{"id":11588,"date":"2015-08-29T07:23:57","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T12:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11588"},"modified":"2015-08-29T07:23:57","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T12:23:57","slug":"pushing-the-edge-on-nuclear-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11588","title":{"rendered":"Pushing the Edge on Nuclear War"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/08\/28\/pushing-the-edge-on-nuclear-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pushing the Edge on Nuclear War<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong>\u00a0Official Washington\u2019s neocons and liberal hawks are ratcheting up tensions again over Ukraine with the goal of humiliating and even destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia \u2013 and there\u2019s no modern-day JFK to tamp down the enthusiasm, an existential risk that ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk examines.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<hr \/>\n<p>Decisions on nuclear weapons are and will remain the most important part of our quest for world security since even small mistakes or wrong actions would probably be catastrophic.\u00a0We now seem to be moving closer to the danger point of provoking their use.\u00a0So I want particularly to emphasize four points on the issues we all face and then raise a few other general considerations:<\/p>\n<p>\u2013Technical mistakes are always possible. More have happened than is generally known. In the Eisenhower administration, NORAD at least once spotted on radar a flight of geese over Iceland and went to Red Alert.\u00a0It took a critical period of minutes to recognize the cause and stand down the alert.\u00a0During that time, the danger of a missile launch or an aircraft attack was clear and present.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/kennedy_address_of_the_cuban_missile_crisis_by_nuclearwar3-d78kypy.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13162\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/kennedy_address_of_the_cuban_missile_crisis_by_nuclearwar3-d78kypy-300x236.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"President John F. Kennedy addressing the nation regarding the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some years later, a nuclear bomb was actually dropped on America (by a U.S. Air Force bomber flying where it should not have been while carrying a weapon it should not have been carrying).\u00a0 Fortunately, the firing mechanism was faulty and the bomb did not go off.\u00a0Had it detonated, in the confusion SAC and other formations would have been hard to stop from reacting to the supposed attacker.\u00a0These are just two of many incidences of dangerous times.<\/p>\n<p>I fear that we are again heading into dangerous times.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pushing the Edge on Nuclear War Exclusive:\u00a0Official Washington\u2019s neocons and liberal hawks are ratcheting up tensions again over Ukraine with the goal of humiliating and even destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia \u2013 and there\u2019s no modern-day JFK to tamp down the enthusiasm, an existential risk that ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk examines. Decisions on nuclear weapons are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1372,8530,561,8531,581,2583,694,827,834,862,865,6962],"class_list":["post-11588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-jfk","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-neocons","tag-norad","tag-nuclear-war","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-russia","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-william-polk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11589,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11588\/revisions\/11589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}