Trump Vetoes Bill to Limit US Nuclear Attacks on Yemen
Editor’s note: If only we were making this up.
Thus, VT supplies supporting documentation at the end of this article.
US President Donald Trump has vetoed a congressional resolution to end American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has so far claimed thousands of innocent lives and left the impoverished nation struggling with the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
Trump on Tuesday vetoed a bill passed by Congress to stop American military support for Saudi Arabia’s aggression on Yemen, describing the resolution as an “unnecessary,” and “dangerous attempt” to weaken his constitutional authorities.
The US president also claimed that the attempt by Congress would endanger the lives of American citizens and troops.
The Tuesday’s move was the second veto of Trump’s presidency.
The legislation was originally introduced in the Senate and co-sponsored by presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, invoking the War Powers resolution, a federal law that gives Congress the power to check the American head of state when committing the country to an armed conflict.
Backers of the resolution argued that US involvement in Yemen violated the constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, should determine when the country goes to war.
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Trump had earlier vowed to veto the bill despite appeals by congressmen to send a strong message to Riyadh. Congress passed the resolution following strong criticism of Saudi Arabia’s deadly air raids on civilian targets in Yemen.
The US has provided billions of dollars of arms to the Saudi-led coalition waging a devastating war in Yemen. Members of Congress have expressed concern about the thousands of civilians killed in coalition airstrikes since the conflict began nearly four years ago.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the former Saudi-sponsored government back to power. Riyadh has failed to fulfill its objectives.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of about 56,000 Yemenis.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories.
The UN has warned that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the worst global famine in more than 100 years.
Appendix I
How Israel Was Busted Nuking Yemen
By
Ian Greenhalgh with Jeff Smith
Target arm – Livermore Nuclear Labs
Target arm – Livermore Nuclear Labs
[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in May 2015. We are re-publishing it today as it remains highly significant and with the current extremely high level of tension in the region, perhaps more significant now than ever.
Ian]
…by Jeff Smith, with Gordon Duff and Ian Greenhalgh
By now, every VT reader will be aware that Israel dropped a neutron bomb on Yemen on behalf of their Saudi allies. As well as the readers of VT, a billion Arabs also know this truth, every Arabic media outlet picked up the VT story as have the Russian outlets Pravda, Russia Today and Sputnik News. This story is too big to die, it is worldwide.
Israel nuked Yemen, period. This is hard fact that has been 100% confirmed.
Just watch the video, the scintillating pixels are caused by particles from the nuclear explosion hitting the camera’s sensor, there can be no other explanation; note the white hot ball of plasma seen briefly before the huge detonation.
Nice Try YouTube
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pVgPKxYVxb0
The camera never lies
Until mobile phones with cameras and small video cameras were developed, small florescent lights were used as emergency nuclear explosion/radiation detectors. Now, phones and CCD video cameras have become dependable “slam dunk” nuclear detectors.
The next few words are the technical explanation of why we are absolutely certain we are dealing with a nuclear event, with no questions whatsoever. This is information available to all member of the press, the military, the scientific community and the general public. This means, of course, that anyone in “denial” of our assertion, proven with this much certainty, is defective as to mental function or suffers from moral degeneracy.
THE COMBINATION OF THE CAMERAS PLASTIC LENS AND THE PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT PRODUCED IN THE CAMERAS CCD PICK UP CHIP (BECAUSE IT IS BASICALLY A VERY LARGE ARRAY OF PHOTO DIODES) ALLOWS THEM TO ACT AS VERY GOOD DETECTORS OF HIGH LEVEL IONIZING RADIATION. LOW LEVEL RADIATION IN THIS CASE IS NOT OF CONCERN BECAUSE IT WILL NOT IMMEDIATELY KILL YOU OR HAVE LONG TERM NEGATIVE HEALTH EFFECTS.
Critical frame from banned youtube
BY SIMPLY POINTING THE CAMERA AT AN EXPLOSIVE EVENT IT WILL IMMEDIATELY DETERMINE IF IT IS NUCLEAR OR NOT. WHEN THE CAMERA’S CCD PICK UP CHIP IS OVERLOADED BY EXCESS RADIATION IT WILL PIXELIZE SHOWING WHITE SPARKLES ALL OVER THE PICTURE OF THE FIREBALL OR BLAST IMAGE AREA.
The demonstration video still was taken in Yemen this month. It is perhaps the best single demonstration image of ionizing radiation hitting a CCD receptor. It is as perfect a demonstration of a nuclear explosion as detected using mobile phone or CCD camera technology, as explained above, as might be possible.
We are contacting scientists and physicists throughout the Middle east and Ukraine; we are distributing software that will allow us to detect not just nuclear weapons but radioactive threats of all kinds including polonium poisons; we are training teams to collect soil samples; preparing packages to allow medical personnel to screen for radioactive poisoning and we are offering materials for civil defence and decontamination efforts.
There has thus far been zero denial or refutation (other than by wingnuts and conspiracy theorists) of this having been a nuclear event nor has there been any effective denial of the pair of F-16A/Bs shot down over Yemen this week; planes which can only have belonged to Italy, Portugal or Israel, otherwise it came out of the mothballed stockpiles in the US southwest.
Russia speaks out
As stated in Pravda today, the world’s scientific community is aghast that
‘the Saudis have begun to wipe Yemen off the map’, they get straight to the point by telling us that
‘shocking video reveals proton bombardment from a neutron bomb’ and that
‘forbidden strikes have brought about a storm of worldwide protest’ and might I add, this wave of protest isn’t going to be silenced by a handful of internet trolls and unemployed Haifa housewives.
‘Obama has recently offered military assistance to any external threat the rich Arab Gulf States may face’ according to Pravda. Russia is not only certain after viewing the evidence, that this is a nuclear attack but they believe that the United States is fully complicit in it; where other sources have cited the Israeli-Saudi nexus, highest level Russian sources believe this irresponsible move is the result of Washington kow-towing to both Saudi Arabia and The Gulf States.
It is too late to put the cat back in the box, the word is out – Israel is using nukes to kill innocent civilians.
Take note of the reaction to this very serious issue of the Israeli use of nukes. Anyone who tries to claim there was no nuke dropped on Yemen or apply a derogatory label to those who seek to get the truth about this most heinous of war crimes out to a wide audience must be viewed as a stooge for Israel.
The worldwide spread of the true story of Israel’s nuking of Yemen has got the perpetrators very worried; the truth is one of the things these people fear most.
Appendix I
A
scintillator is a material that exhibits
scintillation — the property of
luminescence when excited by
ionizing radiation. Luminescent materials, when struck by an incoming particle, absorb its energy and scintillate, (i.e., re-emit the absorbed energy in the form of light).Sometimes, the excited state is
metastable, so the relaxation back down from the excited state to lower states is delayed (necessitating anywhere from a few nanoseconds to hours depending on the material): the process then corresponds to either one of two phenomena, depending on the type of transition and hence the wavelength of the emitted optical photon: delayed
fluorescence or
phosphorescence, also called after-glow.
A scintillation detector or
scintillation counter is obtained when a scintillator is coupled to an electronic light sensor such as a
photomultiplier tube (PMT),
photo-diode, or
silicon photomultiplier. PMT’s absorb the light emitted by the scintillator and re-emit it in the form of electrons via the
photoelectric effect. The subsequent multiplication of those electrons (sometimes called photo-electrons) results in an electrical pulse which can then be analyzed and yield meaningful information about the particle that originally struck the scintillator. Vacuum photo-diodes are similar but do not amplify the signal while silicon photo-diodes, (CCD cameras) on the other hand, detect incoming photons by the excitation of charge carriers directly in the silicon. Silicon photo-multipliers consist of an array of photo-diodes which are reverse-biased with sufficient voltage to operate in
avalanche mode, enabling each pixel of the array to be sensitive to single photons.
History
The first device which used a scintillator was built in 1903 by Sir
William Crookes and used a
ZnS screen.The scintillations produced by the screen were visible to the naked eye if viewed by a microscope in a darkened room; the device was known as a
spinthariscope. The technique led to a number of important discoveries. Scintillators gained additional attention in 1944, when
Curran and Baker replaced the naked eye measurement with the newly developed
PMT. This was the birth of the modern scintillation detector.
Applications for scintillators
Scintillators are used by the American government as Homeland Security radiation detectors. Scintillators can also be used in neutron and high energy particle physics experiments, X-ray security, nuclear cameras, computed tomography and gas exploration. Other applications of scintillators include CT scanners and gamma cameras in medical diagnostics, and screens in older style CRT computer monitors and television sets.
The use of a scintillator in conjunction with a photomultiplier tube or a CCD camera finds wide use in
hand-held survey meters used for detecting and measuring
radioactive contamination and monitoring nuclear material. Scintillators generate light in fluorescent tubes, to convert the ultra-violet of the discharge into visible light. Scintillation detectors are also used in the petroleum industry as detectors for Gamma Ray logs. ( Note small compact fluorescent light bulbs can also be used in an emergency to detect radiation bursts from a nuclear event. They will flash or glow under radiation exposure).
Plastic scintillators and the CCD camera, cell phone connection.
Plastic scintillators are the most common type of radiation detectors found in everyday CCD video cameras, cell phone cameras and home security cameras. With little or no modification at all they can be used as simple radiation detectors for emergency self protection from nuclear blasts and high background radiation levels or to document nuclear detonations. The combination of the cameras plastic lens and the photoelectric effect produced in the cameras CCD pick up chip (because it is basically a very large array of photo didoes) allows them to act as very good detectors of high level ionizing radiation. Low level radiation in this case is not of concern because it will not immediately kill you or have long term negative health effects.
By simply pointing the camera at an explosive event it will immediately determine if it is nuclear or not. When the cameras CCD pick up chip is overloaded by excess radiation it will pixelize showing white sparkles all over the picture of the fireball or blast image area. If you are looking to protect yourself from high level ionizing radiation produced by depleted uranium anti tank rounds or after a nuclear blast this will work. For lower level radiation effects usually just putting black electrical tape over the cameras lens is sufficient enough to detect lower radiation levels. Once the background radiation level has drooped off after an explosion. Usually after about 3 hours or more excluding ground zero where levels will remain higher for a longer period of time the CCD cameras may not be sensitive enough to detect these lower levels of radiation and a better detector will be required. However for emergency use this this process altho crude will work.
If you have an Android or Apple smart phone there are several APPS that will allow you to use your phone as a simple radiation detector/ Geiger counter. Some work better than others and several are actually fake or toy apps so user be ware make sure the APP really works.
Types of scintillators
Plastic scintillators
The term “plastic scintillator” typically refers to a scintillating material in which the primary fluorescent emitter, called a fluor, is suspended in the base, a solid polymer matrix. While this combination is typically accomplished through the dissolution of the fluor prior to bulk polymerization, the fluor is sometimes associated with the polymer directly, either covalently or through coordination, as is the case with many Li6 plastic scintillators.
Polyethylene naphthalate has been found to exhibit scintillation by itself without any additives and is expected to replace existing plastic scintillators due to higher performance and lower price.
The advantages of plastic scintillators include fairly high light output and a relatively quick signal, with a decay time of 2–4 nanoseconds, but perhaps the biggest advantage of plastic scintillators is their ability to be shaped, through the use of molds or other means, into almost any desired form with what is often a high degree of durability. Plastic scintillators are known to show light output saturation when the energy density is large (
Birks’ Law).
Bases
The most common bases are the aromatic plastics, polymers with aromatic rings as pendant groups along the polymer backbone, amongst which polyvinyltoluene (PVT) and polystyrene (PS) are the most prominent. While the base does fluoresce in the presence of ionizing radiation, its low yield and negligible transparency to its own emission make the use of fluors necessary in the construction of a practical scintillator.
Aside from the aromatic plastics, the most common base is polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), which carries two advantages over many other bases: high ultraviolet and visible light transparency and mechanical properties and higher durability with respect to brittleness.
The lack of fluorescence associated with PMMA is often compensated through the addition of an aromatic co-solvent, usually naphthalene. A plastic scintillator based on PMMA in this way boasts transparency to its own radiation, helping to ensure uniform collection of light. Other common bases include polyvinyl xylene (PVX) polymethyl, 2,4-dimethyl, 2,4,5-trimethyl styrenes, polyvinyl diphenyl, polyvinyl naphthalene, polyvinyl tetrahydronaphthalene, and copolymers of these and other bases.
Fluors.
Also known as luminophors, these compounds absorb the scintillation of the base and then emit at larger wavelength, effectively converting the ultraviolet radiation of the base into the more easily transferred visible light. Further increasing the attenuation length can be accomplished through the addition of a second fluor, referred to as a spectrum shifter or converter, often resulting in the emission of blue or green light.
Gas.
Gaseous scintillators consist of
nitrogen and the
noble gases helium,
argon,
krypton, and
xenon, with helium and xenon receiving the most attention. The scintillation process is due to the de-excitation of single atoms excited by the passage of an incoming particle. This de-excitation is very rapid (~1 ns), so the detector response is quite fast.
Coating the walls of the container with a
wavelength shifter is generally necessary as those gases typically emit in the
ultraviolet and PMTs respond better to the visible blue-green region. In nuclear physics, gaseous detectors have been used to detect
fission fragments or heavy
charged particles.
Glass.
The most common
glass scintillators are cerium-activated lithium or
boron silicates. Since both lithium and boron have large
neutron cross-sections, glass detectors are particularly well suited to the detection of
thermal (slow) neutrons. Lithium is more widely used than boron since it has a greater energy release on capturing a neutron and therefore greater light output.
Glass scintillators are however sensitive to electrons and γ rays as well (pulse height discrimination can be used for particle identification). Being very robust, they are also well-suited to harsh environmental conditions. Their response time is ≈10 ns, their light output is however low, typically ≈30% of that of anthracene.
Response to various radiations
Heavy ions
Scintillation counters are usually not ideal for the detection of
heavy ions for three reasons:
- the very high ionizing power of heavy ions induces quenching effects which result in a reduced light output (e.g. for equal energies, a proton will produce 1/4 to 1/2 the light of an electron, while alphas will produce only about 1/10 the light;
- the high dE/dx also results in a reduction of the fast component relative to the slow component, increasing detector dead-time;
- strong non-linearities are observed in the detector response especially at lower energies.
The reduction in light output is stronger for organics than for inorganic crystals. Therefore, where needed, inorganic crystals, e.g. CsI(Tl), ZnS(Ag) (typically used in thin sheets as α-particle monitors), CaF2(Eu), should be preferred to organic materials. Typical applications are α-
survey instruments,
dosimetry instruments, and heavy ion
dE/
dx detectors. Gaseous scintillators have also been used in
nuclear physics experiments.
Electrons
The detection efficiency for
electrons is essentially 100% for most scintillators. But because electrons can make large angle
scatterings (sometimes
backscatterings), they can exit the detector without depositing their full energy in it. The back-scattering is a rapidly increasing function of the atomic number
Z of the scintillator material.
Organic scintillators, having a lower
Z than inorganic crystals, are therefore best suited for the detection of low-energy (< 10 MeV)
beta particles. The situation is different for high energy electrons: since they mostly lose their energy by
bremsstrahlung at the higher energies, a higher-
Z material is better suited for the detection of the bremsstrahlung photon and the production of the
electromagnetic shower which it can induce.
Gamma rays
High-Z materials, e.g. inorganic crystals, are best suited for the detection of
gamma rays. The three basic ways that a gamma ray interacts with matter are: the
photoelectric effect,
Compton scattering, and
pair production. The photon is completely absorbed in photoelectric effect and pair production, while only partial energy is deposited in any given Compton scattering.
The
cross section for the photoelectric process is proportional to
Z5, that for pair production proportional to
Z2, whereas Compton scattering goes roughly as
Z. A high-
Z material therefore favors the former two processes, enabling the detection of the full energy of the gamma ray.
Neutrons
Since the
neutron is not charged it does not interact via the
Coulomb force and therefore does not ionize the scintillation material. It must first transfer some or all of its energy via the strong force to a charged
atomic nucleus. The positively charged nucleus then produces
ionization.
Fast neutrons (generally >0.5 MeV) primarily rely on the
recoil proton in (n,p) reactions; materials rich in
hydrogen, e.g. plastic scintillators, are therefore best suited for their detection.
Slow neutrons rely on
nuclear reactions such as the (n,γ) or (n,α) reactions, to produce ionization. Their
mean free path is therefore quite large unless the scintillator material contains nuclides having a high
cross section for these nuclear reactions such as 6Li or 10B. Materials such as LiI(Eu) or
glass silicates are therefore particularly well-suited for the detection of slow (thermal) neutrons.
Appendix II
VT Nuclear Education: Detonations and Deceit
By
VT Editors
Yemen, 2015, nuclear weapon confirmed by classified IAEA report
The Iron Fist of Tactical Nukes, Hidden in the Velvet Glove of Stories about Fuel-Air Bombs, Moabs and Bunker Busters
By George Paxinos submitted by Jeff Smith
From 2003
The USA has already used Nuclear Weapons in GWI and Afghanistan, and is duping us as it prepares to use them again in GWII
When, on July 16th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the USA had a cover story ready to hide this fact: a “Munitions Train” had blown up, people spoke of seeing the flash and hearing the blast, it was all down pat.
Nuclear scintillation, undeniable proof (Yemen 2015) In a day and age where information is given out to the public only when such information, or what the so-called “Authorities” tell us is such, serves only the purpose of increasing hegemonic corporate profits at the expense of the many disenfranchised peoples worldwide, it is good to scrutinise what comes down from the simple point of view of:
Who Benefits By This?
Now in 1991, a totally gratuitous piece of info was tossed out to the hoi-polloi — meaning us — that the USA was going to use newfangled “fuel-air bombs” in its invasion of the beachheads of Kuwait, along with the proviso, that all media reporting would be subject to a 24-hour news blackout while this went on.
At the time it struck me as odd, that a surface-blast weapon such as a fuel-air bomb, should be used against soldiers dug into deep bunkers, and, knowing something of fuel-air explosives and their limitations, also the fact that they do produce an oxidised hydrocarbon and particulate metal ash cloud like a small nuclear weapon, and may even, using fuel such as powdered aluminum and magnesium mixtures or alloys, produce both a blinding flash, and perhaps even an electromagnetic signature pulse, they would, to the uninitiated, be fairly indistinguishable from a small nuclear weapon.
Also, alas! — the other way round! — should news be given in advance about their use, one might put in small nukes, such as Neutron Bombs, and nobody who was not an expert and had actually witnessed both, could really tell the difference, at all.
EXCEPT that in contrast to true fuel-air explosives, neutron bombs WOULD do the dirty on those underground bunkers and their inhabitants, as the neutron-particle rain they produce WOULD be capable of penetrating many meters of earth.
As those soldiers who were in there at the time of the landings seem to have offered little resistance after the airbursts of whatever was used, and were forthwith bulldozed over and buried deep, some, I believe, to this day – nobody may ever know, will they?
But surely, the USA would not do a dirty trick like that, announce the one thing and then do the other, surely not Alamogordo again; and all to expedite a war and limit American casualties, which might incite antiwar protests at home? Surely not against human beings?
What does this mean, you ask?
Well, let me explain a little about fuel-air bombs, for not only have explosives been my passionate if irrational hobby since I was a kid, but it might even be that I actually met one of the inadvertent inventors of the very first fuel-air bomb ever used in combat, and that during the Second World War.
His name was Ivan Sapsford; in the South Africa of my birth and upbringing, as an older person, “Uncle” Ivan.
Wearing an eyepatch, he was a wizened combat veteran of the Ethiopian Campaign against the Italians in WWII; and some of his escapades were almost legendary in South Africa, especially those of his best-buddy and sidekick, South African flying ace, Oliver Carey.
My Dad and my uncle had a tea-room in the village where those two grew up, which is how I knew them; and the preamble to this essay, which I am about to relate, I heard at first hand from Uncle Ivan himself.
The Italians had a fort on a hill, with long-range guns which the South African forces could not match, so were held off in a stalemate. The South African infantry were chafing in the heat, one of whom was Uncle Ivan.
Then up from South Africa, back from leave returning to his North African squadron, came his best friend, fighter pilot and ace, Oliver Carey. Ivan explained the situation, and Oliver knew the answer: they were all men who had had experience in the mines in South Africa, and all had extensive knowledge of explosives and their use, so Oliver said: Hell, we’ll make a bomb, and drop it on them! It never crossed their minds that perhaps bombing had already been tried to no avail, no, they’d make their own bomb, they were after all pretty much rebels who would accept no authority, they could think for themselves.
So they got a 55-gallon petrol (gasoline) drum, put in as much military explosive as they could scrounge through the larger of its two screwcapped openings, set a stick of explosive with detonator and length of dynamite-fuse into the last piece, filled what was left with as much small-arms ammunition as they could round up, and as there was still plenty of room left, topped it all up with petrol. They were lucky that it went off at all, that the fluid component did not contaminate the fuse and detonator, but they must somehow have thought of that, most of them being mining engineers, and taken precautions against it.
How to deliver it?
There was a small, single-engine mail plane that came by daily and stayed overnight, so they simply and illegally appropriated that for the job.
By this time, and, I believe, all not quite sober, it was almost dawn, and a bunch of men heaved the filled and very heavy drum into the plane’s door lengthwise, then stood it up inside and lashed it with ropes for takeoff. Oliver sat as pilot, and Ivan and another friend sat with the drum.
As they approached the fort, Oliver gave word, and as his friend unlashed the drum, Ivan lit the fuse. Oliver circled the fort, and they threw open the door and tried to shove out the drum. Unfortunately, it was too high for the door.
They tried to lay it over, the way it had been loaded in, but it was too heavy for them together to lay it on its side.
From the heat discoloration of the outside if the wrapped dynamite fuse, it had already burnt down into the drum, so only seconds were left. They shouted for help, and Oliver left the controls and ran in to assist them.
With no-one at the controls, the plane went into a descending spiral spin, directly above the fort.
Oliver saw what was happening, grabbed the plane’s fire-axe, hacked out the upper doorframe, and they shoved the thing out. By this time they were just a couple hundred feet above the fort.
Oliver fought his way back behind the controls, and by his considerable pilot’s skills, managed to pull the plane out of its dive. Ivan and the other man, hanging on for dear life, had a final, frightening view of the drum going down toward the upturned, curious faces of the entire around 300-strong fort garrison at their morning parade, staring wonderingly upward at what was to them basically a civilian aircraft in an uncontrolled downspin.
Then their bomb exploded, a hundred feet or less above the assembled garrison, and killed them all down to the last man.
That night, the Italian military broadcast a communique to all units that “The South Africans had a new Secret Weapon”.
I heard this story from Uncle Ivan personally, and I am ashamed to say I did not believe it.
To me, there was no way that anything but an individual shrapnel hit by some of that small-arms ammo could have done this, and that was just too much coincidence for me to swallow, even as a kid or around 19.
I only believed it after I had heard of the fuel-air bombs used by the former USSR in Afghanistan, which generated an overpressure-wave which killed people hundreds of yards away. Then I understood what Oliver and Ivan had done: The initial blast dispersed a cloud of fuel, and the small-arms ammo, disintegrating and exploding like a giant sparkler firework, had ignited that cloud, and the friendly “Whump!” which you get when you are foolish enough to throw a match at the tiniest pool of flammable liquid was magnified many thousandfold, and the overpressure thump killed them all.
That is the principle of the fuel-air bomb.
It was used by the USSR many, many times in Afghanistan.
It is nothing new to anybody there, it is basically old-hat.
So then, why should the USA suddenly publicly announce in 2001 and 2002 its intention to use this sort of weapon against the Taliban hiding out in caves, and make such a big deal about the matter, and all that in advance, when in war, you do not usually go out and broadcast your intentions far and wide, let alone to your enemy?
Otto von Bismarck once said: “Never believe anything in politics, until it has been officially denied.”
What was this official pre-event announcement, like that before the Kuwaiti landings in 1991, denying, that we all should be kept in the dark about?
Did it have any connective precedent in the other announcement of intent to use fuel-air bombs in Kuwait, against underground bunkers, while the air-blast is mainly only effective on the surface? Did they both find their roots in the precedent of Alamogordo?
What is effective underground? Well, a neutron-rain from a neutron-bomb is … and neutron-bombs, basically mini-nukes, were originally designed with parameters allowing their relatively tiny air-burst, of equivalent only between a few and a few dozen tons’ of TNT equivalent, to be used in even urban environments, with people only a few miles away remaining unaware that the airblast they heard had sent down a neutron-rain killing everything outdoors, indoors, even underground for considerable depth, just some blocks down the road, while leaving the surface infrastructure of buildings and weaponry intact, as was also one of the clever reasons for their design.
To the uninitiated, such a blast is indistinguishable, apart from the surface temperature of its fireball, from that of a fuel-air bomb.
Then why should there be a pre-announcement, AND a 24-hour news blackout in Kuwait, AND another pre-announcement of intent in Afghanistan, AND now, suddenly, an intense propaganda effort to clue us up in advance that the MOAB, the Massive Ordnance Air Burst Weapon, or, unofficially, the Mother Of All Bombs, produces a fireball and a mushroom-cloud almost indistinguishable from that of a small tactical nuclear weapon, and an ineptly overdone cover-story for something officially pre-denied?
CNN carried this story: