Yesterday, New Jersey’s Democratic voters selected flamboyant Newark mayor Cory Booker as their nominee to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant when Frank Lautenberg died in June. Booker becomes Senator Booker in October, when the election is held. No Republican wins a U.S. Senate election in New Jersey, not even if he steals votes. I would have voted for Rep. Rush Holt, a scientist who’s smart, well informed, and a serious legislator, but I didn’t get the chance because I’m smart enough not to live exist in New Jersey.
Booker’s smart, possibly well informed, but he won’t be a serious legislator. He’ll be too busy giving interviews and speeches, and appearing on Rachel Maddow’s and similar show to raise his profile for 2016, when he expects to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
Maybe the bombs are secure, but if they are, they’re secure despite the way the Air Force handles them. According to the Air Force’s official press release:
The Air Force Global Strike Command Inspector General team visited Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., Aug. 5-13 to evaluate the 341st Missile Wing’s ability to execute operations while complying with nuclear surety standards.
The 341 MW received an “unsatisfactory” rating after making tactical-level errors — not related to command and control of nuclear weapons — during one of several exercises conducted during the inspection. This failure resulted in the entire inspection being graded ‘unsatisfactory.’
A failed inspection does not mean that the safety of the nation’s nuclear arsenal is at risk, AFGSC Commander Lt. Gen. Jim Kowalski said.
According to the Associated Press, Kowalski said
…a team of “relatively low-ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. He said that for security reasons he could not be specific about the team or the exercise.
“This unit fumbled on this exercise,” Kowalski said by telephone from his headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., adding that this did not call into question the safety or control of nuclear weapons at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
“Low ranking” airmen are the culprits, eh, General? Not those with higher ranks, for example guys with chickens on their shoulders? Not the commanders who are charged with making sure the low rankers don’t fumble exercises? Will the general whose command earned the “unsatisfactory” be rewarded with a reprimand or early retirement, or with another star?
I wish this were an isolated incident, but it’s not. Earlier this year, 17 Air Force officers were removed from their assignments as watch standers for nuclear armed Minuteman missiles at the missile base near Minot, North Dakota. There’s a morale problem in the missile corps, USA Today reported in June.
The incident reminds one of a night in 2007, at Minot, when an Air Force crew casually loaded six nuclear armed cruise missiles into a B-52, which then flew to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, its pilots and crew unaware of the firepower they were hauling. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had no tolerance for that sort of thing, fired the Air Force’s chief of staff and the Secretary of the Air Force following an investigation conducted by a retired admiral.
Speaking at Langley Air Force Base, Gates explained:
…there is simply no room for error in this mission. Nor is there, unfortunately, any room for second chances – especially when serious questions about the safety and security of our nuclear arsenal have been raised in the minds of the American public and in the international community.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel needs to study that speech before he lets the Air Force close the book on the failed security test at Malmstrom.