Oh, we could probably spare one or two for them, if we could get enough of them in one place for it to be worth while.
But unless that comes to pass, commonplace old 40-foot *dry van* shipping containers will do fine, as at Dasht-i-Leili.
Posted on 02/09/2004 8:30:57 AM PST by swarthyguy
FEB 8 2004
Before we go into this story, readers need some background. Everything below is only what we have heard and no reader should assume that we have some special source. Nonetheless, readers will see that a lot of quite puzzling behavior on Washington and the Khan Affair, and very puzzling behavior on Washington's straight-faced insistence that President Musharraf is cooperating fully on N-proliferation, will now start making sense.
Once America decided to go after Bin Laden in Afghanistan, it asked for and thought it was given assurances of Pakistani cooperation. When Washington found out that the Pakistanis were simply playing games [natural for Pakistan should do since the Taliban was in great part Pakistan's creation and a critical element of its plan to assure its security against India], Washington went ballistic. The Pakistanis had assumed it was business as usual. They did not understand that Washington had declared war against Islamic fundamentalism the day of 9/11. They did not understand that the bureaucratic battles and lack of a clearly defined enemy had stifled America's action against the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, all came to a sudden end on 9/11. Washington was united, the dogs of war were straining at the leash.
We are told that the United States, through several channels and in several ways, told Pakistan that it had a short time [duration we do not know] to come on board on Washington's side - and that Washington would expect complete compliance - or else Pakistan would pay a painful price.
The price's details we don't have. We were told, however, that the threatened to destroy every nuclear installation in Pakistan - and that was going to be just the curtain rising. When these stories go around, there is always considerable exaggeration, but we, at least believe that the anti-nuclear strike really was just the first action threatened, and that essentially the US told Pakistan it was going to be downhill after that: power plants, industrial infrastructure, ports, everything would go because Pakistan had by its actions declared itself an enemy of the United States, and the Pakistanis should know from World War 2 when America unleashes its strength.
Readers will remember President Musharraf's many statements when his opponents accused him of kowtowing to the US that he had absolutely no choice but to act as he did, and the above explains his statements.
The United States immediately locked down Pakistan's N-arsenal [or as your editor maintains, what passed for Pakistan's n-arsenal]. It took a whole series of other actions to ensure that Pakistan could not, under any circumstances, use it. We have even heard that there is no more Pakistani arsenal: its not just that its locked down, it has been rendered inoperative - again, we have no confirmation.
The question now arises: why seize the Pakistan N-arsenal? Its not as if Pakistan could have used it against the US, not unless Pakistan wanted to be returned to the 12th Century AD.
Here is the really tricky part and we must frankly say that we have absolutely no idea if this is true. We also don't know the sequence of events. Roughly, however, it went like this:
Bin Laden was either negotiating previously with renegade Pakistan officers for a nuclear weapon, or started negotiating when he learned the Americans were coming for him.
Even we admit this bomb had the potential of creating a real disaster. The thing about building a Plutonium bomb with reactor grade material, is that you get a highly unstable weapon. Once assembled, it can explode at any time, its yield could be a few hundred tons TNT equivalent, or tens of thousands. At the very least, the conventional explosives used to trigger the bomb could spread lethal radioactivity over a wide radius.
The US, then, had no choice but to act with utmost and swift ruthlessness in seizing the Pakistan N-arsenal. Pakistan cooperated, saving itself worse consequences. Naturally those involved could not give any hint of their surrender: the one thing that has kept Pakistan going is the belief held by everybody, including the armed forces, that they have nuclear weapons so that in the ultimate circumstances, not just India had better not mess with them, the US had better not mess with them.
To save face, a story was agreed on: America was merely helping Pakistan safeguard its arsenal. This story has been repeated a number of times, and we ask our readers one question. Since when does one nuclear power invite another to come help its safeguard its arsenal? Particularly when 96% of the smaller country's people are anti-American [poll taken in the 1980s showing Pakistan was the most American country in the world], and its armed forces are violently anti-American [why we'll explain another time].
If you go by this reconstruction - and we freely admit we could be wrong on most everything - you will understand why the US has been so casual about the Pakistan arsenal. It has taken Chidanand Rajghatta of the Times of India 2 1/2 years to figure this out - see his dispatch from Washington yesterday. We could have told him this and more long ago, but as he knows we're from Iowa, he believes we know nothing. But at least he did figure it out - other media people have not.
Now lets wrap this up. Where does the Khan Affair come into all this?
Dr. A.Q. Khan is just one of the highest Pakistani officials who, along with General Aslam Beg, believes that if God were just, he would burn America to the ground. Our readers would be surprised if they knew of the intense, bitter hatred many, many elite Muslims have against America. Its not just a bunch of misguided people who want to see America destroyed. Its big segments of the ruling elites of several "friends" and "allies" of America. The reason is if you keep beating a dog, when you are not looking, he will go for your throat. Rightly or wrongly, a great many Saudis and Pakistanis feel they have been treated as dogs by America, and thrashed simply for the fun of hearing them scream.
If Dr. Khan had any sense, he would have stayed quiet after 9/11. After all, the man has made several hundred million dollars for himself. But Dr. Khan, never very fond of America, has been doing a slow burn ever since the US came to Afghanistan. Its no sense discussing how America has been treating the Pakistani generals since 9/11, but it hasn't been kindly, and understandably so when we consider what some of those generals have been up to.
Dr. Khan has been boasting rather loudly that America would be fixed, and everyone would know who had done the fixing when it was done. We personally find Dr. Khan quite harmless and amusing, and we believe he had no intention of following up and complicating life for himself. Nonetheless, to talk of bombs even when Pakistan's bombs have been rendered ineffective, is not a good idea.
Because put yourself in Washington's shoes. The Father of the Pakistan bomb and the virulently anti-American General Beg, have been discussing getting a bomb to the "right" people. Incidentally, though Dr. Khan is a bit of a clown, General Beg is not. He is a very tough man and no one who comes within ten kilometers of him remains unaware he wants only one thing for America: extinction. So lets say you are the CIA or whatever, and from dozens of sources come these reports.
Do you sit around like we do, saying forget it, there is no Pakistan bomb? Well, Washington does not have the liberty of treating the subject as a matter for academic debate. Washington is fairly certain it has everything that looks like a Pakistan bomb, but where is the 100% assurance Dr. Khan cant get something together for a client? The stakes are too high.
The solution: take out Dr. Khan. And its not enough to take him out, anyone of import in his circle must be neutralized. And that's exactly what's happened.
Meantime, we are told that the Pentagon at least is having a good snicker at the Washington Post's pompous editorials about General Musharraf, and its accusations that the US Government is being naive. The US is not worried about Pakistan bombs or proliferation because it has all parties exactly where it wants them. Its the Washington Post that needs to be less naive, not the Pentagon.
Personal appeal from Orbat.com to media: Can you all please stop flogging a dead horse? There is no story, there is no scandal. You think the story has just begun? Sorry, it ended a while ago, the snake was repeatedly stomped, and when it gave a little twitch, as Dr. Khan did, the US drove a steamroller over the snake. People, please go home: Orbat.com wants to go back to its business and has no time to waste explaining your foolishness to its readers. Get a grip, media, get a life.
*---------------------------------------------------*
The Indian weekly Tehelka has done what may be the first ever poll of Indian Army soldiers - we'd be interested in knowing if the Government of India permitted the poll, or if Tehelka spoke to soldiers on its own. 65% reported they were afraid of a nuclear war with Pakistan. Orbat.com is not quite clear what the point of this question is, as any sane person should be afraid of nuclear war. 54% of officers surveyed in the 1600 soldier poll supported Indian participation in a US led Iraq force; only 13% of enlisted men supported such participation. Again, we are not quite clear on the point of this question. Indian troops even in peacetime are forced to ensure long tours of duty under harsh conditions, and continuing CI ops in Kashmir and the Northeast, plus the year long mobilization for Operation Parakram, have exhausted the men. Why would an Indian soldier want to go on another open-ended deployment, this time in a foreign land? Further, since when is asking soldiers if they want to do Job X or Y or Z a productive exercise?
Interesting survey at the tail end.
More circles withing circles in the Khan saga.
I actually kind of agree with not-Bright. Except she meant it as an accusation against Bush, rather than as an affirmative strategy.
By keeping track of OBL and Omar, and monitoring people into and out of their location, we can locate and destroy all the elements of Al Qaeda.
Who cares about these individuals. It's "the Base" were after.
February 09 2004 at 11:03AM
By Sami Zubeiri
Islamabad - The Pakistani government on Monday insisted its nuclear arsenal was in safe hands and denied it was working with the American government to stop weapons falling into extremists' control.
The statement came as the country battled to contain the fallout from a nuclear proliferation scandal in which the man who made Pakistan a nuclear power admitted he had leaked information to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
"Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and is fully capable of defending its assets without any outside help," a military spokesperson said.
The National Command Authority (NCA) - established in February 2000 and setting out the country's nuclear command structure - had shown its "complete confidence in the command and control system put in place," he said.
NBC television on Friday quoted an unnamed United States official as saying the US had held talks with Pakistan on ensuring the country's nuclear technology and arsenal did not fall into the hands of extremists.
The military spokesperson rejected the report as "totally baseless."
It comes amid a leaks scandal sparked last year when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tipped off Pakistani authorities that someone in its nuclear programme was trading atomic secrets with foreign states.
The ensuing probe drew in the country's top military and nuclear establishment and named Abdul Qadeer Khan, a one-time national hero who headed the country's nuclear programme, as the source of the leaks.
'The military spokesperson rejected the report' Khan, who admitted in a televised address to the nation that he had run a black market operation trading in nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya, received a presidential pardon after pleading for forgiveness.
President Pervez Musharraf defended his handling of the scandal and his pardon for Khan in an interview with NBC on Sunday.
"The dilemma is: he's a great man, he's a hero, and he's a hero of every individual in the street. Yet he has done something which could bring harm to the nation. Now how do I deal with it? We had to handle it very carefully."
Musharraf held telephonic talks with Colin Powell at the weekend to reassure the US secretary of State that Islamabad would stand firm against future leaks and share the outcome of its current probe.
Powell would visit Pakistan soon for talks on the investigation, a government official said, as Britain added it was concerned by the scandal.
Khan himself has denied that the military was involved in his proliferation activities, and admitted "full responsibility" for the leaks.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri has also defended the decision to pardon Khan, saying that he was not the only scientist in the world spreading nuclear information.
"Why this unhealthy focus on Pakistan, why not others? We are talking about various actors," Kasuri told the concluding session of a two-day security conference in Munich on Sunday.
He said that Iran and the IAEA had supplied Islamabad with a list of names of other people involved in supplying such technology to other states.
"I know the names, I don't wish to spell them out. There are lots of Europeans involved and there are other countries involved," Kasuri said.
Kasuri described Khan as "a national hero, because in the eyes of all Pakistan he has brought about strategic balance in south Asia."
Pakistani foreign office spokesperson Masood Khan said on Sunday the scientist had been pardoned because he had co-operated with the investigation.
However, he said that Khan and other scientists held over the investigation "will not be allowed to resume their illegal activities. They will not resume their duties." - Sapa-AFP
No need to "suspect" anything -- they say in the first paragraph that they have no scoop, no special sources, no nuttin'.
It's pure speculation.
So then why don't we have al-Douri?
Yep, that saved me a lot of reading, too... ;)
I see along, long road ahead of us in dealing with Islam. The writer does not claim speculation on his part, for this statement.
War to the death ?
Yes, hopefully mostly them.
IMHO: Only if its necessary. We could, at this very moment end this problem by wiping out the entire Muslim World. How would History judge us? No thinking human being wants this on his hands.
I'm sure though that, as Bush has said, this going be a looooooooong War. My own reading of everything is that we are going to have to 'deprogram' close to a billion Moose-limbs. This may take literally generations!
Prioritize- First go after the immediate Threats: 1) Defeat Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, etc. 2) Overlapping with #1, go after Militant idealogues and Mad Mullahs. 3) Work to promote a Turkey-ization of the Muslim World.
We've let these idiots play around since the end of the colonial era and the 'divvying' up of the Middle East by Britain and France nearly 100 years ago. Nows the time for action, since as we've seen, it ain't gonna get better. JMHO
That may be true. Something must have happened to negate the threat of Pakistani nukes flying the coop. After all the whole situation has been really weird ...from Khan being paraded (yep, a farce it may have been but it was still a terribly dangerous game for Mushy to play), Washington acting nonchalantly to what would normally have been a major occurence, and most of all India seeming to be totally at ease with all those developments. Actually the perfect benchmark in this case is India, and if Delhi is not reacting at all to these developments then something must have happened behind the scenes to cause them not to worry. Remember when these dudes almost ahd a war last year, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops and all that sabre-rattling. Yet after this India has not squeeked.
Yep Swarthy ...i'd say something happened behind the scenes, and Pakistani nukes are for some reason not the itch they used to be.
Oh, we could probably spare one or two for them, if we could get enough of them in one place for it to be worth while.
But unless that comes to pass, commonplace old 40-foot *dry van* shipping containers will do fine, as at Dasht-i-Leili.
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