as then many people would have said, they asked for it by throwing the bomb.
There's a worldwide consensus that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort. Afghanistan was no last-resort situation, and therefore the reaction of the world to America nuking Afghanistan would have been be accordingly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:55AM
What did Der Spiegel report? That Steiner served as an advisor to Schroder? That seems a silly thing to note. Or that Steiner claimed that the US considered nuke option? Then what did Haaretz report?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:59PM
Yeah, no shit. That's their fucking job, to play through all possibilities. Since the 1940s there have been plans for dealing with Russia, China, etc. on all sorts of topics, which cover military action all the way out to nuclear options. I'm sure there are still plans in the event that Russia rolls into Europe, or China into Taiwan. I'm sure the Russians have their plans for EU aggression, and I'm sure they've got their options all laid out from diplomatic bitching to nuclear attack. How is this a surprise to anyone? That's what being prepared is all about. If such-and-such happens, what are my options? What are the consequences if those options are enacted. The problem on 9/11 was that nobody really had plans for a nation-less state doing a concerted attack on US soil. I'm sure there are response plans for that too, covering "all possibilities."
Jesus, you reactionary imbeciles are so fucking predictable.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:55PM
No kidding. I would actually be kinda disappointed IF they had not been planing things out. It is their job to be prepared for war. Not 'oh NOW that someone did something we start planing'. I would not be surprised if there are plans somewhere if mexico attacked for some reason.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:52PM
Indeed. Nuking Afghanistan and Osama was probably not option #1, if that was the case they would probably have done it, on the list but somewhere down there. I don't see the issue here really. The military of any country worth it's salt have plans for as many possible outcomes or scenarios they can think of -- EVERY type of scenario; even far fetched and ludicrous once. Forever prepared for every eventuality. They even have plans for how they would invade and kill of their current friends and neighbors. Just cause you have a plan doesn't mean it has to be executed. I'm sure there is even a Canadian bacon type plan for the US invading Canada. That said a nuke in Afghanistan was probably not an option cause it was a bit extreme as a response even after a surprise terror-attack.
Last year it was revealed that the US military had plans for how to deal with apocalyptic type events, including zombies. That doesn't mean they exist or that the military fear the walking dead. It just means they plan. In this case it might be actual hollywood type zombies or some rapidly spreading plague or disease type event. It doesn't have to be interpreted literally. "It's only a training exercise" -- everything is just an exercise until it isn't. The MoD apparently have one to, just like many many others.
Speaking of being prepared I am fairly sure that as an example Israel have a plan for nuking half the world, or whatever is in range. The Iran folder is probably quite think. Iran in return have plans of their own. Pakistan and India have fat folders on each other. I'd be lot more worried about those two then a possibility that Bush wanted to nuke Osama, or we don't know if he wanted to -- just that a plan for that eventuality was prepared. Germany has many plans themselves for all eventualities, they are not dummies.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/13/exclusive-the-pentagon-has-a-plan-to-stop-the-zombie-apocalypse-seriously/ [foreignpolicy.com]
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:33PM
Actually a "rage type" zombie plague? Really not that implausible. Just consider the fact that nearly 1 in 4 people around you every day carry Toxoplasmosis [wikipedia.org], a disease shown to alter the brains of at least one mammal it infects [wikipedia.org] and its really not hard to imagine a mutation occurring that causes altered behavior in humans to help it spread in the same way it alters the behavior of mice. If it were to mutate and this mutation affects those already infected? You are talking about nearly half of the world's population turning, that would give you the Hollywood style zombie apocalypse.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:46PM
Yes, indeed. That is exactly right. In fact, I know a guy who does precisely this kind of planning (yes, even the zombie apocalypse scenario) when he is on reserve duty with the Air Force. Our DoD has plans for just about any contingency. It doesn't mean that anyone is actually imminently planning to implement these strategies.
TL;DR: Relax, guys. There is a whole lot less than meets the eye here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:16PM
"We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, do we?"
The distinct impression I get from the US military types is that they really are planning to fight and win World War III. A nuclear first strike would certainly trigger something like that: Pakistan would probably be obligated to respond with a nuclear strike of their own on India, which means India responds by nuking Pakistan. Meanwhile, China would go after the US for mucking up their neighborhood, and the US would have to launch at China, and of course North Korea would launch whatever they had at South Korea. The UK and France would have to go to bat for their NATO ally the US, which means Russia and their former satellite states would go after Europe, so whatever's left of NATO would go after Russia. Oh, and Israel would probably see this as a great time to use their nukes on Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and anyone else they felt like presented an annoyance to them.
That we would have even considered this option suggests how dangerously incompetent the Bush administration was. As it is, they probably only got a million or so people killed (about 11,000 Americans - 3,000 in New York, 2,000 in New Orleans, and 6,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan - 800,000 Iraqis and Afghans, and the remainder being Pakistanis, Yemenis, and other assorted faraway nations).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:58PM
You should watch Jack Black's The Brink. [imdb.com]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:21PM
That is a sweet earth, you might say.
WRONG! [youtube.com]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:21PM
Pakistan would probably be obligated to respond with a nuclear strike of their own on India, which means India responds by nuking Pakistan.
on the bright side, we'd have more tech jobs here.
on the downside, "bob" is taking an overly long time to solve my phone-support problem...
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:38PM
Pakistan would probably be obligated to respond with a nuclear strike of their own on India, which means India responds by nuking Pakistan. Meanwhile...
What makes you think everybody is even 10% as crazy as the U.S ?
By the way U.S is doing someone else's bidding.