Rarely does news from the Department of Defense (DoD) cause me to pause, and contemplate the level of insanity needed to come up with one of the myriad schemes that rival something out of Austin Powers.
If their plan is to make us all think to ourselves, “Are you <expletive deleted> kidding me?” If that was in fact their goal, all I have to say is Mission Accomplished.
1.4 million pounds of “Divine Strake”
Thursday, August 17, 2006 the Louisville Courier Journal reported the DoD is considering a Southern Indiana quarry for a test titled “Divine Strake”, involving more that 700 tons of high explosive.
With little fanfare, U.S. military officials and the operators of a limestone quarry near Mitchell detonated 3,000-pound batches of explosives in the summer of 2004 and in March 2005.
The blasts were part of an experiment by the federal National Threat Reduction Agency to fine-tune ways to root out enemies and powerful weapons nestled in limestone tunnels.
Although the tests largely escaped public attention, the same Hoosier quarry was identified this month in a published report as a possible location for a far larger experimental blast involving hundreds of tons of explosives.
(Hat tip to Oye Sancho at Daily Kos for his diary on this.)
How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (Steve’s Song)
Local environmental activist group Valley Watch reports that the size of the test explosion suggests it is a surrogate for a nuclear bunker buster, ie Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
It is the limestone that is attracting the DOD. In fact, they have already set off two, 3,000 pound explosives there as part of the Divine
Strake experiment. Those tests were conducted in 2004 and 2005 without any
sort of local notice or input.
Apparently, DOD was hoping to keep this a secret as well since several recent reports indicate that there are no state
or local officials who have been informed as to the blast’s possibility.
DOD theorizes that the limestone embedded in the earth in Lawrence County is similar to what would be experienced if a nuclear “bunker busting” bomb was
dropped on the underground nuclear facilities in Iran.
Such a nuclear weapon cannot be tested under the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that
America proposed and signed nearly fifty years ago. So DOD is seeking to use the next best thing, Divine Strake. 1.4 million pounds of mostly ammonium nitrate, the same as used by bomber, Terry McVeigh to blow up the federal
building in Oklahoma City a decade ago is a mere substitute for the nukes that Rumsfeld and Bush are raring to use on Iran.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect about the impending use of this weapon of mass
destruction on the soil of the Hoosier state is that it was Indiana’s own Steve Buyer (R-IN4) who floated a trial ballon for the Bush adminstration when they hoped to get public approval for the used of tactical nuclear weapons in the caves at Tora Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001.
“Don’t send special forces in there to sweep. We’d be very naive to believe that biotoxins and chemical agents were not in these caves. Put a tactical nuclear device (emphasis mine) in and close these caves for a thousand years,” said Buyer in an interview with Indianapolis television station WRTV.
Yes Virginia, Phosgene is a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Valley Watch has posted the environmental impact statement filed for a similiar test in Nevada. Amongst the witches brew of toxic chemicals that are
produced when you detonate 700 tons of high explosives was a suprise. 1,535 pounds of Phosgene (Carbon Dichloride), while the process by which really big bomb creates more than 15,000 pounds of Chlorine compounds is a mystery to me there’s a simple, and incovenient truth here.
Phosgene is a chemical weapon, a relic of the “War to End All Wars”, the first world war; fought to “make the world safe for democracy.”
The toxic action of phosgene is typical of a certain group of lung damaging agents. Phosgene is the most dangerous member of this group and the only one considered likely to be used in the future. Phosgene was used for the first time in 1915, and it accounted for 80% of all chemical fatalities during World War I.
Phosgene is a colorless gas under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. Its boiling point is 8.2°C, making it an extremely volatile and
non-persistent agent. Its vapor density is 3.4 times that of air. It may therefore remain for long periods of time in trenches and other low lying
areas. In low concentrations it has a smell resembling new mown hay.
The outstanding feature of phosgene poisoning is massive pulmonary edema. With exposure to very high concentrations death may occur within several hours; in most fatal cases pulmonary edema reaches a maximum in 12 hours followed by death in 24-48 hours. If the casualty survives, resolution commences within 48 hours and, in the absence of complicating infection, there may be little or no residual damage.
Further, Phosgene is a prohibited Schedule 3 chemical weapon under the Annex on Chemicals attached to the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was in this context, that the British government expressed concern that Iraqi facilities linked to the production of phosgene had been rebuilt in the period following the end of UNSCOM inspections in the September 2002 dossier entitled, IRAQ’S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION:THE ASSESSMENT OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
Phosgene when weaponized is a WMD. The scale of Divine Strake can only be realistically deployed through the use of nuclear weapons, and it produces nearly 1,500 pounds phosgene, a banned chemical weapon. And the DoD is planning testing in a populated area of Southern Indiana.
I direct you to the definition of a WMD per the DoD’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.
