Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Jun 13, 2008, 06:11AM

Air Force Loses Track Of Nuclear Weapons

Twice over the last year the U.S. Air Force has just kind of mixed up where nuclear weapon components are sent, including flying a bomber over the country with live nukes. Woops. Well in a refreshing show of accountability for a Bush administration agency, the guys in charge have been fired, even though the White House didn't have anything to do with it.

The more unbelievable screw-up was that a B-52 bomber was allowed to fly over United States soil in August - mistakenly armed with six nuclear missiles.

But in a show of leadership all too rare in Washington these days, Defense Secretary Robert Gates accepted the resignations of both the Air Force secretary and the Air Force chief of staff in an unprecedented double-firing after an exhaustive investigation revealed the Air Force has serious flaws in control and accountability.

This administration has gone out of its way to obfuscate and avoid responsibility for some of the worst governmental failures in history. The total lack of planning and the dismissal of contrary viewpoints in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has resulted in a military operation whose costs in blood and treasure seems to have no end.

Never mind the extraordinarily lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina almost three years ago that exposed the enormous shortcomings in government preparedness and the President's penchant for patronage in his appointment of horse racing judge Michael Brown to FEMA who later resigned as a scapegoat. Unfortunately, we may never know the full extent of such bungling.

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