US ready to deploy Bush-era behemoth

Bomb to drill into underground bunkers

Photo: INLSA

October 13, 2009 Edition 2
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is speeding up delivery of a colossal bomb designed to destroy hidden weapons bunkers buried underground and shielded by 5 tons of reinforced concrete.
Call it Plan B for dealing with Iran, which recently revealed a long-suspected nuclear site deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
The 15-ton behemoth - called the massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP - will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and carry 2 400kg of explosives.
The Pentagon has awarded a nearly $52 million (R382m) contract to speed up placement of the bomb aboard the B-2 Stealth bomber, and officials say the bomb could be fielded as soon as next year.
Pentagon officials acknowledge the new bomb is intended to blow up fortified sites like those used by Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programmes, but they deny there is a specific target in mind.
"I don't think anybody can divine potential targets," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. "This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in."

The Obama administration has struggled to counter suspicions lingering from George Bush's presidency that the US is either planning to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities itself or would look the other way if Israel did the same.
The administration has been careful not to take military action off the table even as it reached out to Iran with historic talks earlier this month. Tougher sanctions are the backup if diplomacy fails to stop what the West fears is a drive for a nuclear weapon.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently said a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would probably only buy time.
The new US bomb would be the culmination of planning begun in the Bush years. The Obama administration's plans to bring the bomb on line more quickly indicate that the weapon is still part of the long-range backup plan.
The MOP could, in theory, take out bunkers such as those Saddam Hussein had begun to construct for weapons programmes in Iraq, or flatten the kind of cave and tunnel networks that allowed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to escape US assault in Afghanistan in 2001.
The precision-guided bomb is designed to drill through earth and almost any underground encasement to reach weapons depots, labs or hideouts. - Sapa-AP

This article i got from my local newspaper and anybody who is informed enough and has done the effert of researching propoganda and how it is used by the media and goverments would be saying "of course they say there is no target!" because the war against terror is a big illusion and the men called Osama and Sadam are NOT what the media or governement portray tem as. They are just puppets like the very men who govern the world, and since its all a lie then what they are telling us about using this bomb is just the same. The so called "war against terror" is their excuse to manufacture such weapons without the public going histeric. THE PUBLIC DEMAND SAFETY!! so the very men who orchastrated the attack on your safety are the ones giving you the solution in return giving them a reason and full go ahead. This bomb is just another major weapon in the corporation or the U.S.A's arsenal and what if it isnt a bomb at all? what if it did contain nuclear power or even atomic? something that big is worth keeping a secret about and almost any giant bomb can be made to look like a another kind through apearance. These are the sorta questions we need to ask the men holding the power, WHAT IS THE freakin' BOMB REALLY FOR?