[Location: Deep in strategic command bunker well outside Pyongyang, North Korea]
[Present are Kim Jong Un and senior military and party officials]
General: Great Sun of Life, just as the cowardly American dogs had to use, with little testing, their atomic weapons against the dogs in Japan, we should act now.
Kim Young-nam: Great Leader of our Party and of our Nation, we must act to coalesce the People under the demonstrated strength of you as Leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. We humbly request your direct that the Taepodong-2 missiles be fired, targeting the military targets of Hawaii and California.
Sun of the Communist Future: should I command this daring act of superior might, how long until the craven Americans see the bright sun of our power.
General: the expected flight time is 30 minutes, oh Great Sun of Life.
Great Man, Who Descended From Heaven: once I give the command, if I do, how long until the rockets are fired?
[nervous laughter, and no one answers]
Invincible and Triumphant General: do you all want to be tied to the rockets? Answer me!
General: Guiding Star of the 21st Century, the time from command to firing is a national security secret of the highest order. I cannot say in the presence of many here, who while respected and loyal servants of your Glorious Sun, are not cleared for that information.
Kim Jong-Un: Damn it man! Hillary Clinton told the world it was a FOUR MINUTE period for American missiles to launch after the command, what is our interval!
As a bit of late-night sketch comedy, Kim Jong-Un and Hillary Clinton are perfect foils. If it had nothing to do with the lives we lead. And, Kim will not, under most estimates, be a threat to the mainland United States anytime soon. The Clinton Threat, however, is real and imminent. The nuclear interval leak Clinton made during the last debate evidences the kinds of threats she presents.
You may have been watching that last debate between Trump and Clinton.
At last, we were offered an actual, worthwhile, unbiased moderator, conducting an even-handed, if tough, examination of both candidates. Trump continued to display his down to earth, relatable, and human aspect. Clinton continued with her robotic repetition of scripted nonsense.
Until.
Until this:
Did you catch it?
Four minutes.
Four minutes from an order to launch nuclear weapons until that order is given effect at nuclear launch sites.
Now you and I might presume to know that a certain interlude, possibly quite brief, follows the issuance of a nuclear launch command, before that order is given effect at the launch sites. But ours would be, after all, a presumption, not a calculable certainty.
That is, until the former Secretary of State, who, in that position was high in the structure for command and control of nuclear decision-making, told us, our neighbors, our high school buddies, the drunks at the bar, Englishmen tippling at the tap in late night rounds, and virtually anyone -- friend or foe -- something that we only could have suspected until the mouth that should have stayed shut refused to do so.
Now, there's a much more disconcerting point she made in her "nuclear" free fall. She as much as intimated that nuclear launch officers might mutiny if a launch order came from a President named Donald Trump when she reported their views uncritically.
Hollywood, of course, has given us the occasional peak into its vision of the American nuclear launch sequence. Here's one such vignette, from "Wargames:"
The fact that four former launch officers support her campaign and expressed concern at Donald Trump's possible assent to the the First Chair of Nuclear Devastation, was, I suppose, meant as a kind of blackmail to America from Hillary. It came across as, essentially:
You elect him, and you may well be destroyed by a surprise nuclear attack, and that without the satisfaction of knowing that there will have been a superior, mutually destructive, attack unleashed by the USA.
As a citizen, I find her intimation, and its unspoken intimidation, offensive at the highest order. While I respect the duty of every person to determine the morality of orders, the former launch officers have made no such moral judgment. Rather, they have said,
Donald Trump ... has shown himself ... to be easily baited and quick to lash out, dismissive of expert consultation and ill-informed of even basic military and international affairs.They have not said that they would have disobeyed launch orders in their times of service, or that they would urge nuclear launch officers to disobey such orders from a President Trump. So we are left to wonder why, precisely, Clinton would raise the subject.
Presumably, she raised the question because the judgment made by a handful of junior military personnel support her contentions regarding the fitness and judgment of Donald Trump. If that were the case, however, what would be the reason to connect the identity of a group that disputes Trump's judgment with the nuclear launch interval, except her implicit blackmailing of the Nation with a non-existent declaration treachery of launch officers that would refuse to launch nuclear strikes because of personal judgments?
