How realistic is this?

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 2001)

`We cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.'	-- Albert Einstein
`Peace is our profession.'	-- sign on General Ripper's base
What statement was Stanley Kubrick attempting to make with this 1964 film? Is this a parody of the U.S. military and more generally the U.S. government  a mere spoof? How realistic is this depiction?
Though the scrolling text that introduces the film says that any similarities to real people is purely coincidental and that the U.S. Air Force safeguards against the types of occurrences contained in the film text, all subsequent devices used in the film point to a more realistic feel. This sense of factuality overrides the understated initial comments almost to the point of negating them. After our introduction to Group Captain Mandrake and General Ripper, we are whisked away into news-reel-like footage about the Airborne Alert Force. The voice over that accompanies the footage also encourages the viewer to liken the sequence to a factual news segment. Additionally, the statistical information about the 50 megatons of explosives being carried by each B-52 makes the footage seem realistic. Though there is definitely an element of fiction in the film, the realism is later continued by the hand-held camera footage of the invasion of Ripper's base by U.S. troops.
One of the film's elements that seems as at first as if it can't possibly be realistic is the ability of Ripper to enact Code R, to call an attack without the knowledge of the President, the commander in chief of the armed forces. President Muffley has his power `muffled' by a war provision that he has approved and signed into action but about which he has no recollection. The President is shown to be completely impotent in at least one of the powers granted to him by Article II of the Constitution. He is further depicted as a bit of an idiot he has childish arguments with the Russian Premier about who is more sorry and as he makes statements such as `Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is a war room.'
Ultimately, none of the people who sit in the ever-important war room of the Pentagon and gaze upon the secretive `big map' have any real effect on the bomb being dropped. Finally, the decision, after Ripper has made the initial order, is left to be implemented by this group of young pilots, headed up by the countrified Major Kong. Armed with their conspicuously labeled top secret manuals, the crew sets about to follow the ridiculous mission with which they've been entrusted to see through. No wrench can possibly be thrown in the works to stop these boys from carrying out their mission. Kong has been so trained (or so brainwashed  something with which the enemy Commis were charged  by his military training) to stop at nothing, not even following the example of the WWII Japanese Kamikaze pilots, to follow orders. No amount of conferring at the big round table about the big map can keep plans from going awry. In the end, those men at that table really have nothing to do with the war that goes on outside the walls of their precious inner-Pentagon sanctum.
We find that Ripper's aim of peace as a profession is erroneous just as Einstein surmised.