Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 08:07:31 AM

Login with username, password and session length

father of pakistani nuclear technology begs forgiveness

Started by smoker, February 04, 2004, 02:37:56 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

smoker

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,1140850,00.html

i bet he fucking does. sold secrets to iran, libya and north korea, but since he's apologised, musharraf has said he won't be prosecuted. forgiveness is divine and all that, and he is a national hero in pakistan still, presumably for the edge he gave them over india.

still ...

wonder if the americans will be wanting to pop round for a cup of tea and a nice chat soon?

me

Nuclear proliferation matters aside, the Pakistani leader is just a perv.

smoker

Quote from: "me"Nuclear proliferation matters aside, the Pakistani leader is just a perv.

how can you tell? is it the wig?

Pinball

We are the righteous and only we deserve to have nuclear weapons. You just can't trust these rogue states. They create global instability, invade other countries and promote subterfuge, terrorism and imperialistic acts.

Ummmm.

smoker

Quote from: "Pinball"We are the righteous and only we deserve to have nuclear weapons. You just can't trust these rogue states. They create global instability, invade other countries and promote subterfuge, terrorism and imperialistic acts.

Ummmm.

that's hardly valid is it? blair / bush aren't quite dictators yet. an obvious nutjob like kim sung il or whatever he's called shouldn't have nukes, and neither should a country run by islamic fundamentalists.

me

Quote from: "smoker"
Quote from: "Pinball"We are the righteous and only we deserve to have nuclear weapons. You just can't trust these rogue states. They create global instability, invade other countries and promote subterfuge, terrorism and imperialistic acts.

Ummmm.

that's hardly valid is it? blair / bush aren't quite dictators yet. an obvious nutjob like kim sung il or whatever he's called shouldn't have nukes, and neither should a country run by islamic fundamentalists.

Come on smoker, I though you knew you politics. Its Kim Jong Ill, son of  Kim Ill Sung (Who, although being dead, is still the "president" of N.Korea)

smoker

Quote from: "me"Come on smoker, I though you knew you politics. Its Kim Jong Ill, son of  Kim Ill Sung (Who, although being dead, is still the "president" of N.Korea)

ha! can't you tell i just read pinballs / mayers / bill oddie's / jutl's / kingboy's / custard's posts and search for the middle ground, then churn out some ill-informed nonsense anyway? no? well that's what i do

Pinball

I'm sick of the moral judgments being made that we are right, they are wrong. We are good, they are bad. What are we - God???

The strong dominate the weak. The US is currently the strong bully, and we're the bully's friend. We don't have to interfere in other countries' affairs, or at least not in the current brutal, bullying way. Saddam was a bad man - yep. So is Mugabe - are we going to invade Zimbabwe? So is Castro - are we going to invade Cuba? {add 50 other examples here}

My point? It's not about right and wrong. Right and wrong is merely the tool of manipulation of our politicians (and it has ever been thus). The UN should be the route of change - not US military power. Might is not, and has never been, right. Fuck might.

smoker

i agree we're not the good guys, not by a long shot, but in cases like these we're the better guys. and as the better guys don't we also have a responsibility to ensure real loonies in the world don't get hold of nukes? that's why most people who supported the war did so.

me

I see it as the "right" to have something. For instance Stan/Loretta wanted the right to have babies, even though he couldn't have babies. So any nation as far as I'm concerned have the "right" to a nuclear arsenal. Just cause were the big-wigs, i.e the men, we have them, so why do we deny the right of lesser nations, the women if you will, the right too ?

smoker

Quote from: "me"I see it as the "right" to have something. For instance Stan/Loretta wanted the right to have babies, even though he couldn't have babies. So any nation as far as I'm concerned have the "right" to a nuclear arsenal. Just cause were the big-wigs, i.e the men, we have them, so why do we deny the right of lesser nations, the women if you will, the right too ?

yes but stan /loretta was unable to achieve motherhood, whereas these rogue states can and will eventually. so they have the right to have nukes, and can have nukes. but they should not have nukes. simple.

me

Maybe so smoker, but I'm an easy goin liberal kind a guy who really couldn't give a fuck. They will get them in the end. The technology  is already out there to devise a nuclear bomb, albeit those in the know are relatively few in number, the information needed will eventually reach those who "shouldn't" be trying to make these awfull weapons. The world is goin to pot anyway, and I can state with a certain amount of certainty that a far Eastern country, be it India/Pakistan/N.Korea (countries not necessarily in order of likeliehood) will start the whole appocalypse thing rolling..

Hmmm, seems we all have a different kind of opinion, what we need is to bring everyone together so everyone is equal.  What we need is that new world order.  Oh how utopian the world would be under one goverment.


Pinball

We're all doomed to nuclear armageddon - eventually. As the Pentagon would say, it's a "when not if scenario". North Korea et al should be fissionally castrated, of course, but it would be nice if the US was too. Bottomline - the US is a far greater threat to world peace and stability than North Korea could ever be. So let's dialogue about that gun-totin' rootin' tootin' rogue state in-fucking-stead, k?

Vermschneid Mehearties

Whose to say that we have the right to impose regimes on different people, even if we think we are doing the right thing? You could argue that Saddam would never have got in power if we hadn't meddled in their affairs in the first place. Same goes for castro, and to a lesser extent Mugabe.

What adds more danger is that Bush is determined that he is supported by God, which is a pretty simplistic, narrow-minded and despotic way to start ordering the world around. As per usual, the aggressors target the easy and weak first. Of course by blanketing their people with stories about WMD. After that though, you've got the more serious issues, of a nuclear-capable North Korea, and if the USA really want to get stuck in- China. And I somehow doubt it, don't you?

As for Zimbabwe...What'd be the point? Actually helping people with little resources in a time of turmoil being run by a meglomaniac of a tosser? PAH. There's nothing there to economically benefit from is there. And that's where it stops with me. Consistency, and the fact that there appears to be none of it.

Pinball

On a related point, which I know I've raised before - why are there still US bases in Europe? They should be closed down, with immediate effect. Think of all the asylum seekers you could put in the missile tubes? Alternatively, let's have reciprocity and start militarily occupying America. It wouldn't be the first time ;-)

gazzyk1ns

I wonder what would happen if politicians woke up one day and actually said what they mean? There would be outcry, but would it be worse than the current outcry? I think it would, and that's why they lie so much. I don't know whether it's "right or wrong" though, in the bigger picture of things.

Hehe I wonder what would happen if I was prime minister (steady Hencole), and I said "Yeah I don't like the thought of them lot [whoever] having nuclear weapons, I don't trust people who devote their lives to that sort of religion with anything. I believe them to have a form of mental illness. Next!"?

Purple Tentacle

It's my sincere belief that without both the Allies and the USSR owning nuclear weapons we wouldn't be here to discuss it.

(Not in a Sliders type way in that history would be different and our mums and dads wouldn't have met, I mean in a M.A.D. equilibrium sort of way.)

Blair got a lot of stick during the recent war for refusing to rule out us using thermonuclear weapons if attacked, and for once I agreed with him... they do, whether you like it or not, constitute a fearsome deterrent to the all-but insane country to do the same to us.

Yes it would be nice if nukes had never been invented, like Roy Keane, but now they're here it's better to have them on our side than on somebody else's.


Quote from: "Pinball"We're all doomed to nuclear armageddon - eventually.

How can you live thinking like that? Seriously? I mean it's not like you're a goth, you've always seemed to be a fairly exhuberant, funny person, good humoured and intelligent with a foil hat, why the heavy-eyed pessimism?

Every generation seems to think they're living through the worst of times, when they forget examples from recent history. We've been far closer to nuclear annihallation many many times more than we are now, and if a situation can be pulled out of the fire in the rabidly anti-communist 1960s, what makes today so different?

We survived Truman, Nixon and Reagan, and we'lll survive Bush.

Or you may as well hang yourself now.

Pinball

Well armageddon's probably overstating. Isolated nuclear detonation more likely. Still, as long as there's beer in the fridge eh? ;-)

Quote from: "Pinball"Well armageddon's probably overstating. Isolated nuclear detonation more likely. Still, as long as there's beer in the fridge eh? ;-)

Agreed.  I dont think it will be a "goverment" that launches.  There are thousands of nuclear weapons in the world.  We don't know where all of them are anymore.  I know I want one.

Takes me back to years ago when my mother passed me the phone and told me santa was on the other end.  It was one of those recorded messages with pauses in it to give the child a time to respond.  He asked my name, I responded.  Then he asked what I wanted for christmas and I said, "guns and bombs".  "oh, how wonderfull, I shall see what I can do", came his reply.

LIES LIES LIES

smoker

'ere

Kahn Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, BBC reported in 2001
Monday, February 9, 2004
E-Mail Article
Printer Friendly Version
 

On November 7, 2001, BBC TV and the Guardian of London reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q. Kahn who this week confessed selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

The Bush Administration has expressed shock at the disclosures that Pakistan, our ally in the war on terror, has been running a nuclear secrets bazaar. In fact, according to the British News Team's sources', Bush did not know of these facts because, shortly after his inauguration, his National security Agency (NSA) defectively stymied the probe of Kahn Research Laboratories. CIA and other agents could not investigate the spread of "Islamic Bombs" through Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia.

Greg Palast and David Pallister received a California State University Project Censored Award for this expose based on the story broadcast by Palast on BBC Television Newsnight.

According to both sources and documents obtained by the BBC, the Bush Administration "Spike" of the investigation of Dr. Kahn's Lab followed from a wider policy of protecting key Saudi Arabians including the Bin Laden Family.

Noam Chomsky, who read the story on page one of the Times of India, has wondered, "Why wasn't this all over US papers?"

To learn why, read the following excerpt from the 2003 edition of Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, appears below.


The "Back-Off" Directive and the Islamic Bomb

Despite these tantalizing facts, Abdullah and his operations were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their working agents. Just a dumb SNAFU? Not according to a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity. After Bush took office, he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off " from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations-at least before September 11-began to die.

And there was a lot to investigate-or in the case of the CIA and FBI under Bush-a lot to ignore. Through well-known international arms dealers (I'm sorry, but in this business, sinners are better sources than saints) our team was tipped off to a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris in May 1996 with the financial representative of Osama bin Laden's network. The Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim and non-Muslim gun traffickers, met to determine who would pay how much to Osama. This was not so much an act of support but of protection-a pay off to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia.

The crucial question here is that, if I could learn about this meeting, how did the CIA miss it? In fact, since the first edition of this book, other sources have disclosed that the meeting was monitored by French intelligence. Since U.S. intelligence was thus likely informed, the question becomes why didn't the government immediately move against the Saudis?

I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that
were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that the Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Kahn Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)

Dr. A. Q. Kahn is the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan, the "father" of their bomb and, says a former associate, a crusader for its testing . . . on humans. On April 25, 1998, Kahn met at the Kushab Research Center with General Jehangir Karamat, then army chief of staff, to plan a possible preemptive nuclear strike on New Delhi, India. The Saudis lit a fuse under this demented scheme by telling Pakistan intelligence that Israel had shipped India warplanes in preparation for a conventional attack on Pakistan. We only know these details because a young researcher who claims he was at the meeting wrote a horrified letter threatening to make the plan to bomb India public, a threat which appears to have halted the scheme. After writing down his objections, the whistle-blower, Iftikhar Khan-Chaudhry, ran for his life to London, then the USA, seeking asylum. Khan-Chaudhry, when questioned, seemed to know too little to be the top nuclear physicist he claimed, and far too much about A. Q. Khan's bomb factory to be the tile company accountant Pakistan claims. Pakistan police, failing to arrest him, jailed, beat and raped his wife, suggesting they wanted him to keep secret something more interesting than bookkeeping methods. Whether his story was real or bogus, I can't possibly tell. The point is that intelligence agencies under Clinton, based on many other leads as well, were following up on the Saudi connection until the Bush team interfered.

Borboski

Quote from: "Pinball"
My point? It's not about right and wrong. Right and wrong is merely the tool of manipulation of our politicians (and it has ever been thus). The UN should be the route of change - not US military power. Might is not, and has never been, right. Fuck might.

I agree with that... there's a view that the UN has shown itself to be unable to deal with problems like Iraq... Bosnia... East Timore (in fact.. are there any interventions where the UN DOES do a good job? my guess is large parts of africa) but that's only the case because the major states continually undermine it.

It's not inevitable that major states will continue to undermine world government. I want to see it happen more. Am I right in thinking that no member state of the EU has attacked another?

I do think it's fair to say that no liberal democracy has attacked another. So we want more liberal democracies right? Yeah - but we don't do that by invasion but by negotiation I hope.