AQ Khan was not the only one. "Pakistani generals 'helped sell nuclear secrets'," by Julian Borger for the Guardian, July 7:
The story of the world's worst case of nuclear smuggling took a new twist on Thursday when documents surfaced appearing to implicate two former Pakistani generals in the sale of uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for millions of dollars in cash and jewels handed over in a canvas bag and cardboard boxes of fruit.
The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan's former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan's nuclear bomb tests.
Both generals denied the allegations. "What can I say. [These are] bits of old info packaged together. [There is] not an iota of truth in the allegations against me. [There is] no reason on earth for anyone to pay me for something I could not deliver," Karamat wrote in an email to the Guardian. Lt Gen Khan told the Washington Post that the documents were "a fabrication".
The issue is seen as critically important by western governments. Seven years after Khan, the godfather of the Pakistani nuclear programme, made his public confession on Pakistani television, there is still uncertainty over the extent to which he was a rogue operator or just a salesman acting on behalf of the Pakistani state and its army. Western officials are also unsure whether the covert nuclear sales are continuing.
It seems like "rogue operator" might as well be a military rank in Pakistan.
One of the documents published on Thursday was allegedly a copy of a 1998 letter in English to him from Jon Byong Ho, then the secretary of the North Korean Workers' party, who is believed to have masterminded the state's covert trade in nuclear and missile technology. The document states that "the $3m have already been paid" to Karamat, and "half a million dollars" and some jewellery had been given to Lt Gen Khan, who went on to run the national water and power company. The Washington Post interviewed senior US officials who said that the document contained "accurate details of sensitive matters known only to a handful of people in Pakistan, North Korea and the United States", and that the substance was "consistent with our knowledge" of the same events....
Pakistan is a danger to the West and should be handled with care.
The author of "The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World," Paul Williams, argues that the Pakistani nuclear establishment aided al-Qaeda, which he claims, had obtained nuclear material and devices from South African, Chechen and Central Asian (former Soviet) sources.
One shouldn't be surprised if Pakistan's state-sponsored (or condoned) nuclear proliferation includes Saudia Arabia, Turkey, and other Muslim countries. The author even claims Islamists have smuggled nuclear devices into the U.S. (something the Soviets might also have done).
Got the "Islamic bomb," and "Sunni bomb," and will soon have the "Shia bomb," what more does one need to bring on Judgment Day, let alone the Mahdi?
If Mecca and the House of Allah are vaporized in a nuclear (counter) strike, Islam will be on shaky ground as a belief system if the wrath of Allah amounts to nothing, which it inevitably would.
The proven pakistani program to enable (proliferate) nuclear weapons to regimes hostile and in a tepid war against the USA is very simply an act of War.
The determined and evolving efforts by these enemies to increase their militaristic capabilities has no limit.
Yet, as pakistan and iran rabidly follow their insane ambitions with the trajectory of their aims clearly zeroing on us, we (political establishment) largely and tragically remain dormant to this eminent danger laking any creative and courageous sence nessesary to avert this looming danger of an unprecedented magnitude.
The lives of millions hinge on the ruminations of delusional mullahs and followers of their sword wielding conquering prophet.
Stop it before it destroys us.
Hi eliasX!
"One shouldn't be surprised if Pakistan's state-sponsored (or condoned) nuclear proliferation includes Saudia Arabia, Turkey, and other Muslim countries. The author even claims Islamists have smuggled nuclear devices into the U.S. (something the Soviets might also have done)."
I can offer a couple of related arguments against this.
The first is technical. Implosion type nuclear devices have a definite shelf life. Weapons of this sort require access to a depot-level maintenance facility. Every half-decade or so they need to have critical components replaced. I even heard a story about some weapons that experienced a previously unseen phase shift in the plutonium that made the implosion process become questionable. The bottom line is that most nuclear weapons cannot be used in a "deep cover" covert operation where they wait years for the kill order.
The second is operational. Deep cover operations with high tech gear are inherently risky. Look at all of the suspected jihadists that get caught photographing buildings, bridges, and other infrastructure. The longer you keep covert nukes in Western cities the more you increase your chances of losing control of the weapon due to agent neutralization or defection. The only way it works is if you use an accelerated importation schedule and start setting them off right after the last arrives.
So, they can't be here - unless they just arrived; if they just arrived we will most likely get the proof very quickly.
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"Got the "Islamic bomb," and "Sunni bomb," and will soon have the "Shia bomb," what more does one need to bring on Judgment Day, let alone the Mahdi?"
Not much.
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"If Mecca and the House of Allah are vaporized in a nuclear (counter) strike, Islam will be on shaky ground as a belief system if the wrath of Allah amounts to nothing, which it inevitably would."
I see this idea come up now and again, and I have a standard caution. These people have a history of dealing with defeat; if defeat happens it was not Allah's will that they succeed, and so they will try again. They actually have a prophecy that someone with one eye will destroy the Kaaba before the end of the world.
Our Western minds tend to bring up the precedent of Japan in 1945, when these weapons definitely broke the cultic war mentality that gripped the Japanese. We must remember that part of this success is attributable to the fact that Japan had never been defeated in war prior to 1945. I have to conclude that the precedent does not hold in the case of Mecca.
Pakistan I've long believed is the most dangerous and crappy country in the world today. North Korea and others have nuclear weapons because of whores in the Pakistan military and science community. This nation is totally unstable - and simply shitty! We haven't heard the last of nefarious deeds out of this Hell Hole! The powers that be in this world MUST band together to STOP this criminal land...or we SHALL pay an awful price indeed.