EMP SCAREMONGERS FIZZLE

It sounds scary like comic book super-​​villain scary at first, this idea that Iran is plot­ting to hit American with a king-​​sized elec­tro­mag­netic pulse, trig­gered by a nuke in the skies. Luckily, it’s a sce­nario about as real­is­tic as the X-​​Men.
For years, a group of right-​​wing defense pol­icy mak­ers have been warn­ing about the dan­gers of an EMP assault. Their “lat­est evi­dence,” accord­ing to Internet tinhat-​​factory World NetDaily: a Tehran “mil­i­tary jour­nal” arti­cle that “pub­licly con­sid­ered the idea of launch­ing an elec­tro­mag­netic pulse attack as the key to defeat­ing the world’s lone super­power.“
Aha! Exclaimed Peter Pry, with Congress’ Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack. “We can­not rule out that Iran, the world’s lead­ing spon­sor of inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism might pro­vide ter­ror­ists with the means to exec­u­tive an EMP attack against the United States.“
Maybe so. I mean, what can be cat­e­gor­i­cally ruled out these days? Oh, there is one thing we can say for sure, Bouphonia observes: That “jour­nal” arti­cle doesn’t prove a damn thing.

First and fore­most, [the jour­nal arti­cle] con­tains no dis­cus­sion of an EMP attack against the United States.
For that mat­ter, it con­tains no dis­cus­sion of an EMP attack against any­one.
In fact, it con­tains no men­tion of nuclear weapons what­so­ever.
Yes, friends, you heard me cor­rectly. This eight-​​year-​​old arti­cle, which a gag­gle of “defense experts” is cur­rently pre­sent­ing as evi­dence for Iran’s inten­tion to launch an EMP attack using nuclear weapons, does not dis­cuss the use of nuclear weapons, and does not dis­cuss EMP attacks. Not once.

Curses! Foiled again!

May 3rd, 2005 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.