Cable news programs wetting their pants over 30,000 lb. bomb...

[rfranklin]

Flipping through the channels I notice this morning that they're going gaga over the "Massive Ordinance Penetrator."

Rumsfeld, of course, is trotted out to comment on how "so much is going on underground around the globe, especially in terrorist countries." Failing, of course, to name any 'terrorist countries.' Fearr, fear, fear, terra, terra, terra.

Why, the big PR push for this yet to be built 'humanitarian' weapon? Is the Carlyle Group behind this?

[punpirate]

1. No, it's about underground labs in...

... Iran and North Korea. They want to threaten other countries with nuking (hence the talk about new, small earth-burrowing nukes), but they don't actually have such weapons. So, they are looking for conventional weapons which might do the job.

But, just for speculation's sake, here are some general observations. Even 3-5 kiloton nuclear weapons burrowing underground by a hundred feet send up a big cloud of radioactive dirt (easily detectable by radiological instruments and from seismic information), and we don't have any which can burrow 100 feet underground--much less, in fact.

So, if we use a small nuclear weapon, we'll get caught, and we won't obtain our objective of destroying deeply-buried facilities. So, the arms manufacturers have sold the Pentagon an alternative, which is impressive to the neo-con civilians who know neither math or physics--namely, even bigger conventional weapons, which will throw up a lot of dirt, but at least that dirt won't be radioactive, and therefore traceable....

If the neo-cons use nukes, both US and world opinion will relegate them to the garbage can. They know that. These much bigger conventional weapons proprosed by military contractors are a way of giving the neo-cons what they think they want, without actually accomplishing anything but the transfer of funds from the government to private industry.

[NashVegas]

2. I Think I Saw That Thing

In a Xandria catalogue.

[Connie_Corleone]

3. On CNN

I saw the other Carol on CNN this morning talking about it with a smile on her face like it was some new toy or something.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Just as some men are obsessed about penis sizes

Men's policies are also obsessed about size. Remember "more bang for the bucks" being the operative phrase during the nuclear arms race?

[baldguy]

5. "Massive Penetrator"

Sounds like a sex toy to me.

[NoPasaran]

7. Exactly

The War Whores love it when the new toys inrease the bloodflow to their naughty bits.

[koopie57]

6. Will it even

be possible to get that thing high enough in the air to drop it effectively? I don't know anything about planes and thrust and things like that, and I can't imagine how they could get that thing off the ground? And physically how big is it? Did they say how muc it cost to make just one? I wonder how many good things they could do with the money. It just seems to me that if all the money spent on killing and bombing was used for good things, humanitarian aid, etc., we would probably much safer. Everyone we helped would be protecting us. No?