The risk of nuclear war under Trump

POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Thursday, May 7, 2026 16:28
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SIGNYM

Thursday, February 8, 2018 8:39 PM

Quote:
Giving Trump new nukes AND new ways to use them is like giving matches and gasoline to Curious George. It will not end well.

Well, to bring up YOUR point, this is the Pentagon's view of things. Which Trump is probably eager to join.

Yes, this is a worrisome development. IF your national defense strategy/ nuclear posture is "do what we say or we'll nuke you", that's a sign of weakness, not strength. I think the reason why the Pentagon is aiming for "low" yield nuclear weapons is because that's the only thing they have to offer right now. The CIA (the Pentagon's rival) can wage "wars on the cheap" by whipping up divisions in nations, recruiting and paying proxies, and a program of secret drone strikes. The military is hobbled with a Cold War strategy and big aircraft carriers (which are extremely vulnerable to attacks by modern missiles) and "heavy" invasion capability, as well as extremely expensive planes that can't fly (which can be denied airspace by modern missiles).

To dig into what Mattis is saying more deeply, he said that the USA would no longer focus on terrorism. In some senses, the GWOT (global war on terror) than Bush started was the CIA's war; where they fed terrorists with one hand and killed them with the other. GWOT was a non-military war. Now, GWOT might be prosecuted militarily, as when terrorists claim and hold territory. OTOH, if the CIA is no longer funding and arming them (remember the power turnover in Saudi Arabia, from whence much money came?) and their drug operations are allowed to whither, maybe terrorist groups will just die on the vine anyway. So possibly w/drawing military attention from terrorists won't have any negative consequences.

OTOH, OUR problems with Russia and China don't really respond to military force either. Our biggest problem with China is related to balance of trade, and our reliance on the petrodollar. Self created. Our biggest problem with Russia is our policy of continued insertion into Russian "sphere of influence", with the background goal of obliterating Russia. Self created. The only way to solve these problems is with better trade, financial, and policy plans.

When Mattis says ... “If you threaten us, it will be your longest and worst day.” .... I can be fully onboard with that. The problem is, the deep state tends to create/ see threats that don't even exist, and they "see" them ALL OVER THE WORLD. So whether or not this policy is realistic or not greatly depends on how realistic the military is about where they can defend our interests, or whether or not the solutions are really non-military.

Possibly, Mattis just wants more $$$$ for his empire, and doesn't really plan on using any new/ strengthened capabilities.

Given all that, does it come as a relief to know that the Trump Administration just met with all three Russian security heads? I know YOU were hyperventilating about it; how do you feel about it now?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

WISHIMAY

Thursday, February 8, 2018 9:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
As I mentioned, it is the topic of the thread, which I did not start.

HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? You keep making assumptions. Well, you happen to be wrong.
Again, I did not start this thread. But if you want to talk about obsessions: I think you have an unhealthy obsession with Russia. You invest it with far more power than it really has. .

This is just INSANE. Literally.

You are completely oblivious about everything Russia has done and wants to do. Intentionally. You rationalize and downplay everything that they do, when they should not be doing ANY OF IT. PERIOD.

They ARE attacking infrastructure, I see it in the news all the time. Guess you just conveniently miss that, huh?
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/29977/cyber-warfare-2/russia-hacke
d-us-critical-infrastructure.html

US infrastructure and government agencies are constantly under attack, a few weeks ago the White House confirmed to have suffered a cyber attack on its computer network which lasted for almost two weeks.

To have any recall of the Cuban Missile Crisis you would have to be in your 60's and you aren't. Unless you had your kid in your fifties. Right.

This thread was started BECAUSE OF YOUR CONSTANT OBSESSIONS. You really believe that nuclear war could break out at any second with people we aren't in REGULAR WAR with. That is the very definition of paranoid delusion.

I'm done. You can't reason with someone who is intentionally blind and off their rocker.

I will not discuss nuclear war with you ever again, and I'd advise everyone else not to play into your delusion. It's not healthy.

I leave you with this.

I hope you get help for your "nuclear war paranoia disorder".

Holy Hell.

SECOND

Thursday, February 8, 2018 9:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Possibly, Mattis just wants more $$$$ for his empire, and doesn't really plan on using any new/ strengthened capabilities.

Why do these weapons get built?
www.revealnews.org/article/new-mexico-thrives-on-nuclear-bomb-despite-
us-pledge-to-reduce-arsenal/

A review of several thousands of pages of congressional testimony, federal budgets and audit reports, plus an analysis of lobbying and campaign contribution data, shows that the four defense contractors running the two New Mexico nuclear weapons labs, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratory, enjoy a particularly symbiotic relationship with Congress.

That relationship begins with money.

Since 1998, these four contractors have contributed more than $20 million to congressional campaigns around the nation. Last year alone, they spent almost $18 million lobbying Washington to ensure that funding for nuclear weapons projects continues even as nuclear stockpiles shrink.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said the outlay is a bargain considering what’s at stake for the contractors.

“It’s an insignificant cost of doing business relative to the potential income from these contracts,” she said.

Lawmaker-turned-nuclear consultant

Republican Heather Wilson left Congress in January 2009 after a decade as a New Mexico congresswoman. She had lost her bid to jump up to the Senate seat vacated by her mentor, Pete Domenici.

After losing, she set up a consulting business and, within days of leaving office, Wilson – an Air Force veteran – was consulting mainly for the two New Mexico weapons labs.

Over the next two years, Wilson was paid more than $400,000 by Lockheed’s Sandia Corp. and the consortium of contractors running the Los Alamos lab – to help them extend and expand federal contracts and get more business, according to the first of two scathing inspector general reports. Eventually, the contractors were forced to reimburse the government for the federal funds they used to pay Wilson for her advocacy work.

Asked about the significance of that outcome, the Lockheed communications office responded to Reveal via email: “With regards to the inspector general’s report, Sandia has cooperated with the Inspector General’s review and will continue to do so.” Wilson declined to comment.

Wilson’s support for the labs persisted after she left the consulting business in early 2012 and ran for the Senate again. When the Obama administration cut funding for a Los Alamos lab project, Wilson told the Albuquerque Journal: “Not only is this bad for our country and its national security, it’s bad for New Mexico and our economy.”

For New Mexico, the second-poorest state after Mississippi, nuclear weapons and military bases are undeniably a lifeblood. Out of the $27.5 billion in federal dollars poured into the state in 2013, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study, about $5 billion went to Los Alamos, Sandia and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nuclear weapons waste facility east of Carlsbad, where accidents last year exposed dozens of workers to radiation.

Billions more were spent on the state’s four main military bases. The city of Alamogordo, next to Holloman Air Force Base and the Army’s White Sands Missile Range – home of the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was tested in July 1945 – benefits from $450 million a year in military spending, according to the local chamber of commerce.

The labs and bases, and the defense contractors that run or contract with them, also are an integral part of New Mexico’s economic fabric. Los Alamos, Sandia and White Sands are three of the state’s top 10 employers, together providing about 24,000 jobs.

New Mexico politicians helping the labs has a long history in the state, said local political analyst Joe Monahan. It dates back to World War II and the development of the first nuclear bomb under Los Alamos Director J. Robert Oppenheimer.

“The economic impact is the driver of the politics,” Monahan said. . . .

SIGNYM

Friday, February 9, 2018 12:06 AM

This was my response to your question as to why I'm posting about nuclear Armageddon in this thread.

Quote:
As I mentioned, it is the topic of the thread, which I did not start.

HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? You keep making assumptions. Well, you happen to be wrong.

Again, I did not start this thread. But if you want to talk about obsessions: I think you have an unhealthy obsession with Russia. You invest it with far more power than it really has - SIGNY

Quote:
This is just INSANE. Literally.
You are completely oblivious about everything Russia has done and wants to do. Intentionally. You rationalize and downplay everything that they do, when they should not be doing ANY OF IT. PERIOD.- WISHY

Look, I "get" that you're terrified of what Russia "might" be able to do. You're as mesmerized by that prospect as others were mesmerized by the prospect of Saddam's so-called WMD, and what he "might" do with them. And, as it turns out, he didn't have them and of course could do nothing with what he didn't have.

Quote:
They ARE attacking infrastructure, I see it in the news all the time. US infrastructure and government agencies are constantly under attack, a few weeks ago the White House confirmed to have suffered a cyber attack on its computer network which lasted for almost two weeks.
-WISHY

You do? Have power grids gone dark? Have banks failed? Water still coming to your taps? Have hospital records been made unavailable? Is Google email still coming thru? Credit card still being processed? Internet connection and phone still OK? Can you still order thru Amazon?

Quote:
Guess you just conveniently miss that, huh?-WISHY

No, I'm fully aware of cyberattacks on our banks and infrastructure. In fact, I was sitting at my bank trying to open an account when it was undergoing a massive DDOS attack. I have looked at computer logs showing all of the many-times-a-minute "knocks on the door" of criminals trying to implant malware. My records at Equifax, the IRS, and elsewhere, have been compromised many times over.

But what does this have to do with Russia?

The really worrisome ones have nothing to do with Russia, and a lot to do with cyber criminals, based, among other places, in Ukraine:

Quote:
“In Fraud We Trust”: 36 Indicted In $530M Global Cybercrime Ring Based Out Of Ukraine
https://blackswanalert.com/2018/02/08/in-fraud-we-trust-36-indicted-in
-530m-global-cybercrime-ring-based-out-of-ukraine/

So, WISHY, let's assume that Russia could take down any of our critical systems in a couple of days. Why haven't they???

Quote:
To have any recall of the Cuban Missile Crisis you would have to be in your 60's and you aren't. Unless you had your kid in your fifties. Right.

What the hell are you talking about? I AM in my sixties! And our child is almost half my age (physically) but far less than that (mentally). My god, you're an ass. And a stupid one at that. What do you think a catastrophic brain bleed DOES to a newborn? Do you think we worry about our child for NOTHING? My god, do you think that you're the ONLY one who has problems? I can't believe what a self-centered bitch you're being.

Quote:
This thread was started BECAUSE OF YOUR CONSTANT OBSESSIONS. You really believe that nuclear war could break out at any second with people we aren't in REGULAR WAR with. That is the very definition of paranoid delusion.- WISHY

Why don't you ask the originator why they started the thread, instead of making another WRONG assumption and just shoveling all blame on me? I mean really, WISHY, you just work from one wrong assumption after another wrong assumption, don't you?

Quote:
I'm done. You can't reason with someone who is intentionally blind and off their rocker.- WISHY

Erm... I wasn't the one referencing a FICTIONAL MOVIE based on a TOY CHARACTER to make my point about the REAL WORLD, so I'd go a little easier

THGRRI

Friday, February 9, 2018 1:28 AM

T

WISHIMAY

Friday, February 9, 2018 2:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I AM in my sixties! And our child is almost half my age (physically) but far less than that (mentally).

Maybe you should stop referring to her as a "child" then.
She is a handicapped ADULT. I'm sure no one here had a clue what her age was. But, since you call me a bitch just for not knowing her age...I'd have to say I completely see where she gets her messed up mental DNA from.

And the reason Russia hasn't done worse, is we have agencies that stop it before it gets WORSE. It frequently doesn't make the news until weeks after something has happened, and THEN they downplay it.......THIS is the kind of people they are. I can't begin to imagine why you would defend them if you are American (which we know you aren't)

"Just to recap, the Russians didn’t just supply performance-enhancing drugs to scores of athletes. We’ve seen that act before. This time it constructed an actual building in Sochi next to the laboratory that tested athlete samples. It then drilled a small hole in the shared wall. Each night after the lab closed, it had workers on either side pass clean samples in and dirty samples out.
A few predictable things happened. Russia won the most medals. No Russians tested positive for PEDs. The man who orchestrated it, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who much later acknowledged the scheme, was awarded a prestigious honor by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Once the scam was uncovered, Rodchenkov fled to America fearing for his safety, which seems reasonable after two of his cohorts turned up dead. Just a coincidence, of course."

SIGNYM

Friday, February 9, 2018 3:13 AM

Quote:
I AM in my sixties! And our child is almost half my age (physically) but far less than that (mentally).

Maybe you should stop referring to her as a "child" then.
She is a handicapped ADULT. I'm sure no one here had a clue what her age was. But, since you call me a bitch just for not knowing her age...I'd have to say I completely see where she gets her messed up mental DNA from. - WISHY

No, I called you a bitch because you made all kinds of wrong assumptions about me, and everything else, and just ran along with them in total and malicious ignorance. THAT'S why you're a bitch.

Quote:
And the reason Russia hasn't done worse, is we have agencies that stop it before it gets WORSE. It frequently doesn't make the news until weeks after something has happened, and THEN they downplay it.......THIS is the kind of people they are. I can't begin to imagine why you would defend them if you are American (which we know you aren't)

There you go again, being the bitch that you are.

WITCHY, if criminal enterprises can steal so much information and implant malware around the world, holding hundreds of thousands of computers for ransom, do you think a determined state actor could not do MORE???

I happen to be married to a computer expert, and he has told me that our cyber security is laughable. Many of our important installations and institutions - like the air traffic control station east of LA; our fleet of cruisers and littorals; banks and hospitals, credit card processing centers and business servers - still run on Microsoft. MICROSOFT! for god's sake. I was working with our IT department, and learned that they have not patched our server software since it was loaded .... many years ago. that was the same problem as at Equifax. Security-wise, they're as solid as swiss cheese.

Quote:
"Just to recap, the Russians didn’t just supply performance-enhancing drugs to scores of athletes. We’ve seen that act before. This time it constructed an actual building in Sochi next to the laboratory that tested athlete samples. It then drilled a small hole in the shared wall. Each night after the lab closed, it had workers on either side pass clean samples in and dirty samples out.- WITCHY

WHO CARES??? Seriously! You've got to be one twisted sister to obsess about shit like that!

Let's assume that Russia can do everything horrible that you imagine that they can.

I think they probably can, too. (And BTW, so can we.)

But they haven't.

Why not? And trust me, it's not because our cybersecurity is so great!

****

WISHY, I'm sorry but you CLEARLY don't have a clue about cybersecurity or nuclear options and you're just as wrong about me. So why don't you throttle down?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

WISHIMAY

Friday, February 9, 2018 4:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You've got to be one twisted sister to obsess about shit like that!

Let's assume that Russia can do everything horrible that you imagine that they can.

WISHY, I'm sorry but you CLEARLY don't have a clue about cybersecurity or nuclear options and you're just as wrong about me.

And you have to be a complete and total idio..

Oh, wait....Crazy

We already covered that.

It's not the cyber security they are concerned about. If it has gotten to THAT POINT then the CIA and FBI and the other half dozen alphabet soup agencies haven't done their job. I read all the time about things that have been thwarted that don't make the general news, so despite your "genius" husband, there are things that you don't know about going on. He may know computers, but he isn't "in the know" if neither one of you thinks Russia is a threat.

If they AREN'T a threat, why obsess over nuclear war???
Uh huh. Right.

I'm heading to the store now, and won't be in most of tomorrow, so don't bother. I'm done with you.

SIGNYM

Friday, February 9, 2018 4:58 AM

Quote:
I read all the time about things that have been thwarted that don't make the general news= WISHY

From your lofty vantage point as the sick housewife of an Asperger's coal miner in Bummphuck, Indianna? Well, what ARE your sources, sweetie? Have a personal line to Bremmer, do you? It's not that I think you're lying or anything, but ... LINKS PLEASE.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

SIGNYM

Friday, February 9, 2018 7:19 PM

Okie dokie! No links from WISHY!

WISHY, I was TRYING to be nice when I was answering you, but you thought that you could be an unrelenting asshole? Next time you want to uncork the nasty, just be aware that others can right back atcha. I don't know if you thought you were "defending" yourself, but YOU crossed the line into being the bully. You might want to think about that.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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