5 to be fired for Minot nuclear mistake

[unhappycamper]

5 to be fired for Minot nuclear mistake
By Pauline Jelinek - The Associated Press[br />Posted : Thursday Oct 18, 2007 15:17:21 EDT

The Air Force is planning to fire at least five officers for an incident in which nuclear-armed missiles were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber and flown across the U.S. — the worst known violation of nuclear security rules in decades.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is scheduled to be briefed Friday on the plan to fire the officers and other results of a six-week Air Force probe into the Aug. 30 incident. No one noticed for hours that the weapons were on the bomber, several Defense Department officials said.

One said the investigation found long-established procedures for handling the munitions were not followed and it recommends that five or more officers be relieved of their duties.

~snip~

In an embarrassing incident that lawmakers called very disturbing, the B-52 mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles flew from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., with the missiles mounted under one of the bomber’s wings.

The officials declined to say what procedures were not followed. But the mishandling in August would have required not one mistake, but a whole series of lapses by a number of people in order for armed weapons — as opposed to unarmed ones — to be inadvertently taken out of a storage bunker, mounted on the B-52, misidentified on a flight manifest and flown across the country for some three hours without anyone noticing.

The plane also sat on a runway with the missiles for hours after arriving in Louisiana before the breach was known — meaning a total of 36 hours passed before the missiles were properly secured, officials have said.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_minot_firings_071018/

[RC]

1. So when are we going to fire Cheney for all his mistakes?

And you just have to know Cheney had a hand in this too.