A question so paralyzing as not to be tolerated

HUFFINGTON POST:  … For a nuclear missile crewmember at the receiving end of this order, there is one question that is as world-shakingly important as it is impossible to find an answer to: When you get that command, and millions of innocent people will be dead in a blink, how do you know the president hasn’t gone mad?

Air Force Maj. Harold Hering asked that question, as Ron Rosenbaum writes in Slate, in the middle of missile training class.

Hering had done multiple tours in Vietnam, picking up the wounded and dead in live-fire zones. He wanted to be in the Air Force for life. He was expecting a promotion. But once he asked that question, the higher-ups immediately pulled him out of class and, after two years of appeals, Hering was forced to leave the Air Force…  (more)

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