either recommended or even demanded that he employ a first strike against Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy stood up to them and refused to order it, even after one of our U2 planes was shot down over Cuba. Plus, JFK had RFK, Ted Sorensen and others like them to advise him. If all or most of the generals told Trump, no, demanded that Trump let the missiles fly, would he stand up to them?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFVN0Jz0rE]

at Alternet

... plans that were then unknown to the president [Kennedy] ... I briefed his aide, McGeorge Bundy ... on the nature of the plans ... like the delegation of authority to theater commanders for nuclear war by President Eisenhower, which was fairly shocking to McGeorge Bundy, even though Kennedy chose to renew that delegation, as other presidents have.

... I was given the job of improving the Eisenhower plans, which was not a very high bar, actually, at that time, because they were, on their face, the worst plans in the history of warfare ... They were insane. They called for first-strike plans, which was by order of President Eisenhower. He didn’t want any plan for limited war of any kind with the Soviet Union, under any circumstances, because that would enable the Army to ask for enormous numbers of divisions or even tactical nuclear weapons to deal with the Soviets. So he required that the only plan for fighting Soviets, under any circumstances ... was for all-out war ...

... that plan called, in our first strike, for hitting every city—actually, every town over 25,000—in the USSR and every city in China. ... there were no reserves.

... In the event of your carrying out your general nuclear war plans, which were first-strike plans, how many will die? ... USSR ... China ... West Europe ... Austria ... Finland ... Afghanistan ... Japan ... northern India ... a total of 600 million people. That was a time, by the way, when the population of the world was 3 billion. And that was an underestimate of their casualties—a hundred Holocausts.

But the recent discussions of that, which emphasize his [Trump's] sole authority to do that, don’t take account of the fact that he has authority to delegate. And he has delegated. Every president has delegated. I don’t know the details of what President Trump has done or since the Cold War. Every president in the Cold War, right through Carter and Reagan, had delegated, in fact, to theater commanders in case communications were cut off. That means that the idea that the president is the only one with sole power to issue an order that will be recognized as an authentic authorized order is totally false.
...
It happened that a commodore of several [Soviet] submarines in the area was on that sub rather than some other one. It could have been one of the others, but he was there. And since he was the commodore, his assent was also needed. And he said no. And thanks to that man, Vasili Arkhipov, we didn’t blow a cruiser out of the water and cause the nuclear explosion that Kennedy had already announced would cause an all-out attack on the Soviet Union. That’s why we’re still here.

I'm already pushing the limits of fair use, the whole article is worth a read.

he's a blowhard, and that has been the official response since the Russians tested a bomb themselves. I'm afraid of Theresa May and Hillary.
May actually said - to Parliament - that she wanted to order a first strike. IMHO she meant that if Hillary was elected that she would have. (about a week later a British sub tested a missile launch and failed. May's enthusiasm was quietly dropped. I unshakably believe that I saw a televised interview (just before the third debate) where Hillary said, "The Iranians are violating the treaty. I will destroy their nuclear facility, and if that requires a nuclear weapon, well that's not off the table… (also) Russian and Chinese hacking." but I cannot find the clip anywhere. (I do not mean her calmer statement at the debate) I was having narcoleptic episodes at the time (they stopped when I started taking carbodopa for my parkinson's) so it's possible it was just a lucid dream, but normally I have some giveaway , like remembering that I woke up, or there was a green cat eating a banana in my dream. This did not happen here. Does anyone else remember this? Someone must have been watching whatever network had the interview.

We came close twice in the past, once during the Cuban missile crisis, and another time when
Russians saw false radar images. Both nations have a considerable percentage of their strategic nuclear arsenals ready to go.

Why do we risk this????

I can only guess that it's for political gain and profit. I just heard a young Democratic Congressman speak, who's made it clear that his "image" was liberal on identity issues and "strong" on defense. He was going to get tough on Russia and force them to change their behaviors to be more acceptable to the US. "Russia wanted to deny us our democracy." What a load of crap! Russia has little interest in meddling with our "democracy". We, however, have meddled with 52 documented elections around the world including the admitted meddling in Russia, repeatedly. So now we have the traditional war party, the Republicans, and the new war party, the Democrats. This is a recipe for global nuclear annihilation.

So here's the point. The reaction in Russia is progressively more angry. Who would have suspected? Russia, North Korea and mostly every country in the world understands that the US stands ready to use nuclear weapons. That they are an integral part of US foreign policy. That the US continues to spend 100s of billions of dollars into nuclear weapon development, including bunker busters and dial-a-death bombs. That the US loves them and has had many plans to demolish other countries with a first strike. The US neocons raised the obvious point in the late 1990s, that the USSR military strength was gone and that the time was ripe for a nuclear first strike to finish off Russia and make sure that a rising Russia was never competition again. Russia understands this well, and will never let this happen. Russia's nuclear retaliatory capability today is real and devastating.
I see two hazards. The first is a simple error on the part of early warning systems, mistaking a non nuclear threat. The other is escalating tensions. The US considers Syrian territory East of the Euphrates river as theirs. Recently there have been skirmished in the air. A US F22 buzzed a pair of Russian SU24s on an anti ISIS mission, an unfair match. That lasted until Russia showed up with an SU35. The F22 high-tailed it out of there as it is no match in a dogfight. Assume for a minute, that the dogfight happened and the SU35 shot down the F22. The US would declare foul play since it seems to think that it owns part of Syria. Russia will say F-U. Warplanes and missiles will fly.

Relative to war itself, all war except for purely defensive purposes is illegal under international law and a violation of the U.S. Constitution. ALL war is a racket.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/76-years-of-pearl-harbor-lies/235375/

The United States is indisputably the world’s most frequent and extensive wager of aggressive war, largest occupier of foreign lands, and biggest weapons dealer to the world. But when the United States peeps out from under the blankets where it lies shivering with fear, it sees itself as an innocent victim. It has no holiday to keep any victorious battle in everyone’s mind. It has a holiday to remember the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — and now also one, perhaps holier still, to recall, not the “shock and awe” destruction of Baghdad, but the crimes of September 11, 2001, the “new Pearl Harbor.”

Similar to Israel, but with a variation, the United States is deeply obsessed with World War II, overlaid of course on a Southern obsession with the U.S. Civil War. The Southern U.S. love for the Civil War is love for a war lost, but also for victimhood and the righteousness of the vengeance wreaked on the world year after year by the U.S. military.

The U.S. love for World War II is also, fundamentally, love for a war lost. That may seem odd to say, because it is simultaneously very much love for a war won. World War II remains the U.S. model for potentially some day winning a war again, as it’s been losing them all over the world for the 71 years since World War II. But the U.S. view of WWII is also strangely similar to the Russian view.

Russia was brutally attacked by the Nazis, but persevered and won the war. The United States believes itself to have been “imminently” attacked by the Nazis. That, after all, was the propaganda that took the United States to war. There was not one word about rescuing Jews or anything half that noble. Rather, President Franklin Roosevelt claimed to have a map of the Nazis’ plans for carving up the Americas.

Hollywood has made relatively few movies and television shows about all other wars combined, in comparison with dramas about World War II, which may in fact be its most popular topic ever. We’re really not drowning in movies glorifying the theft of northern Mexico or the occupation of the Philippines. The Korean War gets little play. Even the Vietnam War and all the more recent wars fail to inspire U.S. storytellers like World War II, and some 90% of those stories relate to the war in Europe, not Asia.

The European story is much preferred because of the particular evils of the German enemy. That the U.S. prevented a peace without victor in World War I by crushing Germany, and then punished it viciously, and then aided the Nazis — all of that is far more easily forgotten than the nuclear bombs that the United States dropped on Japan. But it is the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, together with the fantasized Nazi invasion, that persuades the U.S. public that waging war in Europe was defensive. So the history of the United States training Japan in imperialism and then antagonizing and provoking Japan must be forgotten as well.