Why? Because they wanted to test it and they now have a President who
doesn't care about consequences, who doesn't read reports, who leaves this
sort of thing to military discretion. Or so said Kathy Kelly and Dennis
Bernstein on Flashpoints last night.
Miriam
Truthdig
U.S. Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' in Afghanistan
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/us_drops_mother_of_all_bombs_in_
afghanistan_20170413/
Posted on Apr 13, 2017
By Emma Niles
A Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon is prepared for testing at the
Eglin Air Force Armament Center, Florida, in 2003. (Wikimedia Commons
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_Blast#/media/Fi
le:MOAB_bomb.jpg) )
The U.S. military Thursday announced it dropped a 21,600 pound non-nuclear
bomb in Afghanistan. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_Blast) (MOAB)
is nicknamed the "mother of all bombs," and was developed in 2003 but never
used in a battlefield. CNN reports
(http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/afghanistan-isis-moab-bomb/) :
[MOAB] was dropped at 7:32 pm local time Thursday, the sources said. A MOAB
is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful
non-nuclear bomb.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, stationed in Afghanistan and
operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, Pentagon spokesman Adam
Stump told CNN.
Officials said the target was an ISIS cave and tunnel complex and personnel
in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province. ...
Gen. John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, signed off on
the use of the bomb, according to the sources. The authority to deploy the
weapon was granted to Nicholson by the commander of US Central Command, Gen.
Joseph Votel, Stump said.
Both Nicholson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Nicholson,_Jr.) and
Votel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Votel) were assumed their
current positions during the Obama administration. According to the online
news site Heavy, the Achin district has a population
(http://heavy.com/news/2017/04/mother-of-all-bombs-moab-gbu43/) of around
95,000 people.
Presidential press secretary Sean Spicer said in a subsequent press
conference that the U.S. "took all precautions necessary to prevent civilian
casualties."
"The United States takes the fight against ISIS very seriously and in order
to defeat the group we must deny them operational space," he added.
Pressed by reporters for more information on the use of MOAB, Spicer
responded, "Please refer to Department of Defense for specifics."
According to CNN, the military is still "assessing the damage" from MOAB.
A 2003 article (http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/16/world/fg-bomb16) in
the Los Angeles Times explained the massive bomb's effect:
Military analysts in the U.S. say that because the 21,000-pound massive
ordnance air burst, or MOAB, is so huge, it can be dropped only from a
military cargo plane that flies slowly and at relatively low altitudes,
making the plane vulnerable to antiaircraft weapons. And because the bomb
causes devastation across such a broad swath, it is unlikely to be used
against anything but a large concentration of entrenched enemy troops-just
the kind of target likely to be armed with antiaircraft weapons.
"It's really quite improbable that it would be used," said Loren Thompson, a
military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank in
Arlington, Va.
"The Pentagon is committed to avoiding large concentrations of civilians,
and it is committed to avoiding putting its pilots and its planes at
unnecessary risk. The only real use for this kind of indiscriminate terror
weapon is to scare the bejesus out of Saddam Hussein."
MOAB reportedly "took $314 million to develop
(http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2017/04/13/Heres-How-Much-Mother-All-Bombs-Co
sts) and has a unit cost of $16 million." Watch video of a test drop of
MOAB below:
</p><p>
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