A few weeks ago the Air Force either made a really stupid and careless series of errors, or cooperated with Mr Cheney’s desire to start a war with Iran. The official story is that somehow, about three or four different trained professionals all overlooked the fact that some nuclear-armed AGM-129 missiles were being shipped to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation, military officials have confirmed.

The plane took the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for decommissioning Thursday, the Air Force said.

"This is a major gaffe, and it's going to cause some heads to roll down the line," said Don Shepperd, a retired Air Force major general and military analyst for CNN.

Shepperd said the United States had agreed in a Cold War-era treaty not to fly nuclear weapons. "It appears that what happened was this treaty agreement was violated," he said.

The warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were attached to the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.

Now, if you know anything about how special weapons are handled by the Air Force (I don’t other than what I read) this occurred because the enlisted handlers removed specially marked missiles which are a different size than regular ones, plus they’re apparently quite a bit heavier than regular missiles. They’re marked with a special marking – probably a painted sign that says, “Hey! This is a fucking nuclear weapon!@” or words to that effect.

After the enlisted men drew the wrong weapons, the officer in charge of signing off on the movement had to miss the different sizes and markings. Maybe he was a christianist Evangelist – there’s a lot of them in the Air Force – and since he was probably home schooled he missed the thing about “which of these things is bigger than the others?”

The missiles had to be moved to the pad and loaded onto the wing pylons of the B-52. B-52 wings are pretty flexible. Would a wing with five nuclear missiles dangle lower than a wing with normal warheads?

The crew was unaware that the plane was carrying nuclear weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary sensitivity and security surrounding the case.

No, I guess not.

So the plane landed at Barksdale and the official story is that no one noticed the specially marked weapons there, either, for almost a day.

Air Force regulations are pretty specific about how nukes are to be handled and transported. There are no allowances for mistakes.

The official story is that these missiles were flown to Barksdale to be decommissioned. (Decommissioning of these missiles is apparently done at Davis-Monthan AFB at Tucson, AZ.) Maybe somebody needs a new navigator because they ended up at the AFB that stages to the Middle East. Wrong weapons, wrong airbase, wrong time.

Unless you want to turn a mistake into a PSYOPS to intimidate Iran.

By the way, the initial reports were that five weapons were erroneously sent out from Minot AFB. This report came about because Barksdale said five were received. Then somebody at Barksdale anonymously contacted Army Times that actually six missiles had been shipped, and maybe someone should be asking questions if six were actually shipped from Minot and Barksdale says five were received. After that news got out the Air Force agreed that six were actually shipped. If you’re confused, welcome to the club.

Just in case they’re still wrong on the count (you just don’t know when Dick “dick” Cheney is involved, even peripherally) those fine folks at Wired have published this as a public service.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Click here to see it mushroom – uh, to a larger size, I mean.