The Military Times brings word of a screw-up in the United States Air Force that has already cost a squadron leader his command and sent shocked headlines around the Web.Uh, now remind me again, why are we all presuming that this was NOT an episode of 24???
...
The good news: the plane did not embark on some rogue mission straight out of TV’s “24,” instead landing safely and without the intervention of Jack Bauer at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
The bad news: the weapons were missing from Minot during the three-hour flight, and no alarms sounded.
...
The military immediately sent alerts up the chain of command, including President Bush and Gen. Peter Pace , the chairman of the joint chiefs, Agence France Presse said.
And the Air Force launched an immediate investigation “to find the cause of the mistake and figure out how it could have been prevented,” the Military Times said. It evidently faulted the squadron commander, as a fairly damning quote — “the Air Force has lost all confidence in his ability to handle nuclear weapons” — suggests in an NBC News report.
[ cf Loose Nukes: Warheads in the Sky ]
I mean, let's be serious here for a moment? We're suppose to believe that there were Nukes Randomly Wandering around, not merely for the flight time from Minot to Beale, but from the weapons repository to the combat aircraft....
All of which is clearly within a Jack Bauer moment, and would clearly justify him savagely torturing anyone who may or may not have been involved or known to any of the possible members of the Rouge Op....
Hum, did the Prez put down his reading about the exciting story of our friend the Billy Goat??? Or was he even less concerned that this might just have been one more Iranian Flying Saucer Attack, like on 09/11 when all of the whole world changed!!!!
But clearly boys and girls we all feel far safer than ever before because we know that Jack Bauer is willing to torture someone's little daughter in the hope that this will force someone to tell us where the nukes are....
Yeah!!! We RULE!!!!
Or is there something structurally wrong about hoping that leaving our national security in the hands of fictional TV characters may be systemically a gooder reason to privatize the Zombie Hunting Industry so that we can all sleep safer....