The New York Times is reporting that the Bush Administration has spent almost $100 million helping Pakistan’s on-again, off-again dictator Pervez Musharraf secure the country’s weapons of mass destruction.
This is the same Bush Administration that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars chasing after Iraq’s fictional WMDs, and is gearing up to spend God-only-knows how much on a missile defense systm to defend against Iran’s hypothetical future nukes.
Sort of sad when $100 million wasted in the last 6 years (which would buy you a pretty good free agent in most professional sports) trying in vain to get a nuclear training center built in Pakistan seems like an economical option.
Eric Margolis and others have reported that Bush has been giving Pervez $1 billion a month to prop him up.
Are they trying to bribe the Pakistani Generals/Scientists into not selling their warheads on the Black Market? Almost like preemptive bribery. Because you know those Pakistanis would love to get some of that Persian Gulf Oil wealth in a Swiss Bank Account so they can retire and buy an island in the Pacific Ocean.
Or some Pakistani General in charge of the Nuclear Arsenal may get the crazy idea that he wants to be a Regional Warlord and starts laying claim to large parts of the country and building up his own personal Army, and Pakistan has plenty of people to do that with. In fact this program would give him the cash to make his dream a reality.
Those are the US government nightmare scenarios. Because they would have no control over the situation. What are they going to do? Send B-52’s from Diego Garcia to attack Pakistan? They do that and the whole island and its 2,000 or so US Military personnel will disappear in a Mushroom cloud. The US Naval bases in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates? Well let’s just say the growing Dubai skyline will cease to exist. This is the sort of thing that really scares the Pentagon chiefs.
Attacking Pakistan would be crazy. Yet it is precisely what some of the so-called experts on both the left and the right are advocating.
So much effort is now made in manipulating Middle Eastern countries into doing what we want. Its astounding. It never seems to dawn on the powers that be that a better course has to do with their wanting to do what we want. And that, of course, requires something in the way of genuinely acknowledging who they are and their interests in the world and in a fashion that sees them as no more or less worthy than anyone else. We’re in this nuclear dilema with Pakistan precisely because we haven’t so acknowleged so many.
John Lowell
No wonder other countries want nukes! What a great way to get some free money!
The neo cons want us to ‘cakewalk’ into a new catastrophic war — The war with Pakistan. Unfortunately, many on antiwar also say that instead of attacking Iraq we should have attacked Pakistan who actually has the nukes. The scenario presented by Bill K can never materialize, he has no idea how massive and professional Pakistan’s military is. Does he think a US general can do the same thing here? How about an Israeli general getting hold of nukes and then threatening Syria and Jordan to surrender their territories?
The US is not(yet) as fractured along ethnic lines as Pakistan. And are you suggesting Military Coups(like those of a certain General Musharraf) never happen in Pakistan? The Pakistani Military hierarchy is different from most Major Powers as it has more influence than the central government in many areas especially the ISI and its secret dealings with islamists, same thing in Turkey. What I said is EXTREMELY likely. Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist already sold nuclear plans to the highest bidder. The next step is easy to make if the country is undergoing political instability.
Every dollar spent on giving hope to potential Jihadists in Pakistan and elsewhere is worth a million spent on weapons of mass destruction, indeed weapons of any sort. Supporting the general in Pakistan is another huge error. There is no defense from nuclear weapons even the use of one such weapon will produce enormous dangers to the world economy whoever uses it. The use of nucelar weapons should be considered a crime against humanity. The only defense is an enlightened non- militaristic foreign policy, honouring the NPT and reducing sall nuclear stockpiles to a bare minimum and finally total elimination. All enriched uranium should be under international control.
Nuclear weapons are completely useless against terrorist attacks.