Scaring the sheep - planting seeds of fear

WTF the mouthpiece on NPR right now is trying to scare the sheep.
Iran is making nukes!
Be Very Afraid.
We can't deal with them threatening our national security (or was that our corporate interests), we must nuke them right away.

Hell. I'm a midwestern housewife and I know the Iranian nuke program is 5 to 10 years from a weapon.
Iran needs a source of cheap power. They can sell their oil high and make good money, but they import gas and have ration cards for gas. Any rightwing capitalist would agree they are doing what they have every right to do - make money off their own natural resources.
Their "cascade" of crap (we sold them crap) centrifuges can't make anything like a weapon.
The only way they can have a weapon type nuke in the next 5 years is if they buy black market nuke material. But the Boss stunted that program where Clinton was buying black market nuke material to get it out of the hands of potential terrorists.
The Boss knows as well as I do that our spies can't find a hint that the Iranians are cheating. So let's ignore the experts, again.

And, remember when the Boss, or was it the Vice-Boss's secretary, whoever, for POLITICAL reasons outed the CIA deep undercover agent Valerie Plame?
Remember what her job was? Something about she was a valuable covert playa in the world of stopping nuclear proliferation?
I forget, the news slipped down the memory hole, didn't it. Politics was more important.

The Boss talks BIG about security of the Homeland, but underfunds the protection of our shores from whatever is in shipping containers. So, if something awful should happen on our shores... we know how the sheep will rally round the flag and do what they are told.
Shades of the drumbeat to Bush's war on Iraq.
All we needed to invade Iraq was a new Pearl Harbor. Remember?

In the very region of Iraq and Iran, Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Peace loving Israel has something like 400. And the Hills of Tora Bora Packies are such trustworthy allies.
Iran is under tight UN inspection, just like Iraq was (who had NO WMDs), just like North Korea was (before the Boss insulted them so badly).
The Boss just signed an agreement with India to do just what Iran is doing under threat of annihilation. Dubya lives in upside down world. No wonder the Neocons and the CFR and Daddy's mafia have so much sway with him ...and you citizens can just get raptured.
This is all about George.

Iran is roadkill on the Boss's road to Damascus. He's just another dry drunk born-againer jonesing for a little nip of holiday cheer, and having to settle for a world class power trip. He craves, he needs needs needs another religious experience like the one when he got straight with his god before, maybe Armageddon will be enough for him this time.

Oh, so you think we can get away with "nuking" the Muslim califate back to the stone age? This was NOT the right time to have a lunatic in charge of the most powerful nation on earth.
I'm hoping for a time machine under my Christmas tree. I'll go back to 2000 and make sure no one stole the election.

Small nuclear war could lead to cooldown
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
Mon Dec 11

Some of the scientists who first advanced the controversial "nuclear winter" theory more than two decades ago have come up with another bleak forecast: Even a regional nuclear war would devastate the environment.

Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate casualties and lead to a marked cooldown of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery.

As dire as the predictions seem, they fall short of nuclear winter. That theory says that smoke and dust from an atomic war between the superpowers would blot out the sun, plunge the Earth into the deep freeze and cause mass starvation, wiping out 90 percent of the Earth's population, or billions of people.

The new scenario offers no estimate of the number of deaths from the environmental effects of a regional nuclear war.

Still, scientists said the scenario points to the danger of small nuclear states obtaining atomic warheads.

The study, presented Monday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, was described as the first to document in detail the climatic effects of a nuclear war on a regional scale.

Some climate experts not connected with the research questioned some of the assumptions made in the studies.

For example, the studies assume that smoke is mostly made up of soot. But other organic particles could cause smoke to scatter and not stay aloft in the atmosphere as long, lessening the impact, said scientist Steve Ghan of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"I think the effects of the smoke are exaggerated, but it does give people pause to think about," Ghan said. "It suggests that anyone who is contemplating attacking another country is not going to be immune to the impacts on their own countries."

The late astronomer Carl Sagan and four colleagues developed the nuclear winter theory, calculating in 1983 the possible effects of an all-out nuclear attack between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Other scientists have disputed the degree of damage to the Earth.

The superpowers' nuclear stockpiles have shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War. But some of the scientists behind the nuclear winter theory — including Brian Toon of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Richard Turco of the University of California, Los Angeles — decided to revisit the topic in light of more recent world tensions.

In October, North Korea announced that it had tested a nuclear bomb. Iran is also pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Other members or presumed members of the nuclear club include India, Pakistan and Israel.

The new studies looked at the consequences if two nations dropped 50 Hiroshima-size bombs on each other's big cities. By analyzing population data and distance from blast, scientists predicted a regional nuclear war would kill 3 million people in Israel and up to 17 million in China. The U.S. would see 4 million blast deaths.

But the researchers say black soot from the fires would linger in the atmosphere, blocking the sun's rays and causing average global surface temperatures to drop about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the first three years. Although the planet would see a gradual warming within a decade, it would still be colder than it was before the war, the scientists said.

The cooldown would shorten the growing season by about a month in parts of North America, Europe and Asia. Normal rainfall patterns such as summer monsoons in Africa and Southeast Asia would be disrupted, possibly causing huge crop failures.

In addition, the ozone layer, which keeps out harmful ultraviolet radiation, would shrink more than 20 percent, with the poles seeing a 70 percent reduction.
On the Net:
American Geophysical Union: http://www.agu.org