[CPEO-MEF] New Florida bombing range

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Bombing the Panhandle

Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida

By BRUCE K. GAGNON
Counterpunch
October 7, 2004

JI have just returned from a one-day trip to Perry, Florida to speak to
a gathering of concerned citizens who are organizing to stop the
placement of a new bombing range in their rural community. It was one of
the most inspiring trips that I have ever made.

Perry is up in the Florida panhandle, just south of the capital city of
Tallahassee. The region is called the nature coast as Taylor county
touches the Gulf of Mexico and has several key rivers that run through
its pine tree forests to the gulf. The county has a relatively small
population as Florida goes and that is one reason the Pentagon sees it
as a good place to put a bombing range.

There is a bombing range already in the region, just further west at
Eglin AFB near Ft Walton Beach. I lived there while in high school when
my father was stationed at Eglin and I hiked through the middle of the
bombing range as an explorer scout. It is one of the largest military
bases in the nation but population has grown near the base to the point
where the noise from the bombing range has begun to draw complaints.
Most recently the Mother of all Bombs (MOAB) was tested at Eglin. The
MOAB is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever created that creates a
mushroom cloud and shockwaves similar to a small nuclear explosion.

...

for the entire article, see
http://www.counterpunch.org/gagnon10072004.html

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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