Taliban forces on verge of seizing Pakistan's nuke arsenal

[katty]

more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-22/the-talibans-nuclear-threat/

As insurgents close in on Islamabad, The Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner reports that Taliban forces are on the verge of seizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal—which has the capability to hit India, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

This morning Taliban units took control of the Buner region of Pakistan, bringing their burgeoning insurgency within 60 miles of the capital city of Islamabad. The government called the advance a breach of a recently-signed peace agreement. But what did they expect? Any store owner who has ever faced ever-increasing protection payments to local gangsters could have told the Pakistanis that their recent string of capitulations to the Taliban—striking peace deals and ceding territory—was doomed to failure.

You think the stock market looks bad over the last two years? Let a Taliban spokesman announce that Mullah Omar has his finger on the Islamic Bomb.

The Taliban advance should be causing high Richter-scale reactions inside the Obama White House. Counterterrorism officials have long warned that al Qaeda is desperate to obtain weapons WMD. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in play if the Taliban insurgency should unseat the government of Asif Ali Zadari.

[tekisui]

1. Pakistan is a failed nuclear state.

It is going to get very hot there in a short time.

[katty]

2. agree--it is blazing hot - ready to blow

[damntexdem]

3. And it may get really hot around the nuclear arsenal.

Something tells me that some other countries will not hesitate to blow it to bits before the nukes can be seized. And that does not necessarily mean the U.S. will do it -- a few other countries with nukes and delivery systems may not be willing to allow an Al Qaeda bomb.

[katty]

4. yes-good point, one, interestingly enough that has not been

mentioned in the MSM ...yet

[AnthemRoad]

8. Mhmmm

Yeah, you would think someone would be asking for their brown pants. >_>

[bemildred]

5. This seems a bit hyperbolic to me.

The USSR got nukes, China got nukes, Israel got nukes, India got nukes, Pakistan got nukes, North Korea got nukes, other countries like South Africa worked on it. All without permission. Nothing much happened. I don't buy the "Islamic fundies are all nuts and want to die" crap.

[katty]

6. well yes, but Pakistan is the poster child for a totally failed

nuke state-its history (as we are all well aware) is one of constant chaos and instability. This may be a tad hysterical, but, nevertheless, it's a very volatile environment.

[Captain Hilts]

11. True. And the nukes are all over in various states of security. nt

[Mojorabbit]

7. I disagree

They are stoning and executing women for perceived transgressions against their religion. Fanatics are nuts which does not equate with Muslims are nuts. I bet that the world will be involved in a war in Pakistan in the very near future.

[katty]

9. yes, fanatics that 'do act out' their beliefs to the extreme are

a real concern to say the least.

[bemildred]

10. I'm not saying they are nice people.

But if they can take over Pakistan despite the best efforts of the USA and the current government, they are very rational. We may well be outmatched in that department.

[katty]

12. ah, no, by all accounts the Taliban are not 'nice', as

for 'rational' well they have never been described as that. The oppressed and suffering women of Afghanistan can certainly attest to that and much more.

[bemildred]

13. How do you explain that they are taking over the country?

Despite being outgunned and outspent? Despite the billions in aid and all that we've been dumping into the country for a couple decades now? They may be nasty, but they are far from nuts.

[katty]

14. excuse me but I don't have to explain anything to you, I am simply

posting an article on 'what is happening now' - they may be able to take hold of certain nuke sites-I never stated that they were 'taking over the country' - it is about seizing nuke sites that are vulnerable due to the instability of the Pakistan government, their agents - that's it.

[bemildred]

16. Well OK then.

I'm just expressing my view that they will not do anything stupid with the nukes, if they get them. It's not that I like them, I just think we'll do better if we stop underestimating them. They have basically handed us our asses, so far.

[katty]

18. well, could be - we'll see

[bemildred]

19. Don't misunderstand me, I think it would be far better if the nukes were moved somewhere, and soon.

But is worth remembering on the other hand that Pakistan has been central in proliferation problems for decades. This is not something new that just blew up.

[katty]

21. yep agree with you on that-every nation is fully aware of this

situation

[katty]

15. and I did not use the word 'nuts' - they are fanatics, who

knows what the hell they MAY do? that IS the point of the article and my comments.

[bemildred]

17. Mr Posner says this:

"Of course, the use of a nuke by the Taliban would mean certain annihilation for Pakistan, because countries with their own nukes, such as Israel and India, would massively retaliate. But the radicals running Pakistan might not care. If they see themselves as the ultimate martyrs, they might relish meeting Allah in paradise."

That sounds like a good description of "nuts" to me. Notice he does not say that they might not understand, he say they might not care. He is asserting that after working all this time to get their new islamic caliphate going, they will knowingly run right out and get it destroyed.

[TankLV]

24. I don't care if you don't buy it. ALL ISLAMIC FUNCIES ARE NUTS AND WANT TO KILL US!!!

You may not believe it, but it's a FACT...

And China, USSR, India and the rest aren't NUTS...

[bemildred]

25. LOL.

Did you do a survey or what?
:rofl:

[ShortnFiery]

27. Oh please, they used that EXACT same meme for "The Commies" during Vietnam.

They're less than human. They're GOOKS. They're savage because they're Godless.

WTF! They are a sovereign nation. Build a fence around them and let "the natives" settle the scores.

[Doctor_J]

20. Bush gave the entire ME to the Taliban

What was that guy's name who gave the Pakistani nuke secrets to the USSR? At the time we thought that was bad.

[Dr.Phool]

22. ?

[truth2power]

23. A.Q. Khan, was running what amounted to a nuclear Wal-Mart,...

passing around nuclear technology to various other countries. Musharraf put him under house arrest. He was released in Feb. (now that Musharaff is gone) and was quoted as saying, "We don't want to talk about the past things."

Do these guys all operate from the same playbook?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29051413/

[ShortnFiery]

26. Perhaps, we may need to think twice about sending out the drones.

:shrug: Unless we wish to invade? :(

[bemildred]

28. Good point.

Real winner that. Stirred up the hornets nest big time.

[Dennis Donovan]

29. If Posner's reporting this...

...it must be "Case Closed."

I don't trust Posner.:thumbsdown:

[MasonJar]

30. The Taliban must never get their misogenic hands on a nuclear weapon.

These are the fools who blew up ancient Buddhist icons for their own distorted sadist reasons.

[Turborama]

31. Cosign

Added to that, these malevolent death cultists have one thing at the back of their minds whilst they're running around grabbing land and installing Sharia to intimidate the people of Pakistan, virgins and paradise.


:kick: K & R

[Turborama]

32. In case you missed it:Obama’s Worst Pakistan Nightmare - What to do About Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal

Source: NYT

By David E. Sanger

TO GET TO THE HEADQUARTERS of the Strategic Plans Division, the branch of the Pakistani government charged with keeping the country’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons away from insurgents trying to overrun the country, you must drive down a rutted, debris-strewn road at the edge of the Islamabad airport, dodging stray dogs and piles of uncollected garbage. Just past a small traffic circle, a tan stone gateway is manned by a lone, bored-looking guard loosely holding a rusting rifle. The gateway marks the entry to Chaklala Garrison, an old British cantonment from the days when officers of the Raj escaped the heat of Delhi for the cooler hills on the approaches to Afghanistan. Pass under the archway, and the poverty and clamor of modern Pakistan disappear.

Chaklala is a comfortable enclave for the country’s military and intelligence services. Inside the gates, officers in the army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, live in trim houses with well-tended lawns. Business is conducted in long, low office buildings, with a bevy of well-pressed adjutants buzzing around. Deep inside the garrison lies the small compound for Strategic Plans, where Khalid Kidwai keeps the country’s nuclear keys. Now 58, Kidwai is a compact man who hides his arch sense of humor beneath a veil of caution, as if he were previewing each sentence to decide if it revealed too much. In the chaos of Pakistan, where the military, the intelligence services and an unstable collection of civilian leaders uneasily share power, he oversees a security structure intended to protect Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from outsiders — Islamic militants, Qaeda scientists, Indian saboteurs and those American commando teams that Pakistanis imagine, with good reason, are waiting just over the horizon in Afghanistan, ready to seize their nuclear treasure if a national meltdown seems imminent.

In the second nuclear age, what happens or fails to happen in Kidwai’s modest compound may prove far more likely to save or lose an American city than the billions of dollars the United States spends each year maintaining a nuclear arsenal that will almost certainly never be used, or the thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan to close down sanctuaries for terrorists.

=snip=

At the end of Bush’s term, his aides handed over to Obama’s transition team a lengthy review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, concluding that in the end, the United States has far more at stake in preventing Pakistan’s collapse than it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq.

“Only one of those countries has a hundred nuclear weapons,” a primary author of the report said to me. For Al Qaeda and the other Islamists, he went on to say, “this is the home game.” He paused, before offering up the next thought: For anyone trying to keep a nuclear weapon from going off in the United States, it’s our home game, too.

Links to full article and an insightful documentary were posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x429668