Posted on 11/11/2007 6:59:13 AM PST by RDTF
George W. Bush is hardly the first U.S. president to forgive sins against democracy by a Pakistani leader. Like his predecessors from Jimmy Carter onward, Bush has tolerated bad behavior in hopes that Pakistan might do Washington's bidding on some urgent U.S. priority -- in this case, a crackdown on al-Qaeda. But the scariest legacy of Bush's failed bargain with Gen. Pervez Musharraf isn't the rise of another U.S.-backed dictatorship in a strategic Muslim nation, or even the establishment of a new al-Qaeda haven along Pakistan's lawless border. It's the leniency we've shown toward the most dangerous nuclear-trafficking operation in history -- an operation masterminded by one man, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
For nearly four years, under the banner of the "war on terror," Bush has refused to demand access to Khan, the ultranationalist Pakistani scientist who created a vast network that has spread nuclear know-how to North Korea, Iran and Libya. Indeed, Bush has never seriously squeezed Musharraf over Khan, who remains a national hero for bringing Pakistan the Promethean fire it can use to compete with its nuclear-armed nemesis, India. Khan has remained under house arrest in Islamabad since 2004, outside the reach of the CIA and investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who are desperate to unlock the secrets he carries. Bush should be equally adamant about getting to the bottom of Khan's activities.
Bush's sluggishness over Pakistan-based proliferation, even as he has funneled about $10 billion in military and financial aid to Musharraf since Sept. 11, 2001, is even harder to explain when one considers the damage Khan has done to the world's fragile nuclear stability. Khan used stolen technology and black-market sales to help Pakistan obtain its nuclear arsenal, setting the stage for a possible atomic showdown with India.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
ping
no mention of his apparent ‘escape’ here..
escape?
I'm missing either your reference, or some recent news.
sorry... just relaized wrong Khan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1921025/posts
Imran Khan escapes from house arrest [Pakistan]
Times of India ^ | 5 Nov 2007 | n/c
Posted on 11/05/2007 12:14:04 AM EST by BlackVeil
relaized = realized
Is the whole working premise here that since the authors have heard no leaks, the safe assumption is that there's no intel feed from Khan? And if he is singing like a canary, what would the WaPo have the administration do, leak it to them? write op-eds? turn it over to ElBaradei so he can write the op-eds or better yet, make the appropriate excuses? The surest sign of competence is that the UN "watchdog" group is in their usual position: clueless and in the dark.
No, the hope is that the administration has access to the information, that it is being kept secret, and that the ops are in place to disrupt cells when needed and follow the trails otherwise. Instead, the WaPo expects someone to be so proud that they learned a secret that they will trumpet it across the face of their newspaper. Sort of like saying that we have AlQ's computer network infiltrated only to have it go dark before the ink was even dry. Thank you NYT.
And WTF is that about the Dutch designing centrifuges in secret?
I wish for the day when someone interviewing a journalist or celebrity asks them “when were you granted a security clearance?”
I give him 3 more weeks at best.
As usual, the Post sees only the surface facts and thinks it is in the know. What they fail to understand is that Pakistan got its nuke technology from China, and that China gains valuable time to catch up with the west while we diddle around with a bunch of 7th century extremists who now have tons of money, excess young men, and are a little dangerous. They think that in 30 years when they are able to take care of the west, they can take care of the Muslims, too, and given their moral code, they could.
People have been saying 3 weeks since October of 2001.
Stalin was a real nasty piece of work yet we had to do business with him to be a a nastier piece of work called Hitler.
The real world is a messy ugly place where the US has to make all sorts of moral compromises with dubious sorts to protect itself from enemies trying to kill it.
This habit of the Junk Media, and the other assorted Leftist US butt clowns, of acting all indicate about our allies while ignore the same, or worse sins but supposedly “Progressive” regimes like North Korea, Zimbabwe or Venezuela is absurdly childish.
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