AMERICA’S PLANNED NUCLEAR ATTACK ON LIBYA

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
March 31, 2011

A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years.

On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under “Operation El Dorado Canyon”, in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a Berlin discotheque. The pretext was fabricated. During these air raids, which were condemned by both France and Italy, Qadhafi’s residence was bombed killing his younger daughter. 

Barely acknowledged by the Western media, a planned attack on Libya using nuclear weapons, had been contemplated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The Department of Defense had developed a new generation of bunker buster tactical nuclear weapons for use in the Middle East and Central Asia:

“Military officials and leaders of America’s nuclear weapon laboratories [had] urged the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons… which could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations.” (Federation of American Scientists, 2001)

The B61-11 earth-penetrating weapon with a nuclear warhead had not been tested. It was part of the B61 series, coupled with a so-called “low yield” nuclear warhead. According to US military sources: “If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout [of the B61-11] could drift over nearby countries such as Japan.” 

 (B61-11 Earth-Penetrating Weapon, Globalsecurity.org). The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was configured initially to have a “low” 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for post-Cold War battlefield operations in the Middle East and Central Asia.

THE PENTAGON’S PLAN TO NUKE LIBYA

The B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated by the Pentagon to be used in 1997 against the “Qadhafi regime”:

“Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April [1997] by suggesting that the earth-penetrating [nuclear] weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah. This thinly-veiled threat came just eleven days after the United States signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any other signatory, including Libya.” (David Muller, Penetrator N-Bombs, International Action Center, 1997)

. 

Tarbunah has a population of more than 200,000 people, men, women and children. It is about 60 km East of Tripoli. Had this “humanitarian bomb” (with a”yield” or explosive capacity of two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb) been launched on this “suspected” WMD facility, it would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, not to mention the nuclear fallout…

The man behind this diabolical project to nuke Libya was Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Palmer Smith Junior. “Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target”. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – September/ October 1997, p. 27, emphasis added)

Harold Palmer Smith had been appointed by President Bill Clinton to oversee nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs with a focus on “the reduction and maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons”. From the outset, his actual mandate, was not “reduce” but to “increase” the nuclear arsenal by promoting the development of a new generation of “harmless” mini-nukes for use in the Middle East war theater.

Harold Palmer Smith Junior

 “TESTING” THE B611-11 NUCLEAR BOMB ON AN ACTUAL COUNTRY

The Department of Defense’s objective under Harold Smith’s advice was to fast track the “testing” of  the B61-11 nuclear bomb on an actual country:

Five months after [Assistant Defense Secretary] Harold Smith called for an acceleration of the B61-11 production schedule, he went public with an assertion that the Air Force would use the B61-11 [nuclear weapon] against Libya’s alleged underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah if the President decided that the plant had to be destroyed. “We could not take [Tarhunah] out of commission using strictly conventional weapons,” Smith told the Associated Press. The B61-11 “would be the nuclear weapon of choice,” he told Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Smith gave the statement during a breakfast interview with reporters after Defense Secretary William Perry had earlier told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on chemical or biological weapons that the U.S. retained the option of using nuclear weapons against countries armed with chemical and biological weapons. (http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/B61-11.htm)

While the Pentagon later denied its intention to bomb Libya’s Tarhunah plant, it nonetheless confirmed that “Washington would not rule out using nuclear weapons [against Libya]“. (Ibid. emphasis added.)

NUKES AND MINI-NUKES: IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

The US military contends that “mini-nukes” are “humanitarian bombs” which minimize “collateral damage”. According to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon, they are “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”,

The B61-11 is a bon fide thermonuclear bomb, a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the real sense of the word.

Military documents distinguish between the Nuclear Earth Penetrator (NEP) and the “mini-nuke”, which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.

This distinction between mini-nukes and the NEP is in many regards misleading. In practice there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several “available yields”, ranging from “low yields” of less than one kiloton, to mid-range, and up to the 1000 kiloton bomb.

In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several “available yields”.

What is contemplated for theater use is the “low yield” 10 kt bomb, two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb.

THE LIBYA 1997 “NUCLEAR OPTION” HAD SET THE STAGE…

Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations have excluded using thermonuclear bunker buster bombs in the Middle East war theater. These weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War “conventional conflicts with third world nations”.  They were approved for use in the conventional war theater by the US Senate in 2002, following the adoption of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review.

In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 in Afghanistan. The stated targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.

Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the “conventional” bunker buster bombs “‘are going to be able to do the job’… he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons.” (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001.)

The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. In this regard, the B61-11 was described as “a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets”, which included Saddam Hussein’s underground bunkers:

“If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime.” (Defense News, December 8, 2003, emphasis added)

“All options are on the table”… Sheer madness. 

Nukes to implement “regime change”.

What Rumsfeld had proposed, as part of a “humanitarian mandate”, was the use of a nuclear bomb to “take out” the president of a foreign country.

(author’s note: There is no documentary evidence that the B61-11 was used against Iraq).

IS A NUCLEAR ATTACK ON LIBYA STILL ON THE PENTAGON’S DRAWING BOARD?

“The Coalition of the Willing” under US-NATO mandate is currently involved in “a humanitarian war” on Libya to “protect the lives of innocent civilians”.

Is the use of a nuclear bomb excluded under the alliances R2P Responsibility to Protect Doctrine?

The Bush administration’s 2001 nuclear doctrine contained specific “guidelines” regarding “preemptive” nuclear strikes against several countries in the broader Middle East Central Asian region, which explicitly included Libya.

As revealed by William Arkin in early 2002, “The Bush administration, in a secret policy review… [had] ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons [The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review approved by the Senate in late 2002] against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–but also China, Libya and Syria. (See William Arkin, “Thinking the Unthinkable”, Los Angeles Times, 9 March 2002)

In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as “surprising military developments” of an unspecified nature. These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons that reduce collateral damage, are contained in a still-classified document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was delivered to Congress on Jan. 8. (ibid)

The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO) ~ endorsed by the Obama Administration ~ allows for the preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons in conventional war theaters directed against “rogue states”. While the “guidelines” do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US /NATO nuclear arsenal, Pentagon “scenarios” in the Middle East and North Africa are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb.

The fact that Libya had been singled out by the Pentagon for a possible 1997 mini-nuke “trial run” was a significant element in the formulation of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

It is worth noting that tactical B61 nuclear weapons have also been deployed by America’s NATO partners: five European “non-nuclear states”, including Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy, which are directly participating in the Libya bombing campaign, have B61 mini-nukes stockpiled and deployed under national command in their respective military bases. (Michel Chossudovsky, Europe’s Five “Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States“, February 10, 2010)

These European-based mini-nukes are earmarked for targets in the Middle East. While Libya is not mentioned, according to “NATO strike plans”, the European-based thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs could be launched “against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran” (quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 2005).

In the context of the ongoing war against Libya, “all options are on the table” including the preemptive nuclear option, as part of a “humanitarian mandate” to protect the lives of innocent civilians.

In 2007, a Secret 2003 STRATCOM Plan was revealed, which confirmed Washington’s resolve to wage preemptive nuclear attacks against Iran, Syria and Libya. While the concepts and assumptions of this document were derived from the 2001 NPR, the Plan formulated by Strategic Command headquarters (USSTRATCOM) focused concretely on issues of implementation.

The use of  nuclear weapons including the B61-11 against Libya in the course of the current military campaign, as initially envisaged by the Department of Defense in 1997 and subsequently embodied as the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) cannot, therefore, be ruled out.

ISRAELI SECURITY FIRM IN CHARGE AT JAPANESE NUKE FACILITIES PRIOR TO DISASTER

The damaged No. 4 unit of the Fukushima 

Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, on Tuesday March 15, 2011.

Ed note ~ to all those who scoffed at the idea of whether or not the present nuclear meltdown taking place at Japan’s nuke facility might have been part of an Israeli intel operation aimed at demonstrating the power of Israel’s stuxnet computer virus, Haaretz is now reporting that it was the Israeli security firm Magna that was providing security for the plant prior to the incident.

Source–Haaretz

Israeli firm which secured Japan nuclear plant says workers there ‘putting their lives on the line’

Magna CEO says Japanese workers at nuclear plant ‘projecting business as usual’ but says it is ‘unclear if they are healthy due to the high level of radiation at the reactor, which is life-threatening.’

The CEO of the Israeli company that installed the security system at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant said Thursday that those workers who have elected to stay behind are “putting their lives on the line” to save Japan.

Magna BSP set up the security system about a year ago at the facility, which suffered extensive damage after the recent earthquake and tsunami, with particular concern over radiation leakage from the reactors at the site.

The system includes cameras and a warning system, enabling the facility’s security staff to monitor anyone attempting to trespass onto the site or damage the perimeter fence. The security system was designed to guard the plant against any hostile elements seeking to seize radioactive material to use in a terrorist attack.

Among the 50 Japanese workers who have remained at Fukushima amid the unfolding crisis, in an effort to bring the facility under control, are two individuals who were in Israel about three weeks ago, where they underwent training to transfer the operation of the security system to the Japanese themselves.

“We still haven’t been able to make contact with them, either by phone or e-mail,” Magna CEO Haim Siboni said yesterday. “We know they’re alive, but it’s not clear if they are healthy due to the high level of radiation at the reactor, which is life-threatening.”

“The Japanese workers who have remained at the reactor are really putting their lives on the line, with the knowledge that they’re doing it to save all of Japan,” he added.

Although there is no access to the area, Siboni said the cameras from his company’s security system ~ which were installed high up ~ were probably not damaged and likely captured the post-earthquake explosions at the site, as well as the impact of the tsunami.

Magna BSP was established by Siboni about 10 years ago and is owned by several partners. Based in Dimona, the firm employs 15 people, a number which Siboni expects to expand dramatically in light of additional orders Magna has received from Japan and interest shown by the operators of nuclear reactors in other countries. Its operations in Japan are conducted through a Japanese government firm.

“We have an agreement in principle with the Japanese that we will provide protection for all of the country’s nuclear reactors,” Siboni said.

Magna had planned to send additional security equipment to Japan next week. The Japanese have not asked that the shipment be halted, Siboni said, adding: “They are projecting business as usual.”

And this from the Jerusalem Post:

ISRAELI FIRM’S CAMERAS 

RECORDING JAPANESE NUCLEAR CORE

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
03/15/2011

Security cameras installed by Israeli defense company at Fukushima plant have ability to detect presence of radioactive clouds in air.

As the world continues to gaze with concern at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, hi-tech security cameras installed by an Israeli defense firm are recording events at the troubled core from an insider’s vantage point.

The Arava-based Magna BSP company, which specializes in producing and installing stereoscopic sensory and thermal imaging cameras, had been contracted to place cameras around one of the plant’s six cores ~ the core that has been experiencing explosions and overheating.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Monday, Magna’s head, Haim Siboni, said the thermal cameras also had the ability to detect the presence of radioactive clouds in the air, but added that Magna had not been able to gain access to the images recorded by the cameras at this time.

“Because we are using these special cameras, we can also identify radioactive clouds, due to the spectrum that our cameras can sense,” Siboni said.

Although Magna is able to gain remote access to its computer system, which receives the cameras’ images, Siboni said his company had not yet been authorized to do so.

“We have not been allowed to take control remotely yet,” Siboni said.

Magna has been asked to secure a second core at the Fukushima plant in the near future.

A PRAYER FOR THE DEAD: ON THE GROUND IN BLIGHTED JAPAN

The photographs used in this piece are from Natori.

 

Posted by Krista Mahr

March 15, 2011

The specter of a full-blown nuclear disaster loomed over Japan on Tuesday morning after the third reactor explosion in four days occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant just after 6AM. By noon, employees were scrambling to contain a fire in another reactor, and reports were trickling in that radiation had been detected in Tokyo.

And then it started to rain.

After the quake and the tsunami, the temperature dropped radically 

and heavy snows fell, hindering rescue work.

For the disaster workers fanned out over the kilometers of wasteland that used to be a coastal neighborhood of Natori, it was hardly a welcome turn of events. Since the twin disasters struck Japan's east coast on Friday, search and rescue teams from across the nation have been conducting a massive operation amidst a constant barrage of aftershocks and tsunami alerts.

As firefighters and soldiers trudged out for a fourth morning into the mountains of debris today, the cold rain falling was yet another complication ~ and a grim reminder that as the hope of finding survivors fades, the magnitude of this national disaster is just starting to come into focus.

After leaks like the ones underway in Fukushima, rain can speed up the rate of radioactive material making its way from the atmosphere to the ground.

(Read: Is Fukushima the Next Chernobyl?)

But as residents in areas near the Fukushima plant were warned to stay inside and out of the potentially harmful weather, rescue teams carried on. Yukio Konno, the captain of a local firefighting unit conducting a search in Natori's worst-struck neighborhood, pulled a small blue radiation detector from the breast pocket of his heavy uniform and looked at the display. It read 0.0 ~ or zero radiation detected ~ good news for him and his colleagues.

Konno says there were about 100 firefighters from Natori and other parts of the country, including Hiroshima, sifting through the debris.

“We had a lot more help before, but they all left after 72 hours. We don't expect many survivors.”

Teams like Konno's have reluctantly stopped listening for calls for help in the rubble, and started looking for bodies. He says that about 1000 people died in this area of Natori, a vast swath of mud and detritus that stretches as far as the eye can see in from north to south, but the final number is still unknown.

Other reports say Natori's death toll is already double that. When Konno's team finds a corpse, they report it to the police or the Self Defense Force soldiers. Throughout the afternoon, green military trucks patrol up and down the mud-caked streets, ghostly ferries waiting to carry the dead away.

Along one road, a group of SDF soldiers stands over a row of six bodies covered in bright blankets punctuating the gray landscape. Another vehicle pulls up, and the soldiers, wearing blue rubber gloves, carry the body of a young woman out of the truck. 

An old man weeps. One quarter of Japan's populace are seniors and it is becoming more difficult to meet their needs; most have powerful memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When they set her on the ground next to the other corpses, the flowered cloth slips away, exposing her breast. The soldiers who have set her down rush to cover her. One by one, they transfer the corpses with great care onto a plywood board covered in a green army blanket. Before lifting the first body off the ground and into a waiting truck, they pause to say a short prayer.

Four days after the 9.0 earthquake started this chain of events being watched around the world, over 8000 people in Japan have been confirmed dead, and thousands are still missing. 

As domestic teams fan out, international search and rescue groups have arrived to help from the U.S., South Korea, Australia, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, China, Hungary, Singapore and the United Kingdom. One of Japan's own search and rescue teams was still assisting with post-quake efforts in Christchurch, New Zealand, when the earthquake and tsunami struck, according to CNN. Ninety-one nations have offered aid to Japan.

But even with this international outpouring, help is still slow to arrive in many places, including Natori. At an evacuation center in the city's Masuda Middle School gymnasium, the school principal, who is also serving as the evacuation center coordinator, says he hasn't seen any foreign aid groups in the area. The city has supplied food and Tokyo has supplied blankets, but other than that, he and the other staff are not getting much help. “The national government is concentrating on the rescue first,” says Kanao Takashi. “It's just taking a long time.”

A resident of Natori weeps upon learning he has lost his wife, his parents, and three children when their home was swept away by the tsunami.

In the first hours after the tsunami washed ashore, 500 residents of Natori were staying in the gymnasium. As people have begun to scatter, leaving to stay with family and friends, there are only about 80 left on a scattering of futons and blankets on the wood floor, though local residents who still don't have food are also coming here to eat. Pastel colored post-its stuck in neat rows onto a whiteboard at the front of center serve as a missing-and-found-persons board.

“Ken-chan, your father and mother and brother are safe,” reads one note.

“Mori-san, you cannot be reached. Please let me know if you are already. Watanabe,” reads another.

Five days in, the mood at the center is changing, says Takashi. “For the first days, people were just relieved to alive,” he says. But he's noticed they're now getting tired of living in a massive communal space, getting less tolerant with each other, and worrying about what comes next. “They're starting to think about their situation.”

Two women take a break from looking for remnants of their lives. 

Already the scent of the dead is becoming overpowering.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/03/15/search-teams-persevere-under-threat-of-nuclear-catastrophe/#ixzz1GvdklQAc

"THE INGRAINED INSTINCT FOR ORDERLINESS AND CALM” OF THE JAPANESE

March 13, 2011

Revisionist Review

Editor's note: I have always admired the Japanese people for many of the same reasons I admire the Germans, although in the case of the Japanese, I am swayed by the added fact that Japan is the only foreign nation to have translated and published two of my books. Laura King of the Los Angeles Times offers a glimpse into the stoic national character amidst catastrophe.~ Michael Hoffman

JAPAN'S MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE

HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON CULTURE'S IMPECCABLE MANNERS

By Laura King

Los Angeles Times

March 13, 2011

One injured woman pinned under furniture apologizes for causing trouble in just one example of the nation's trait of exhibiting concern for others even in the worst of circumstances.

Reporting from Tokyo --She was elderly and alone, injured and in pain. When the massive earthquake struck, a heavy bookshelf toppled onto Hiroko Yamashita, pinning her down and shattering her ankle.

When paramedics finally reached her, agonizing hours later, Yamashita did what she said any "normal" person would do, her son-in-law recounted later: she apologized to them for the inconvenience, and asked if there weren't others they should be attending to first.

The worst earthquake in Japan's recorded history left a trail of blazing buildings, inundated coastal communities, wrecked roadways and potentially unstable nuclear power plants. But it barely made a dent in the implacably Japanese trait of exhibiting concern for others even in the worst of circumstances.

The Japanese language is full of ritual apologies, uttered so often as to become almost meaningless: I am about to make a nuisance of myself ~ please excuse me! Some of this is a matter of mere formality. But at a time of crisis, such politesse can be the glue that holds the country together.

Even though Friday's magnitude 8.9 quake was shocking and discombobulating, few would imagine burdening a stranger with their anxieties.

On a long flight to Tokyo, amid uncertainty almost until the last minute over whether the plane would actually be allowed to land at the capital's airport, a fifty-something businessman questioned a seatmate closely about plans and contingencies: where are you staying? Why there? Well, the next neighborhood over is nicer. Is someone meeting you, taking care of you?

Only at the tail end of a nine-hour flight did he confide, almost as an abashed aside, that a close relative was missing, and that he would be trying to make his way north, into the tsunami-inundation zone, to determine her fate. He fiddled with his seat-belt, looked around distractedly, and all but coughed out his doubt that he would find her alive.

Some resent the stifling conformity that can accompany social mores such as these. Even in modern-day Japan, speaking one's mind or making an overt demand can lead to ostracization. Young people, in particular, sometimes feel shackled by rigid conventions of behavior that can seem as arcane as a Kabuki drama.

But in a country where people with a case of the sniffles wear surgical masks in public to avoid infecting anyone, most people seemed determined not to let their anxieties show. That particularly included those attending to customers.

"I am trying hard not to let people see how scared I am," said Masaki Tajima, a hotel clerk in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo.

Closer to the quake zone, there were cracks in the studied courtesy. At a gas station in Koriyama, about 130 miles north of Tokyo, some customers become anxious and agitated as fuel ran short, attendants said. Kenji Sato, an attendant of 12 years, recited apologies, trying to soothe people. "Sorry, no more gas, very sorry," he intoned.

Elsewhere, though, the ingrained instinct for orderliness and calm has kept its hold even amid difficult moments. In Tokyo and its suburbs, the quake knocked out much of the usually clockwork-reliable public-transportation system. Yet when trains finally appeared on a few crucial routes, the queue was as orderly as on any mundane commuting day.

Once aboard, people sat quietly, gazing at their cellphones in hope of an elusive signal.

"It would be uncivilized to try to push and shove, and what good would it do anyway?" said Kojo Saeseki, helping his wife onto a crowded train on the city's outskirts.

In the city itself, those aboard a nearly empty subway car looked surprised and discomfited when they were asked what had happened to them the day before, but if pressed, they would tell their stories: being trapped in an elevator for hours, or crouching under a desk in a tall building as it swayed like a ship at sea, or seeing a thick pane of safety glass suddenly spider-webbing with cracks.

Some were still telling their stories, haltingly, when the train pulled into a station where a small gap presented itself between the door and the platform. And everyone in the car called out to a departing passenger: Kiotsukete! ~ Be careful!