Mind Scalpel

Okay, I admit it. I am torqued. Torqued!

Do you have any idea how much it’s cost me to develop (and, via espionage, steal) my own nuclear weaponry? More than a few peanut butter sandwiches, let me tell you.

And now I see this story, about how we accidentally sent some nuclear warhead fuses to Taiwan. Accidentally! They didn’t even order them! They had asked us for helicopter batteries!

How the hell does this happen? This is worse inventory control than Wal-Mart uses for razor blades, let alone nuclear weaponry, and far worse shipping control than FedEx uses for Christmas gifts.  Is there some vast government warehouse somewhere, jam-packed with both junk and classified weapons technology cluttering the shelves, with some knuckleheaded clerk cruising around on a Segway scooter randomly filling boxes? “Dope-di-dope; well, gee, batteries…batteries…can’t find those…oh heck, let’s toss in some of these doohickeys…they look all electrical-like….” And off the Minuteman missile fuses go to Taiwan.

There’s really no reassuring part to this story. Oh, there’s a lame warm-and-fuzzy about how the fuses contained “no nuclear materials,” which is not all that comforting, considering that, if these were detonation fuses, that’s one of the most complicated parts of a nuclear weapon. Some other stories talk about how the “tamper seals” on the things were undisturbed, which is pretty laughable, given how easy it is to circumvent and/or replace, for example, medicine bottle tamper-resistant packaging, which, I’ll wager, is probably a lot better than old-style government-issue tamper seals. I mean, come on, this is Taiwan! You think they’re not innovative enough to figure out a way around shrink-wrap?

And if I sound a bit perturbed, it might have something to do with another story you might recall from a few months back, about how six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were “accidentally” flown across the U.S.

I paid good money for those nukes; could the government at least have handled their delivery properly? Noooo.

They should have done what I told them to do, and shipped them to me FedEx.

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