Mussed Hair

The fantasy of "nukes you can use" has been around for decades, and of course there is a dedicated group of Blob Ghouls who are absolutely thrilled to have their chance to bring them up, yet again.

One of Dick's things, of course.

Perhaps the most alarming revelation to emerge from the new Bush biography is the elder man’s recollection that while Cheney had been his defence secretary, he had commissioned a study on how many tactical nuclear weapons would be needed to eliminate a division of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

Apparently the answer was 17, though a more profound conclusion is that Cheney was a more dangerous figure than anyone knew. It adds weight to reporting by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker that Cheney also contemplated the use of low-yield nuclear bunker-busters against Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities. The more we hear about the George W Bush administration, the clearer it becomes that the global damage it wrought could have been even worse.

It's one thing to contemplate "little nukes" against a country that doesn't have Big Nukes. That's horribly evil and wrong but perhaps it won't lead to the apocalypse. But the Blob Ghouls think that's for pussies.

 A nontrivial number of people are excited by the prospect of the apocalypse, or at least want to kill a whole lot of people,* and are attracted to the jobs and positions of influence that let them help bring it about.

That they're the same types of people who get enraged when their pizza order is late, or when the Whole Foods is out of a particular kind of lettuce, is, well, interesting! 

*Some of these people quite clearly have "humanitarian help" and "serial killer" wires crossed in the brains, and truly think they are doing good.