...Then Gen. Le May said, 'Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started.'

"I think that was just a loose comment for his staff guys, because Gen. Tommy Power, his hatchet man in those days, chuckled and he never laughed very much. So I always figured that was a joke between them. But we thought maybe that was serious. To our knowledge we were the only U.S. Air Force crew that had flown an overflight at that point."...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/07/03/stranger-than-strangelove-a-generals-forays-into-the-nuclear-zone/4dc9a919-8d2f-47cb-82ee-e74d9ecc436a/

STRANGER THAN 'STRANGELOVE': A GENERAL'S FORAYS INTO THE NUCLEAR ZONE

by Paul Lashmar
Wahington Post, July 3, 1996

EXCERPT...

Austin and his crew were summoned to meet Gen. Le May back in the United States. He wanted to decorate them for bravery.

"He said 'I tried to get you guys a silver star,' but he said 'you gotta explain that to Congress and everybody else in Washington when you do something like that, so here's a couple of DFCs {Distinguished Flying Crosses}, we'll give you for that mission. There wasn't anybody in the room except the wing commander and us three guys, Gen. Le May and his intelligence officer."

It was at this meeting that the question arises about Le May's motives. Hal Austin recalls what happened next:

"Then Gen. Le May said, 'Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started.'

CONTINUED...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/07/03/stranger-than-strangelove-a-generals-forays-into-the-nuclear-zone/4dc9a919-8d2f-47cb-82ee-e74d9ecc436a/

I was there in 1962 and it happened exactly as described here . Sgt. Peter Fiortino .

Why the government should look for and release records. Immediately. Now wheelchair-bound, Bordne has tried, thus far without success, to track down records related to the incident on Okinawa. He contends that an inquest was conducted and each launch officer questioned. A month or so later, Bordne says, they were called upon to participate in the court martial of the major who issued the launch orders. Bordne says Capt. Bassett, in the only breach of his own secrecy command, told his crew that the major was demoted and forced to retire at the minimum service period of 20 years, which he was on the verge of fulfilling anyway. No other actions were taken—not even commendations for the launch officers who had prevented a nuclear war. -- Aaron Tovish, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Okinawa missiles of October

Aaron Tovish
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct. 25, 2015

John Bordne, a resident of Blakeslee, Penn., had to keep a personal history to himself for more than five decades. Only recently has the US Air Force given him permission to tell the tale, which, if borne out as true, would constitute a terrifying addition to the lengthy and already frightening list of mistakes and malfunctions that have nearly plunged the world into nuclear war.

The story begins just after midnight, in the wee hours of October 28, 1962, at the very height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then-Air Force airman John Bordne says he began his shift full of apprehension. At the time, in response to the developing crisis over secret Soviet missile deployments in Cuba, all US strategic forces had been raised to Defense Readiness Condition 2, or DEFCON2; that is, they were prepared to move to DEFCON1 status within a matter of minutes. Once at DEFCON1, a missile could be launched within a minute of a crew being instructed to do so.

Bordne, now 74, appeared in an introductory video, and then answered questions via Skype from his home in Pennsylvania. Recounting the atmosphere on the base that week, Bordne described all his fellow airmen crowding around a television to watch President John F. Kennedy discuss the standoff with the Soviet Union: “There was standing room only. There was dead silence during … and there was dead silence after. It was then that we really got the impression we would have to do what we were paid to do.”

SNIP...

According to Bordne, as Bassett attempted to determine whether the orders were legitimate, a lieutenant decided that Bassett did not have the authority to stop the launch, and ordered his section of the overall crew to proceed to fire its four missiles. Bassett, says Bordne, threatened to have the lieutenant shot.

SNIP...

As of today there’s no way to know for certain whether events transpired 53 years ago as Bordne describes them. Bassett died in 2011, and Bordne remains the only participant willing to describe them on the record. However, a Japanese news outlet spoke last year to another U.S. veteran who was willing to anonymously confirm Bordne’s account. There was general agreement among the other participants in the U.N. discussion, including Princeton nuclear security expert Bruce Blair, that Bordne’s account was credible.

CONTINUED...

http://thebulletin.org/okinawa-missiles-october8826

New evidence that US Army deliberately targeted hospital in Kunduz

By Joseph Kishore
wsws.org, 27 October 2015

It is now more than three weeks since the October 3 massacre by US military forces of medical personnel and patients at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical center in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Aided by the media, the US military and the Obama administration are continuing their efforts to cover up and whitewash a war crime.

On Monday, the Associated Press published a report providing further confirmation that the facility was targeted and bombed by US military personnel with full knowledge that it was a functioning hospital. The attack lasted for an hour, destroying the building and killing 30 people, including at least 13 MSF staff members and 10 patients.

SNIP...

A report from “a senior Green Beret officer from 3rd Special Forces Group” on October 2 stated, “MSF report that they have personnel in the trauma center,” according to the AP, citing two sources who have seen the report.

The AP states that it was the Green Berets, the Special Forces division of the US Army, that called in the attack.

SNIP...

[font color="red"]The report follows a previous article citing a former intelligence official who said special operations analysts had mapped the entire area and drawn a circle around the hospital.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/27/kund-o27.html

Troops who sought strike thought Taliban had hospital

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army Green Berets who requested the Oct. 3 airstrike on the Doctors without Borders trauma center in Afghanistan were aware it was a functioning hospital but believed it was under Taliban control, The Associated Press has learned.

The new information adds to a body of evidence that the internationally run medical facility site was familiar to the U.S. military, raising questions about whether the decision to attack it violated international law.

A day before an American AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital, a senior officer in the Green Beret unit wrote in a report that U.S. forces had discussed the hospital with the country director of the medical charity group, presumably in Kabul, according to two people who have seen the document.

SNIP...

Taken together, the revelations add to the growing possibility that U.S. forces destroyed what they knew was a functioning hospital, which would be a violation of the international rules of war. The Pentagon has said Americans would never have intentionally fired on a medical facility, and it's unclear why the Green Beret unit requested the strike — and how such an attack was approved by the chain of command — on coordinates widely known to have included a hospital.

CONTINUED...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a39810b7161d42fcb0abe36576d26730/troops-who-sought-strike-thought-taliban-had-hospital