from Bill Still
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Good morning, I’m still reporting on the invasion, and the news is not good.
In the wake of Turkey’s failed coup attempt on Friday, electrical power has been deliberately cut to the 3,300 acre Incirlik Air base in southern Turkey.
The big base is of the utmost strategic importance to the United States. At the height of the Cold War, Incirlik was home of the U-2 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union.
Today, it is the epicenter of American flight operations against the Islamic State. It is 100 miles from the Syrian border and 800 miles from downtown Tehran.
However, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook:
“U.S. facilities at Incirlik are operating on internal power sources.”
In other words, backup generators.
During Friday’s coup, the base was not attacked, despite suspicions that some Turkish Air Force assets co-located on base might have been used by Turkish pilots in the coup.
That resulted in the security status of the base being moved to the highest level – DELTA – where locals are denied access.
On Sunday, the Turkish base commander was arrested by Turkish forces loyal to sitting president Erdogan and permission to resume anti-ISIS air operations was again granted.
With the collapse of the coup, Turkey under Erdogan is purging all remnants of its previously secular government – right down to non-Islamic school teachers.
The result – Turkey is now only spinning further into the grip of the Islamic invasion rushing northwards thru Turkey as it heads towards Europe – and Erdogan actually wants to be the head of it!
Now, even those who still support the EU’s open-borders policy say that should Turkey enter the European Union under Erdogan, Turks may not be granted unlimited, passport-free travel.
In December, Erdogan travelled to Saudi Arabia to declare himself the leader of the entire Islamic world.
His plan is said to include imposing an entirely new Constitution on Turkey to bypass democratic laws and become an emir and establish a new Islamic caliphate with Turkey – not the Levant – as its center.
Ergodan’s move – to either hijack the caliphate from ISIS – or move its center in concert with ISIS – raises monumental security concerns for incoming President Trump.
Yesterday, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran articles questioning the security of 50 tactical nuclear weapons stored in underground bunkers just off the 10,000-foot runway at Incirlick.
What kind of tactical nukes? Although the U.S. is thought to have much smaller devices, what can be known from public sources is that B61 bombs are stored there. Each nuclear bomb is just under 12-feet long and weighs 700 pounds.
However, reports disagree if these bombs could be useful to terrorists. The Washington Post minimized the danger, stating that these nukes:
“… use control devices known as Permissive Action Links that make them difficult to use without authorization.”
Difficult? But not impossible.
In this age of President Obama’s last few months in office, that alone should be seen as an unacceptable risk.
But it gets worse, much worse.
Turkey is still a member of NATO. In fact, Turkey has the 2nd largest standing military in NATO – second only to the U.S.
The U.S. badly wanted Turkey in NATO, and perhaps one of the sweeteners was membership in the nuclear club.
The implications of Erdogan merging with ISIS and thereby gaining total control of the Turkish military are difficult to contemplate, but here is just one problem a new President Trump would have to urgently consider.
What the Washington Post article failed to mention was that yes, the U.S. has 50 B61 nuclear bombs at the Incirlik Air Base.
However, according to Wikipedia’s “Turkish Armed Forces” article – as a NATO member, the Turkish Air Force already has an additional 40 more of the U.S.-made nukes already in their possession, in case of a nuclear conflict involving NATO.
Not so reassuringly, Wikipedia states however that:
“… their use requires the approval of NATO.”
During the coup, it was said that the Turkish Air Force was the branch of the Turkish military that was the most pro-US. Perhaps this is why. They are the keepers of those nukes.
How can we get those 40 nukes back?
Will President Obama make an effective effort to do so? Highly unlikely!
Therefore, one of incoming President Trump’s top national security priorities must be to get those nuclear weapons back and immediately move them to a more secure location out of the reaches of this invasion.
Talk about a doomsday scenario suddenly looming up!
I’m still reporting from Washington. Good day.