And here they thought they could wipe out all the lefty bloggers at once.

Operation Divine Strake, a.k.a. Operation Biggest Dickus -- the testing of some 700 tons of ammonium nitrate bomb in the Nevada desert has been postponed until June 23.

Darwin Morgan, a public information officer for the Nevada Test Site, confirmed Tuesday that the 700-ton ammonium nitrate-fuel oil blast has been postponed for at least three weeks. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Nuclear Security Administration proposed the test 150 miles west of St. George to gather data about the effects of both large conventional weapons and low-yield nuclear weapons.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, released a statement Tuesday morning indicating that he hopes the postponement will help get all the facts "out for public view." Matheson and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have both been persistent in questioning federal officials about the blast.
Cheri Abdelnour, a DTRA spokeswoman, said the Department of Energy's Nevada Site Office decided to postpone the experiment "due to scheduled legal proceedings." Downwinders in both Nevada and Utah, along with members of the Western Shoshone tribe, filed a lawsuit in April to stop the blast because of the possibility of disrupting radioactively contaminated soil and spreading it downwind.

Robert Hager, a Reno, Nev. attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the postponement is good news for his clients and all Downwinders. But he said the agencies conducting the test need to produce the data that indicates it will be safe.

"Some of the things that the NNSA says are flat out untrue," Hager alleged, referring to government assertions there is no radioactive soil at the blast site. "Until they come forward with data that will support their opinion that the blast will be safe we will continue to stop them in court."

An appendix to the government's environmental assessment indicates the nearest man-made radioactivity is approximately 1.1 miles from the blast site. Despite this factor, the NNSA and the DTRA still released a finding of no significant impact, stating, "the proposed action is not a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment."

This bomb test, which is apparently a trial run for nuking Iran, will result in a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud over the area -- which as you can see from the quoted article, is near some radioactively-contaminated soil.

Heckuva job, Brownie.

Now, Yearly Kos, which I would LOVE to attend, were it not for Mr. Brilliant being out of work, my own workplace getting quieter for the day, and it being Mr. B's birthday weekend, is June 8-11, so presumably the radioactive dust that will be showered upon Las Vegas just before the bloggers' arrival.

Somewhere Richard Cohen is gnashing his teeth in disappointment.