Matthew Yglesias hears the craziest goddamn thing

[mmcirvin]

You want to hear stupid? THIS is stupid, especially if true:

At this point, I think I need to bring up what one might call the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time. This story came to me last week from an anonymous individual who I would say is in a position to know about such things. According to this person, the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran. The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent. By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying. In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so. Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we'd just hit.

Because radiation's radiation, right? It's all the same! Nobody could possibly tell where it came from! And if the estimated yield seems to be a few kilotons, I guess a wizard did it.

I agree that this probably isn't going to happen, but as he says, the mere idea that somebody in the OVP thinks this makes any sense is pretty scary, like, daisy-girl-ad scary.

(Conventional airstrikes, timed just before the midterm elections, on the other hand, I wouldn't count out. And, by the way, that would also be stupid, especially if they are somehow intended to bring about regime change.)

Comments

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought the bunker-busting nukes was the dumbest thing I'd ever hear about nuclear weapons.

I don't know what kind of radiation monitoring systems are in place in this region of the world, but I'll bet that within days or hours every single one would be screaming "SOME IDIOT SET OFF A FUCKING NUKE!"

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

...I can't get past the fact that the measurements needed to disprove the claim that a nuke wasn't use is on the difficulty level of an undergraduate lab exercise. As a matter of fact, I've done that lab exercise, and I thought it was great fun.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

If the American public believed things that can be proved by experiment and observation, then they'd believe in evolution and global climate change.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Evolution's an unfortunate one, but last I heard, the American public by and large does believe in anthropogenic global warming. They're way ahead of the industry denialists on that one.

[astrange.livejournal.com]

Well, there isn't an evolution movie consisting of Al Gore explaining a really big graph yet.
I see a clear opportunity.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my thoughts exactly: they're proposing that nobody in the world can do something that I could do given some college-lab equipment and a Chart of the Nuclides.

Who needs a chart?

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

We don't need to know the exact list of decay products. Big spike over 200 AMU: No nuke. Bunch of spikes around 100 AMU: Nuke.

Re: Who needs a chart?

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more of using some sort of GeLi gamma spectrometer.

But the fact that we're actually thinking of different, easy methods just goes to show how ridiculous the concept is.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this isn't one of those occasions like I read about recently in regard to discovery motions against corporations, to wit: if the company is big enough, chances are that someone has taken every possible position on something.

What's not clear here was whether the suggestion to nuke and deny was followed by a chorus of "Yes, Mister Vice President, I believe that'll work," or "Very funny, but I can't take that to the Veep."

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Indeed, as always the case with leaks of bizarre things supposedly said in closed meetings.