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$293Bln US Nuclear Upgrade a Waste of Money

Sputnik – August 8, 2015

WASHINGTON – The US government’s $293 billion nuclear arsenal upgrade will endanger the United States rather than improve its national security, MIT professor and former Pentagon official Theodore Postol told Sputnik.

The United States has launched an enormous quarter century program to completely upgrade or replace the entire US strategic nuclear weapons stockpile and their delivery systems

“This has nothing to do with the national security of the United States. It is damaging the national security of the United States.”

On Thursday, the US Government Accountability Office said in a report that the country’s 25 year nuclear modernization program would cost $18 billion more than previous estimates.

Postol commented that the rising cost of the program is not surprising.

“The Nuclear Modernization Program is on automatic with no oversight, no thought on the role nuclear weapons will play in our defense or in future wars.”

Postol continued that US policies to maintain massive nuclear stockpiles had never been seriously reassessed since the end of the Cold War and the weapons upgrade could prompt other nuclear powers to improve their capability.

“This program is causing the Russians and the Chinese in particular to become increasingly concerned about what they perceive as our new nuclear build up and they will respond accordingly.”

He added that top US defense policymakers are not ready to ask difficult but necessary questions about when and how nuclear weapons could be used, as well as whether it is necessary to have so many of them.

The scale of the US nuclear arsenal, he argued, “is just absurd.”

“A very small number of nuclear weapons will deter everybody. It does not take much to establish a credible deterrent threat.”

However, he said some amount of nuclear retaliatory threat was necessary to maintain peace.

Postol previously worked as an analyst at the US Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, the operational head of the US Navy.

August 8, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

MIT study of Ghouta chemical attack challenges US intelligence

RT | January 16, 2014

A new MIT report is challenging the US claim that Assad forces used chemical weapons in an attack last August, highlighting that the range of the improvised rocket was way too short to have been launched from government controlled areas.

In the report titled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former UN weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), examined the delivery rocket’s design and calculated possible trajectories based on the payload of the cargo.

The authors concluded that sarin gas “could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’, or from the Eastern edge, of the Syrian government controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013.”

Based on mathematical calculations, Lloyd and Postol estimate the rocket with such aerodynamics could not travel more than 2 kilometers. To illustrate their conclusion, the authors included the original White House map that depicted areas under Assad control and those held by the opposition. Based on the firing range and troop locations on August 21, the authors conclude that all possible launching points within the 2 km radius were in rebel-held areas.


“This mistaken intelligence could have led to an unjustified US military action based on false intelligence. A proper vetting of the fact that the munition was of such short range would have led to a completely different assessment of the situation from the gathered data,” the report states.

The authors emphasize that the UN independent assessment of the range of the chemical munition is in “exact agreement” with their findings.

The report goes on to challenge the US Secretary of State’s key assessments of the chemical attack that he presented to the American people on August 30th and to the Foreign Relations Committee on September 3rd in an effort to muster a military attack on Syria.

“My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct,” Postol told McClatchy news.


“The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons,” he said. “I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government.”

It also remains a mystery why the particular type of rocket that was used in the attack was not declared by the Syrian government as part of its chemical weapons arsenal when it agreed to destroy its chemical weapons and their delivery methods. OPCW inspectors charged with implementing the agreement also did not discover such a rocket in possession of government forces.

Syria agreed to the destruction of its chemical weapons through a deal brokered by Russia and the US after a sarin gas attack on August 21. Western nations blamed the deadly attack on President Bashar Assad’s forces, while Damascus accused the rebels for the incident. The UN fact-finding mission had no mandate to find out who carried out the attack.

Under the UN-backed plan, all of the country’s declared 1,290 tons of toxic agents should be destroyed by June 30. Initially, the first batch of the most dangerous materials was to be moved out of Syria on December 31.

However, the deadline was missed because of the ongoing war in Syria and technical issues. It was only on January 7 that “priority chemical materials” left the Syrian port of Latakia on a Danish ship for international waters.

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January 16, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Iron Dome grossly over-hyped: scientists

Al-Akhbar | March 9, 2013

Israel’s much touted Iron Dome missile defense system has been grossly over-hyped, a team of renowned scientists have found.

The Iron Dome’s success rate of 84 percent, as reported by the Israeli military, may be as low as 5 percent, according to international expert in military defense Theodore Postol. He previously argued that the joint American-Israeli Patriot missile defense system was ineffective against Iraqi Scud missiles in the second Gulf War.

Postol and two other scientists, who have worked for billion dollar defense companies Raytheon and Rafael, reviewed video footage of the Iron Dome’s performance and concluded that images said to show rocket interception were actually the Dome’s missiles self-destructing.

During Israel’s vicious assault on Gaza last November, 3,200 civilian damage reports were filed due to retaliatory rocket fired from the coastal strip, although the Israeli military reported that only 58 missiles failed to be intercepted by the Dome. Scientists said this was ‘impossible’.

The United States is currently providing funding for an additional eight Iron Dome units. $205 million has been authorized by Congress for the project.

March 9, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 5 Comments