Occasionally one comes across an editorial in a US newspaper that almost knocks you out of your chair.
Not often does one see an editorial-like thing condemning the usual imprecations to bomb Iran because that country will eventually launch an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States.
How did the sane person get a permissions slip to opine?
Barry Kissin of the Frederick News Post writes:
I just read “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” by Daniel Pipes, visiting fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution of Stanford University. When I first read the title, I was certain this had to be satirical. It’s not! His first point: “[Obama’s]counterterrorism record barely passes the laugh test.
It continues:
Pipes then points out that the way for Obama to consolidate popular support is to act tough, you know, start another war. Pipes follows with the polls (Zogby, Pew, Los Angeles Times, Fox News) that all show that a definite majority of Americans favor “using the [U.S.] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon.”
How about this from Pipes: “Eventually, [Iran] could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country.” And: “Taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities … would require few ‘boots on the ground’ and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.” And: “Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year … ” And the clincher: “[T]he chance to do good and do well is fleeting. As the Iranians improve their defenses and approach weaponization, the window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now … “
However, Kissin’s final line is most surprising. It is something most editors simply would not allow into a newspaper in 2010.
This is subhuman idiocy. It is also part of a long-standing pattern of criminal manipulation of the frightened and very misinformed.
By contrast, Pipes’ material immediately gets wide duplication around the country, also immediately flying into the Jerusalem Post.
“I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear and whose policies I work against,” he writes. “But here is a way for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the US and its allies.”
When the electromagnetic pulse crazy/bomb Iran lobby launches a sally — which is does once every few months, the last one petering out in September at the Values Voter summit — it always does so with perniciously admirable efficiency.
Everyone gets on the same page and makes a push into the opinion sections of US and foreign newspapers. And it always works.
In addition, the Cult of EMP Crazy lobby always comes up with a new catastrophic meme to sell the story of Iranian-launched electromagnetic pulse doom.
Usually, it has been the story that the US will be hurled back to the time of horse and buggy transportation, water drawn from the creek and shitting in out houses or trenches filled with lime.
Now, however, there’s a new flavor of Gotterdammerung.
“EMP attack, our version of Haiti quake,” trumpeted Clifford May for the Scripps Howard News Service very recently.
He writes, and this isn’t satire:
President Obama has pledged $100 million to help Haiti recover from its recent earthquake. By coincidence, that’s precisely the amount that the [mumble] recommends be spent on measures it estimates would limit the damage resulting from an EMP event by 60 to 70 percent.
This is delivered in an essay which, as must be the case, brings up the Bomb Iran lobby’s favorite story:
Think of a blackout, but one of indefinite duration — because we have no plan for recovery and could expect little or no help from abroad.
The EMP commission also reported that Iran — which is feverishly working to acquire nuclear weapons — has conducted tests in which it launched missiles and exploded warheads at high altitudes. And the CIA has translated Iranian military journals in which EMP attacks against the U.S. are explicitly discussed.
Might Iran’s rulers orchestrate such an attack if and when they acquire a nuclear capability?
For regular readers of DD blog and longtime observers of the the Washington DC Doom Club, May was warning about anthrax just in November.
“A scenario perhaps even more frightening: terrorists using biological weapons, setting off epidemics of smallpox, Ebola virus or other hemorrhagic fevers; a crop duster spreading 10 pounds of anthrax causing more deaths than in World War II.”
Alert readers will notice May always resorts to writing that potential enemy strikes will cause more casualties than America suffered in World War II.
On electromagnetic pulse attack by Iran, our equivalent of the Haiti quake , May writes:
When you consider that such an event — whether naturally occurring or a “man-caused disaster??? — could cause trillions of dollars in damage and claim more lives than were lost in World War II …
Readers will have also noted that it’s not really a coincidence that Dan Pipes’ Bomb Iran/EMP doom essay also ran in the National Review.
It’s what’s called a rigging. And one can’t help but applaud the EMP Crazy lobby’s talent for it. They’re really good.
In today’s Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, often called ‘the Short Count’ behind closed doors, if he is called at all, writes about how a neocon thinks the Obama administration can save and revitalize the country.
Mr. Obama is floundering as he tries to reset his presidency on economics. Defense is sacrosanct. Either taxes go up, or entitlements go down, or both. On Capitol Hill, it’s still burned toast for the president.
For centuries, leaders faced with insuperable domestic problems found escape in foreign distractions. In some cases, the distractions occurred suddenly and fortuitously, such as World War II, which started in Europe and pulled America out of the Great Depression.
President Obama isn’t looking for such a distraction, but others have no pangs illuminating what they think is the way out of the “clueless in Washington” dilemma. Right-wing scholar-activist Daniel Pipes, a neocon icon, could not be more blunt: President Obama can “save” his presidency by bombing Iran. The fact that this also could cost him the presidency is not deemed worthy of discussion.
Continuing:
“Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. It would have the advantage of sidelining health care, push Republicans to work with Democrats, make Tea Party-ers jump for joy, conservatives and neoconservatives would swoon ecstatically.”
In 2003, President George H.W. Bush appointed Mr. Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
And what better way to promote peace than to advocate bombing. Even the President can get behind that in America.
So what else is there? Electromagnetic pulse crazy, that’s what!
To reinforce the war party’s arguments, Mr. Pipes also says that “the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran” could eventually “launch an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the U.S., utterly devastating the country.” His detractors dismiss EMP alarmism as flimflam. But they are wrong. EMP is a very real concern of those who ponder future asymmetrical threats.
To summarize: One would be hard-pressed to imagine a bigger instance in which a group of people offer themselves up for deserved ridicule.
If a thing is backed up by hard science [like global warming or evolution], the Republican party denies its existence. If, however … something [is] rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is … not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, [like electromagnetic pulse doom], the GOP extreme right believes in it very strongly.
And so The Short Count writes, repeating the electromagnetic pulse crazy/bomb Iran lobby’s favorite script of doom:
One Scud-type nuclear missile, fired from the cargo hold of a freighter off the East Coast, set to explode 75 miles up, could fry everything electrical in one-third of the United States, from every cell phone and computer to aircraft, trains, vehicles, elevators, and the entire government, including the Pentagon.
Not only does a strong majority — 57, 52, 58, 61, and 61 percent in these five polls — already favor using force, but after a strike Americans will presumably rally around the flag, sending that number much higher.
Fourth, if the U.S.limited its strike to taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities and did not attempt any regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground??? and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.
DD had missed this but it’s ably pointed out by Don Emmerich here.
Concerned about EMP attack closing the guns & ammo shop early? Look at the bright side: It would end the creep toward socialism and healthcare reform.
If a thing is backed up by hard science and poses a real danger for everyone on the planet, [like global warming], the Republican party denies its existence. If, however, the threat is something rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is something not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, [like electromagnetic pulse doom], the GOP believes in it very strongly.
So it was written earlier this week in a piece on how the Republican Party has taken years to ensure that it has the vote of every single person concerned about devastating electromagnetic pulse attack.
It is a voting demographic entirely lost to the Democrat Party.
“In recent weeks, I have attended two lectures that discussed what could be the greatest existential threat to the U.S: EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, attacks,” wrote Brett Joshpe at the American Spectator on July 1. Upon logon, the publication shoots a pop-up at you, one featuring comedian, actor, global-warming denier and non-believer in evolution, Ben Stein. That would cover all the important bases.
“Although an EMP attack would utilize conventional nuclear weapons, it is an infrequently discussed aspect of our nuclear policy, and one for which we are woefully unprepared,” continued the Spectator lede.
If [the threat of electromagnetic pulse doom] is not enough to wake up members of Congress and a seemingly unaware public, then recent activity by American adversaries should,” Joshpe warned. “The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Russia, China, and other countries have ‘penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.’ ”
First, Carlini quotes from ol’ DD without crediting (I’m sure he didn’t mean to).
“If you read some of the extremists from both sides, you get a range of comments. For example:”
New America paranoids have a very special flavor of craziness. It’s the belief that the country will be devastated by an electromagnetic pulse attack and not enough is being done to combat the grave threat.
Then he quotes from one of the first ranks of the EMP crazy side — the Heritage Foundation — which does get a credit.
Since it’s the stock EMP crazy rubbish though, it doesn’t count much. All EMP nutter stuff is written the same, tolerating no deviance from the script’s numbing repetition.
As proof, from the Heritage Foundation piece’s first graf:
A major threat to America has been largely ignored by those who could prevent it. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could wreak havoc on the nation’s electronic systems—shutting down power grids, sources, and supply mechanisms.
Yeah, yeah, heard it, been there, broken record.
But back to Carlini, who opines that EMP attack could cost the country more than a few ‘TARPs’. He writes plaintively:
There is a time for fear mongering and a time to wake up to the facts. Now is the time to wake up to the facts. The media should be covering EMP bombs rather than the latest political sex scandal.
DD has a suggestion: More electromagnetic pulse doom news, less Jacko!
Alert readers may have sussed that the current spurt from electromagnetic pulse nutters derives some perspiration and inspiration from North Korean missile testing. Lost, however, is the reality that North Korea’s atomic tests have been fizzles, although the more recent one was less of a failure.
North Korea, it seems, just can’t get things quite right. It carefully prepares the stage, explodes its bomb … and then western analysts spoil the party.
Nevertheless, it has spurred talk of electromagnetic pulse attack and news stories in South Korea on the government planning for the same.
“South Korea plans to improve defenses by 2014 against nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks that could devastate power grids and electronic systems,” reported the Korea Herald this weekend.
The ministry announced a 178 trillion won ($141 billion) mid-term defense plan for 2010-14, aimed to bolster response to North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
The military will spend about 100 billion won to ready measures to shield strategic assets from a possible EMP strike from North Korea. About 6 billion won has been earmarked to fund the project design in next year’s budget.
No electromagnetic pulse doom abatement plan would be complete without the purchase of American arms to seek out and destroy an enemy’s weapons:
“The Defense Ministry also said yesterday it would purchase U.S. high-altitude unmanned spy aircraft called ‘Global Hawk’ in 2015 … U.S. bunker-busting bombs capable of destroying underground enemy targets will be introduced next year, officials said.”
And here’s even more from yet another handful of EMP loons at the Heritage Foundation. Yes, at Heritage they just can’t repeat the same script enough. You’re just not listening people! Ninety percent of Americans could die!
In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That’s how long it would take for an enemy ballistic missile launched from the other side of the world to hit the United States. If it carried and detonated a nuclear weapon high over the center of the country, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would literally fry the nation’s electrical grid and all of the circuitry that powers our homes, businesses, hospitals, phones, cars, planes, traffic lights, ATMs, water supplies, and anything else not “hardened” against such attacks. The EMP Commission chairman has testified that, within just one year of such an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation and disease.
What’s the answer? Spend more on missile defense. Stop funding those parasitic social welfare/entitlement programs. Stop wasting money improving fuel efficiency by trying to get ‘clunkers’ off the road! More EMP attack abatement, dammit!
The EMP crazy lobby also has videos.
Here are a couple featuring William Forstchen. For the first, on Fox, he declares North Korea to be fully capable of imposing electromagnetic doom on the US.
The second is an excerpt from “Coast to Coast,” a famous radio show devoted to UFO kooks.
And here’s a home video on how to protect your stuff from EMP doom. Put those old ammunition cans to good use.
And here is another dude from the EMP lobby, RP Eddy, also on Fox News.
Here’s a video staging of how EMP doom would occur, your bank account kaput, our country sent back to a pre-industrial age, a living American nightmare. It’s put together by defense hawk and EMP crazy Frank Gaffney, of the Center for Security Policy.
Electromagnetic pulse crazy eminence grise Newt Gingrich, on Fox News. Mark Sanford, pre-news of Argentine love frenzy, dragged in, too.
The Delilah Bomb, because it would steal our strength, like she stole Samson’s. Welcome to the 1880s!
“Contrary to media reports, it is not true that an EMP attack from a typical strategic weapon would completely shut down the electronics within a country. First, the effect is statistical in nature – some systems will not notice the pulse at all while identical counterparts will be affected. Second, the most likely effect from an EMP attack is ‘upset’ rather than destruction …”
Oddly, found here. Indicating the chorus of busted GOP wristwatches is occasionally interrupted by someone quoting from an actual expert source.
“Brief analysis shows that our computerized, electronically-dependent society offers any rogue nation a perfect target: an EMP-vulnerable power grid susceptible of a sucker punch to the heart of our infrastructure,” writes a columnist at the star journal for right-wing crackpots, Human Events.
The electromagnetic pulse attack lobby is now exclusively the property of the GOP. It’s a dumping ground for a rich a variety of Republican crazies, a constituency which DD mapped for many years. Like those who believe global warming to be a hoax, the Republican right has electromagnetic pulse fear all locked up.
If one thinks about this paradox, it has a neatly confounding internal anti-logic.
If something is backed up by hard science and poses a real danger for everyone on the planet, the Republican party denies its existence. If, however, the threat is something rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is something not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, the GOP believes in it very strongly.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman characterizing GOP attitudes towards global warming: You could call this crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists.
“The nightmare scenario of [EMP attack] is this: A rogue nation like North Korea or a stateless terrorist like Bin Laden gets hold of a nuclear weapon and decides not to drive it into a large city but rather to launch it on a Scud-type missile straight into the atmosphere from a barge off the East Coast,” wrote one brilliant theoretician at Slate a couple years ago.
“In fact, [a congressionally chartered commission] discovered that knowledge about EMP is widespread in such places as: China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia,” wrote defense hawk and EMP crazy Frank Gaffney for the Washington Times, also a couple of years ago.
“Several of these nations, and perhaps terrorists that they sponsor, could launch a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a ship – the sort of attack that poses an especially grave threat to the United States.”
You see, EMP crazy theory has always been immortal Fortress American paranoid voodoo, crap — in other words, a threat which can be glued on anyone: teen hackers, Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea, Iran, al Qaeda, plus miscellaneous other suspects and a half dozen enemies we have yet to find and publicly vilify, like maybe you.
“There is reason to believe the Iranian regime is working toward [an EMP] capability that could destroy America as we know it,” wrote Gaffney in the same opinion piece. He was citing an old GOP stalwart and infamous kook, now run out of Congress and mostly forgotten, Curt Weldon from southeast Pennsylvania.
“One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude — to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States — would create an EMP ‘overlay’ that triggers a continent-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation, and communications infrastructure … Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish … We most likely would never recover from the blow,” wrote famous Newt Gingrich, also a card-carrying electromagnetic pulse attack crazy, in March, here.
“The incentive to attack America through EMP is high because the cost to America would be catastrophic,” confirms Kathryn Gaines at Human Events.
“If America were hit with an EMP over the course of one year 90% of Americans would be dead. America would be reduced to third world status,” she adds.
Quite naturally, it is now the Democratic administration’s fault that not enough has been done to defend against electromagnetic attack.
“The current administration is failing to imagine, and so resists planning for an EMP attack,” concludes Gaines. “The government is failing in its primary task of protecting the citizens.”
The daily dishwater on cyberwar, this time from the Times of London. “If you’re not worried, you have not been paying attention,” warns the writer.
“[Cyberwar] would be like being teleported back to the 1970s,” it is said. “Even a minor conflict could slow the global Internet to a crawl. So cyber-war is a bit like nuclear war, in that even a minor outbreak threatens everyone’s life and welfare.”
Is your life threatened when you cannot log on to Twitter? Well, OK, that’s a trick question. We already know that the upper class swells on CNN and in newspaper features sections wouldn’t be able to go on with life.
OK, ok, but you’d quickly starve during an all out cyberwar. That’s for sure. The local supermarket with all the fancy signs wouldn’t sell you food and it certainly wouldn’t give you a dollar off on all those things when you punch in your telephone number. And I bet your cable digital TV and phone wouldn’t work either, just like in that movie where Bruce Willis as John McClane battles the annoying cyberterrorist who used to work for the Pentagon.
That was a good movie. The annoying cyberterrorist had a really hot chick who could kickbox as his henchwoman.
Anyway, cyberwar will be so bad you’ll have to find your own corner market, one not connected to the Internet, for your fortified wines.
So, what to do when the nuclear apocalypsecyberwar begins?
“[One expert] recounts what one of the staff told him about how NATO would react to a [new] cyber-strike,” reports the Times. “Overwhelming response: a single, gigantic counterstrike that cripples the target and warns anyone else off launching a future cyber-war. He isn’t sure what it would look like, but the show of force he envisages is so severe that the only thing he can compare it to is a nuclear attack.”
Just for amusement, DD has hit the Wayback Machine and retrieved similar quotes from 2001, when another excitable fellow — an alleged cyberwar expert by the name of James Adams — was often in the news about total cyberwar.
“Y2K will illustrate what an attack could do… Anybody who says after January 1, 2000 that this [threat of cyber attack] is all just made up I think is an idiot.” From the University of Southern California’s Networker magazine, winter 98-99.
Pentagon hackers employed in Eligible Receiver “did more than the massed might of Saddam Hussein’s armies, than the Nazis in the Second World War.” — from Techweek, 1999.
“”One need only look at today’s headlines to recognize industry’s need for iDefense … iDefense draws upon an unparalleled understanding of the critical infrastructure and a keen awareness of the growing threats and vulnerabilities confronting industry to provide its clients a timely and truly unique service.” — from the PR Newswire, June 1999.
“Which brings us to the final rung on the escalatory ladder: the virtual equivalent of nuclear deployment. I offer as illustration Eligible Receiver.” From a speech, “The Future of War,” delivered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, June 2000.
“Consider the recent LoveLetter virus … The effect? The equivalent of a modest
war … No terrorist organization in history has ever achieved such damage with a single attack. Few small wars cost so much … The LoveLetter attack was indeed the first real taste of terrible things to come.” Also from “The Future of War.”
“Estimates of the cost of [the LoveLetter virus] to the United States range from $4 billion to $15 billion — or the equivalent, in conventional war terms, of the carpet-bombing of a small American city.” From Foreign Affairs magazine, May-June 2001.
“And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased,” wrote Paul Krugman.
He’s pointing out the obvious: The two recent assassinations conducted by white extremists uncomfortably aligns with the pop-eyed rhetoric emitted daily by the GOP.
Predictably, Krugman singles out Rush Limbaugh and actor Jon Voight, who has always been a notorious kook. However, the “rising star” is Glenn Beck, someone DD looked at back on the old blog late last year.
Beck’s Friday show was devoted to the outside-the-box thinking of a bunch of nuts white guys now on the fringes of society (Gerald Celente, Tim Strong, Stephen Moore, Michael Scheuer, Ben Sherwood and someone named Thor. Really.)
For lack of a better term, call them Turner Heevahavas. The first part of the name is taken straight from the pre-eminent piece of hate conspiracy lit written in the US, “The Turner Diaries.” In case you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a feverish book on the catastrophic collapse of the United States, allegedly brought about by Jews, socialists, liberals, blacks and college professors. Christian white identity freedom fighters band together to fight the government, hang everyone on their enemies list, and destroy all tyranny with atomic bombs.
Put a nicer face on it and the tone, conspiracy thought and attitude of “The Turner Diaries” is now found in the … GOP right. More generally, one can find it daily on blogs of the ilk of the Southeast Pennsy Biblical Neo-Nazi
Too many of the neo-Nazi white identity screeds from “The Turner Diaries” are unfortunately now mirrored by GOP dogma: the constant rabid complaint about socialism — of others, not the white southern base, getting something they don’t deserve.
To the GOP, the masses are hypnotized and oppressed by Obama. In “The Turner Dairies,’ the same things were credited to ‘the System.’
