The Fatal Flaw
By William Thomas
WillThomas.net
3-6-7

Reporter's notebook -   While the following account is obviously hypothetical, this scenario presents a true and precise depiction of US and Israeli military vulnerabilities from Chinese-supplied microchips. So far, numerous "broken arrow" nuclear weapons accidents have not resulted in a detonation as described here. But in-flight fuel system shutdowns and accidental ordnance releases are regularly triggered by accidental electronic interference-sometimes with calamitous results (Google JEMI; see Scorched Earth by William Thomas). The raid on North Korea, the "womb room" tests, the nano-graffiti, the destruction of an advanced "Keyhole" spy satellite by a Chinese EMP, 9/11's implanted false radar returns, and the shootdown of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania are factual events-just as a White House plan to invade Iran under the guise of offering assistance for a precipitated nuclear catastrophe, and Israel's atomic response already secretly in place in Iran are likewise confirmed by multiple, trusted sources. Is anybody listening?   ­William Thomas       April 2007, Persian Gulf:.. Close off the coasts of Iran, three American attack carriers-Enterprise, Eisenhower and Stennis, as well as the marine helicopter assault ship, Boxer-are awaiting a strike order from the National Command Authority who ordered them there. Besides deploying the biggest U.S. naval fleet since the Second World War, G.W. Bush has replaced his top commanders in the Persian Gulf, appointing Admiral William Fallon as the new head of Central Command (CENTCOM) for the entire Middle East Theater of Operations. A favorite of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (the JINSA lobbyists who largely determine the neocon's agenda for Middle East dominance), besides overseeing two disastrous ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the former Navy pilot will now supervise Bush's career-capping catastrophe in Iran. After nearly three months on station, the pent-up crews, pilots and marines are exhausted from the fatigue of long watches, constant flying and-for the 'first ashore, first to die' contingent-shipboard inactivity. Everyone's nerves have been further frayed by constant calls to battle stations in drills that at any moment could turn deadly real.   USS ENTERPRISE     Deep in the Combat Information Center onboard Enterprise, the attack carrier's cigar-chewing captain is keeping a craggy eye on humming computer consoles that track everything in the surrounding sky, as well as on the sea and below its surface. With no threats on the boards, Admiral Fallon's handpicked representative would not ordinarily be here. But this day is special. Tensions are high. Provoked by the "Great Satan's" naval presence so close to its shores, Iran has been carrying on cranky for several days, issuing blistering diplomatic broadsides and redeploying its high-speed hovercraft, submarine and land-based missile forces to counter the American threat. All is proceeding according to the "Gulf of Tonkin Redux" plan cooked up by fundamentalists in Washington eager to precipitate a pretext that will allow them to complete a decade's-old plan called "Project For A New American Century". Their blueprint to disarm and "democratize" Iran is being fast-tracked before their administration ends in infamy and possible impeachment, if not incarceration. What happens next has not been entirely scripted. Suddenly one of the swabbies sings out: "Signature, sir! I've got a possible nuclear detonation at an-Bushehr. Could be the light water reactor there, sir!" They actually did it, the captain thinks. Those SEALS got ashore and did the deed. For one long moment, he isn't sure whether to be proud, or appalled. It's just like North Korea, his pattern-seeking brain supplies. He'd lost some good spec war buddies over there in the firefight that preceded a huge reported "gas explosion" that had set back Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program for years. Unaware that three drowned American frogmen are being ID'd and photographed by vomiting crewmen onboard an irradiated Iranian patrol boat, the captain figures that this time around he is probably going to lose more friends. Or maybe not. Within minutes, before Iran's stunned mullahs can react, he knows that a press release will be going worldwide from White House disinformation specialists, confirming an "unfortunate accident" at the an-Bushehr nuclear power plant.   US military ships, aircraft, ground transport and personnel deployed in the region are already en route to "assist" the Iranian government in dealing with the tragedy. Fortunately, high mountains screen Iran's "sacrificial" coastal nuclear installation from the interior of the country. Teheran and other cities have not been directly harmed by the blast though the track of the fallout cloud has yet to be precisely determined. "Confirm!" barks the captain. "Aye aye, sir." The tech is already moving the cursor on her screen. She hits the "enhance" key. But instead of identifying the mysterious bloom, the screen itself flares and goes blank. The captain bites his cigar in half. Spitting its remains to the deck, he barks, "Reboot!" Alarms blare as the nose-wrinkling odor of burning electronics fills the compartment. The tech does not look up as a senior chief empties a CO2 extinguisher into the CIC's smoking main data board. Lifting her hands from the keyboard, she announces, "It's no good, sir. It's not a software glitch. Everything must be fried." "Captain!" The OOD is using an antique sound-powered phone left over from World War II to call down to the CIC from the bridge. "We've just lost all comms and navigation systems. Everything just wentpoof!" Another hollow, disembodied voice replaces the Officer of the Deck. "Sir, damage control reports most of the ship's radio, radar, phone and computer systems are offline. Maybe 50 percent. Maybe 90 percent. They are still assessing. Preliminary damage reports indicate that most motherboards in all onboard CPUs onboard are" the voice hesitates in disbelief, "down." "Down? What the hell do you mean, 'down'?" the captain wants to know. "How can that be?" "They're burned out, sir." "Sir, sonar is down," shouts another rating in the CIC. "All radar is down, sir." "Goddammit!" the carrier's commander shouts back. "This cannot be happening. We are hardened for EMP. And that was a ground detonation, not an airburst. Get me Washington. Now!" "Sir, Washington is offline, sir," replies a frightened petty officer. "So are Stennis and Eisenhower. We cannot raise anyone at this time." Someone else in the CIC is waving her hand. "Captain, runners from CAG are reporting all ship's aircraft out of commission with electronics malfunctions." "What about Lucky Strike? Are they still flying a racetrack in case this thing goes haywire? Report Lucky Strike loadout and status." "Lucky Strike is armed with air-to-air, penetrators and two Bad Boy city-busters, sir. No contact with Lucky Strike. No joy at this time."   LUCKY STRIKE     "Strike lead to flight. Possible nuclear detonation two-o'clock. Range approximately six-zero miles. I've, ah lost my radar. Anybody else picking this up?" "Strike lead, Blue section. This is Brubaker. Fuel transfer pumps have shut down. Flame out! Flame out! Am ejecting!" "Strike lead! Break right! Break right! Fox one! Fox two! Inadvertent missile launch by Blue Section two. Break All fleet units, all fleet units! Be advised inadvertent hot ordnance release! Batten down! Bad Boy may have tripped safeties and self-armed for air-burst detonation." None of these transmissions leave their cockpits.   USS STENNIS     "Is the entire U.S. Navy down?" cries the captain of the attack carrier Stennis. "Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?" A marine major standing in the corner of the compartment has grasped the implications of what is happening before his navy host can process his own shock and lack of intel. There goes our standoff capability, the major thinks. With most of our supporting firepower knocked out, what the hell are we going to give our young marines in the face of human wave suicide-bomb assaults? Pistols and sabers? "CIC, bridge!" cries a voice over a sound-powered phone. "Lookouts report multiple high-speed bogeys inbound on the deck. Could be Sunburns" "Torpedoes in the water!" another voice sings out in the background. "Jesus, they're fa" The CIC blooms incandescent as the carrier explodes.   BAGHDAD     In Baghdad's Green Zone, the U.S. Army command is less than pleased to be taking orders from a squid, even if he is an admiral. As the new joke goes: "What are we having for dinner?" The standard reply is delivered with a grimace: "Calamari." Suddenly, the bustling communications center goes eerily quiet. All radio, phone and SINGAR chatter cease as the stink of burned circuitry wafts through the room. "What's happening?" a colonel demands. "Give me a SITREP." "We're down," a noncom blurts, before hastily adding, "sir." The officer looks startled. "What the hell! Are we having a Microsoft moment?" "Negative, sir. This is not a software glitch. Everything is down. We can't even get CNN!" FLORIDA     Inside CENTCOM's Florida headquarters, wall-spanning electronic maps showing the disposition of friendly and hostile forces in the Persian Gulf go blank as all airborne and satellite sensors simultaneously burn out. A technician frantically tapping his keyboard gets no response. "All birds are down, sir!" he calls out to the colonel in the charge. "We've lost intel and all comms from the TO!" The colonel's been practicing his Patton for this special moment. "Well, goddammit!" he quips, "Call al-Qaim and have someone drive over to Baghdad and see if it's still there." "Can't, sir." The colonel stops chuckling at his own wit. "What the hell do you mean, you can't?" "All sat, phone and tight data links are down, sir. Looks like a major malf of some kind" "Well, goddammit, I can see that!" the colonel thunders. "What are we supposed to do? Send them a postcard?"   TEL AVIV     Before the dirty fallout cloud has begun to flatten into an ugly anvil plume, word of Iran's nuclear detonation is flashed to the IDF high command in Tel Aviv. But those warning transmissions never leave the smoking circuit boards of their Gulf cellphones and transmitters. Like their American counterparts, the Israeli military has "hardened" all weapons systems-including aircraft, ground mobile units, and computer and communications-against any EMP surging invisibly outwards from a nuclear detonation or pulse weapon. At least they thought they were built with heavy-duty circuitry. The Israelis have also purchased most of their most critically important electronics and computer circuitry from trusted U.S. suppliers. THE PENTAGON     "Captain Revere, are you telling me that the microchips used in our most secure communications, surveillance, air, ground, space, sea and subsurface weapons systems come from Wal-Mart?" "No sir, general. Our most critical electronics components are built to milspec, as you know. These come from Taiwan, Japan and the USA. These chips are supposedly built to rigorous military specifications to handle a nuclear environment. As far as anyone knows, they're good to go. Problem is, since we lost our superconductor supremacy earlier in this century, globalization has thoroughly muddied the marketplace. Corporations like ADM, Motorola, Intel, NEC and SMIC are now outsourcing from their corporate subsidiaries and third-parties supplying low-cost chips from mainland China. With the parent company's brand on them." "That's crap, captain and you know it. We test the hell out of those chips. I've handled a circuit board for an Apache fire-control helmet. You could break bricks with it." "Those motherboards are custom-made, sir. Some of these semiconductors are even signed with their builder's artwork, just like the graffiti painted on the sides of freight trains-except these guys have contests for their personal signatures on the nano scale. That's less than one-hundredth the width of a human hair. But there are millions of other microchips installed in our systems, ranging from radios and radars to mainframe fire-control computers, flight controls and warheads that in terms of war-fighting reliability might as well come from eBay. We don't know where each one originated. And we can't check them all. I'm here because a couple of techs in a womb room running routine tests on what were supposed to be chips hardened against EMP ended up frying them. But that isn't the only bad news. The monitoring equipment set up across the room was also blown out by the same electromagnetic pulse. And that was not supposed to happen." "Okay, captain. You've made your point. A few bad chips probably do slip through from time to time. We'll just replace them if they fail." "Sir, when the techs back-engineered the fault they found that all of the chips-repeat, all of the chips received from this particular manufacturer had the same flaw. Instead of being laser-etched with the milspec equivalent of an EMP-proof 30-amp fuse, these have civilian wiring equivalent to a 3-amp fuse. As you know, general, electronics are daisy-chained. Even if 10 hardened chips soldered in series survive an EMP-and one does not-that component will fail. And there will be no replacements in theater, because all of the spares warehoused afloat or ashore will also get toasted by the same invisible pulse. Because we're talking so many embedded semiconductors wired on a nano scale, to rectify this situation each one must be inspected and recertified at a few test centers equipped with specialized gear. That cannot happen, sir. If the Iran op goes nuclear, we won't know if anything still works until we roll." "You'd better back check your intel, captain, and get back to me with a better readout. You cannot be telling me that every goddamn piece of electronics in the entire U.S. military inventory is vulnerable to an EMP burst. Hell, man. You know the President has ordered us to be prepared to use nukes against those Iranian bunkers." "That would shut us down operationally, sir. We would have saved a few bucks and lost the war. Because whether its an EP going off, a shipboard reactor failure, or an Iranian power plant going critical, in a split-second the resulting electromagnetic pulse could reduce our forces in Persia to basically throwing rocks and spears. Can you spell, Carthage?" The general glowers. "Our weapons systems, logistics and comms could also be deactivated by a deliberately thrown switch, sir." "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" "Since China has supplied most of the chips we're using in theater, the mandarins in Beijing know the specific frequencies and power densities at which they will melt. Such a pulse can be sent from a microwave battery guarding any of their considerable commercial interests in Iran. I must emphasize that we do not know whether they have such a beam weapon deployed in country. But they would be crazy not to. We do know that they have this technology and that it works. Remember that NSA spy bird that went offline, leaving us blind to that North Korea's underground nuke test in October oh-six? That was a Chinese EMP. Because it went right through the satellite, we did not have a clue what happened until we were able to backtrack the lack of significant solar activity that day. We never could prove they did it. So it wasn't an act of war. It was a demonstration. Sir." "If what you are saying is true, captain-and I am not prepared to sign off on your fairy tale-you'd better put a lid on it. Unless you have a real strong desire to visit the Aleutians."   "I read you, general. Just like Agent Orange, the experimental Gulf War I and II vaccines and the DU that's crippling our own people with radiation and contaminating wombs in five countries-including CONUS-I understand that news this bad must be kept at all costs from the people it affects most. I just don't know if I want to live with that level of betrayal, sir." "You break ranks on this, captain and I will personally see to it that you have an extended opportunity to live with your betrayal. In Leavenworth. Dismissed!"   TEL AVIV     Inside the IDF headquarters, every status light on the Israeli's Persian Gulf boards has gone out. AWACS, JSTARS-everything flying overhead, providing a real-time overview of what is going on has gone darker than doom. Even cellphones in the region have stopped working. The ops center has fallen spookily quiet. And no one knows why. The only people reporting "from the field" are staff turning away from the windows to report the absence of fireballs over Tel Aviv. So far. Among Israel's top military and civilian command, with flight-times for incoming Iranian missiles measured in minutes, the complete failure of in theater recon, command, and control leaves little time to respond. NMCC     The heart and brains of the United States war machine-the Pentagon's National Military Command Center-is reliving the morning of September 11, 2001, when false radar returns from bogus blips planted by several simultaneous air defense drills ordered held that day by Dick Cheney under the President's authorization spread consternation and confusion through the U.S. air defense network. (See Days of Deception by William Thomas.) This time, the Persian Gulf Theater of Operations has inexplicably dropped off the electronic wall map as frantic phone calls, radio and telex messages fade like shouts into an empty well. Then partial vision returns as a bright and terrible flower blossoms off the coast of Iran. A naval aide equipped with a wireless headset quickly briefs an air force bird colonel. "Colonel, one of NOAA's EOS birds has just come up over the Middle East and is sending back these Earth observation images from less than two-hundred miles overhead. (pause) It's a confirmed nuclear detonation, sir. As you can see, most of Task Force One has been wrecked or sunk. Because of the close quarters of the shallow Persian Gulf, they were unable to disperse in NuDet formation to limit the effects of a nuclear detonation. (pause) That zoom-in could be the listing hulk of Eisenhower, sir." "Dear God, son. The President was right. The Iranians had nukes all along. And now they've used them. Go to DEFCON THREE! Get Cheyenne Mountain on the horn. Order them to prepare to launch a counterstrike as soon as we receive go code authentication from National Command Authority." The aide's face goes white. "Yes sir." A three-star is already on a secure link to the White House situation room. "Yes sir, Mr. President. All communications are down and we have a confirmed nuclear strike in the Gulf. The Iranians have taken out at least one carrier task force, including escorts. Do you want us to respond in kind?' The reply is a repeat of the 9/11 shootdown of Flight 93: "You bet." DOMINOES     Israel's weapons and communications links remain completely unaffected by the distant EMP burst in Iran. Orders immediately go out to scramble 25 F-15s from the 69th Squadron based at Hatzerim Air Base in the Northern Negev, about 50 miles south of Tel Aviv. Their destination: "downtown" Teheran. But it takes time to arm a dozen of these Ra'am (Thunder) strike fighters with 20-kiloton nuclear weapons delivered from a secure bunker to the flight line. Before those jets start engines, the Pentagon, fearing the loss of all capitol ships in the Gulf and unable to assess what fresh mayhem might be ensuing in Iraq, initiates a response.   Even before word of the American missile launches reaches Tel Aviv, Israel activates its own doomsday scenario. With authenticated military commands green-lighted by a grim-faced Ehud Olmert, nuclear warheads smuggled into Iran from two-man miniature submarines that had earlier made their way beneath the Caspian Sea to bury black-market Russian MIRVs throughout the Islamic Republic-are command-detonated by order of Israel's prime minister. Moment later, nuclear-tipped American ICBMs impact Teheran, just as that country's EMP-hardened warheads arrive over Dimona and downtown Tel Aviv. In a heartbeat, the personal dramas and distractions that preoccupy most of our daily lives become as irrelevant as a dimly remembered dream. Full reality will take a while longer to replace all of our virtual constructs. When it does, the world we've known and taken for granted will vanish forever. # # # [<http://www.willthomas.net/>link here for original, fully documented article]   The author is a former member of the U.S. Navy Reserves who resigned his commission over the mass murder of civilians during the Vietnam War. He later served with a three-man Gulf Environmental Response Team in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during and immediately after Desert Storm. His film of that experience, "Eco War" won the 1991 U.S. Environmental Film Festival award.     "WE ARE POWERLESS ONLY IN OUR IGNORANCE"

Disclaimer






MainPage
http://www.rense.com


This Site Served by TheHostPros