Monday, March 30, 2009

Newt Gingrich: A Single Nuke Could Destroy America

on the slight chance anyone reading here doesn't already realize this. . .

from Newsmax:

Newt Gingrich: A Single Nuke Could Destroy America

Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:23 PM

By: Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen

There is a sword of Damocles over our heads. It is a threat that is real but has been all but ignored.

On February 3rd, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit can also drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than forty-five minutes.

Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States given our retaliatory power. A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim:

One small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can, in fact, destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a by-product of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.

This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.

Even as the new Administration plans to spend trillions on economic bail outs, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the reluctance by the United States to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?

Fifty years ago it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit could also serve as an ICBM.

Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.

The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation. . .can now at last achieve their dream of our annihilation in a matter of minutes.

Those who claim that there is little to fear from Iran or North Korea because “at best” they will only have one or two nuclear weapons, ignore the catastrophic level of threat we now face from just “a couple” of nuclear weapons.

Again: 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 continental-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation and communications infrastructure.

Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish. The impact has been likened to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina. Some studies estimate that 90% of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement and medical infrastructures collapse.

It is a blow we most likely would never recover from.

Two things need to be done now and without delay.

1. Make clear in the strongest of terms that if a rocket is launched by either Iran or North Korea on a trajectory headed towards the territory of the United States, we will shoot it down. The risk of not doing so is beyond acceptable. And if they construe this as an act of war, so be it, for they fired the first shot. The risk of sitting back for thirty minutes and praying it is not an EMP strike is beyond acceptable, beyond rational on our part.

2. Funding for EMP defense must be a top national priority. To downgrade or halt our missile defense program, which after twenty five years of research is at last becoming viable, would be an action of criminal negligence.

Surely, with such a threat confronting us, a fair and open debate, with full public access and the setting aside of partisan politics, is in order. In the meantime, a policy must be stated today that we will indeed shoot down any missile aimed towards the United States that is fired by Iran or North Korea. America’s survival, your survival, and your family’s survival might very well depend on it.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. William Forstchen is the author of "One Second After," an account of a town struggling to survive after an EMP weapon is used against the United States. Epaminondas wrote about this book & provides a link to an interview with the author here Just got my copy on Saturday. --MR

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

To bring this about, Abbasi said, "There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them." This Revolutionary Guard officer continued by saying, "Iran's missiles are now ready to strike at Western targets, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Ali Khamenei, we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations."

http://www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/2/3626

revereridesagain said...

There is also growning concern over the possibility of sunspot activity around 2012 severe enough to disrupt grids. For both reasons the government should act on strengthening the infrastructure against this kind of disaster, natural or, "man-made"*cough*Islamofascist*cough*. But no, they're to busy revving up the AGW juggernaut.

revereridesagain said...

The 1859 event was a flare, actually. It touched off a magnetic storm so intense that the aurora was seen in Cuba and telegraph wires got fried all over the place. It is a rare but recorded and observable phenomenon, unlike AGW.

Christine said...

And at this time, Iran and NK are sitting next to a missile and the WH is barely blinking an eye.

Iran and NK could take over the world and nobody would do anything to stop them.

Of course we are all mere minions here. Beholden to our masters in the WH. Who really have nothing to worry about, since they have their bomb shelters and planes to take them away.

Christine said...

BERLIN (JTA) -- A high-level Iranian official said that Iran will not dialogue with the United States until Iran has a nuclear bomb.

Remarks by the secretary general of Iranian Hezbollah were reported in Berlin from a March 26 symposium on "Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah: Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial."

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi reportedly told the Iranian state news agency Shabestan that Iran "will arrange contacts to America as soon as we build our own bomb."

"If one is not allowed to build an atom bomb, then no contacts are allowed. And if there are to be contacts, then it will be necessary to build the atom bomb," Kharrazi said, according to a translation from the original Farsi, reported by Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a senior research fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy.

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/29/1004064/iranian-official-no-dialogue-until-build-bomb