The best way to tease you to listen to this podcast is their tease:
“President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and – in 20 minutes – kill 60 million people. Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. But what if you were the military officer on the receiving end of that phone call? Could you refuse the order?
This episode, we profile one Air Force Major who asked that question back in the 1970s and learn how the very act of asking it was so dangerous it derailed his career.”
The officer profiled in this story was going through the Air Force training to be a launch control officer. Essentially, a person, in conjunction with a fellow officer, responsible for launching a nuclear missile. He was comfortable with the check and balances at his level, but he begin to wonder about the checks and balances for the person who would ultimately make this decision. In regards to his career, he made the mistake of asking if there were checks and balances in place in regard to the President launching a nuclear attack.
Given the mentally ill, sociopath now occupying the White House this becomes an even more pressing question. Let’s forget Effingham Trump for a minute, should one person have the power to destroy our planet without there being some governance over them? My emphatic answer would a loud, ringing,”NO!”
Another interesting tidbit from this podcast is in regards to Truman and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Truman has always being tainted in my opinion for authorizing this nuclear attack when the war in the Pacific was essentially drawing to a close, with us as the victor…just in case you do not remember your history.
The first Truman knew about the atomic bomb was when he assumed the Presidency on FDR’s death. The military then informed him of the new weapons that had more power than any weapon ever created before. I was left with the impression that Truman really did not understand how lethal they were. How could he? He had no frame of reference. Secondly, he was under the impression that they would be used against purely military targets. He was appalled when he realized that a whole city, including women and children, had been wiped out. The military actually had 3 bombs in the pipeline. The second was dropped before Truman could react. He stopped the third. He then begin to put in restraints on the military and the use of nuclear weapons. From this grew our present policy.
Enough of my ramblings, here is a link to this disturbing, but informative podcast.