GOP fearmongering just reached an outlandish new height: Inside the Iranian electromagnetic menace

[DonViejo]

Sen. Ron Johnson wants to know: Nuking magnets, how do they work?

SIMON MALOY

Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz sat down with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday to answer some questions about the six-party nuclear agreement with Iran and endure some grandstanding from Republican critics of the deal. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee chair, kicked things off by telling Kerry, the lead negotiator for the U.S., that he had been “fleeced.” Jim Risch of Idaho expanded on Corker’s assessment, arguing that Kerry and his team had been “bamboozled.” The hearing was the first opportunity for congressional Republicans to directly and publicly confront the Obama administration over the Iran deal, and they took full advantage.

Amid all the sputtering outrage and high-dudgeon fulminating, one Republican managed to rise above the rest with a potent mix of pedantry and fearmongering: Sen. Ron Johnson. The Wisconsin Republican, who is up for reelection in one of this cycle’s most fiercely contested races, devoted several minutes to interrogating Ernest Moniz about the threat posed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by a nuclear-armed Iran.

If you’re at all familiar with the grubbier corners of the conservative media, you’ve likely heard something about electromagnetic pulse attacks before. The scenario goes like this: One of our geopolitical adversaries – like Iran or al-Qaida or whatever – fires a missile with a nuclear warhead high into the atmosphere over the United States where it detonates and sends out a pulse of highly charged particles that fry the hell out of any electrical system in their path. In the resulting blackout, the country descends into a dystopian hellscape rife with theft, murder and cannibalism. All communications equipment will be shot. Social order will break down. Chaos will reign.

It’s a terrifying scenario. But it’s also absurdly unlikely to occur. Consider everything that would have to happen for the Iranians to successfully explode a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere above the U.S. They would have to: develop nuclear weapons; develop missile technology that would allow for delivery of one of those weapons; come to the conclusion that a nuclear strike on the planet’s foremost nuclear power is a worthwhile pursuit; slip that weapon past all the United States’ missile defense systems; and then trust that the U.S. will not turn Iran into a lifeless radioactive wasteland in response.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/gop_fearmongering_just_reached_an_outlandish_new_height_inside_the_iranian_electromagnetic_menace/

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. At the Slate link, you find Congress had Peter Pry to 'testify' about this

and, Jesus, he's appeared on Coast to Coast! http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/pry-peter/67535

Republicans have no shame in fearmongering any more.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Pandering to the paranoid and using the taxpayer's time and Congress building to make campaign

ads pandering to your local lunatics should be criminalized, so immoral is the act, a plain breach of contract between lawmaker and the makers of the lawmaker?

Republicans are a grave threat to everyone's sanity.