Friday, March 5, 2004

The Paki Nuke Deal FEATURED ARTICLES - Pak to freeze Qadeer's assets, Times Of India, - Were We All Wrong About Pakistan, Too? by Leon Hadar, The Cato Institute, - THE DEAL, by Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, QUOTE OF THE DAY "When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." - - Plato KNOW YOUR HISTORY - MARCH 5th 1956 -- U.S. Supreme Court affirms ban on segregation in public schools in Brown vs. Board of Education. 1970 -- Nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after 43 nations ratify it. 1981 -- President Reagan asks Congress to end federal legal aid to the poor. RHINO HERE: Today Rhino directs your attention to yet another scathing example of the lies & evil deeds of the shrub gang, this time in cahoots with as dastardly a pair of characters as any fictitious villain team in the most terrifying of Hollywood end of the world scenario thrillers. Who might the Rhino be referring to? Why it's Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, & Paki President Pervez Musharraf. Check out a telling photo of  Qadeer Khan at:   http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/img_khan.htm All Americans, especially those who will be voting for President this November, need to realize that: 1) if the shrub gang really wanted to attack the country responsible for the 9/11 attacks, they would have attacked Saudi Arabia. That where the hijackers were from and where they got their funding, but there was a problem. The oil companies were and are way too far up under the sheets of the Saudi Royal Family; and... 2) if the shrub gang wanted to attack the country that not only possessed nuclear WMD's but had also been selling them to anyone with the money to pay for them, then they would have gone after Pakistan. But hey, give them time. Today's allies of the US government are tomorrow's evil doer targets. But enough of Rhino's rant. Read the scary facts about why the gang has been willing to let Pakistan get away with nuclear profiteering. Then spread the word to those Americans who may be considering voting for the shrub. Most important in today's blog is the BOTTOM LINE written by veteran investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, entitled, "The Deal" form the current issue of The New Yorker." Pak to freeze Qadeer's assets Times Of India, 1/26/04 ISLAMABAD: The bank accounts and other assets of Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme , are to be frozen as he was involved in the clandestine sale of technology to Iran , Online news agency reported... Khan had earned millions of dollars and this had been parked in banks in London and Dubai, Hassan told his interrogators. Investigators discovered Abdul Baqi, who was fronting for Khan , was operating the accounts, containing $2 billion. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/445891.cms   Were We All Wrong About Pakistan, Too? by Leon Hadar, The Cato Institute, March 1, 2004 The revelation that a leading Pakistani scientist has been running a smuggling operation that provided nuclear military designs to Iran, Libya, and North Korea, has ignited "Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!" outcries in Washington. After all, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear military program is a national hero in a country that President Bush has described as a key "ally" of the United States in the war against terrorism and the campaign to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And Khan was a close associate of President Pervez Musharraf, the recipient of huge amounts of American military and economic aid. MORE: http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-01-04.html 7:38:27 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - THE DEAL THE DEAL by Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 3/8/04 Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan's nuclear black marketers? On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan's misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan "my hero"). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan's activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. "If they knew earlier, they should have told us," he said. "Maybe a lot of things would not have happened." It was a make-believe performance in a make-believe capital. In interviews last month in Islamabad, a planned city built four decades ago, politicians, diplomats, and nuclear experts dismissed the Khan confession and the Musharraf pardon with expressions of scorn and disbelief. For two decades, journalists and American and European intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I. (Inter-Service Intelligence), to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the government Khan served had been oblivious. "It is state propaganda," Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, told me. "The deal is that Khan doesn't tell what he knows. Everybody is lying. The tragedy of this whole affair is that it doesn't serve anybody's needs." Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who is a member of the Pakistani senate, said with a laugh, "America needed an offering to the gods-blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., 'Bend over for a spanking.'" A Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, "One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels." The intelligence officer went on, "We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It's the second generation now."... MORE: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040308fa_fact "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:38:05 AM    comment

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