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America's Secret Pakistan Nuke Deal
The United States government is negotiating with Pakistan's military, attempting to allow the U.S. to help secure Pakistan's nuclear bombs in the case of a national crisis, Seymour Hersh reports in this week's New Yorker. Pakistan has 80 to 100 warheads, and those in Washington and around the world are increasingly worried that the chaos of recent weeks—a takeover of the army's main headquarters; the assassination of a general—might put them in danger. Also adding to American anxiety is a rise in Islamic fundamentalism among soldiers in Pakistan's army. The secret plans are complicated by the fact that many in Pakistan see potential American assistance as a threat to their sovereignty, an effort to control, rather than to protect Pakistan's nuclear complex. While officials on both sides publicly denied the existence of any secret agreement, The Daily Beast's Leslie H. Gelb told The New Yorker that any accord would be undependable anyway. "I don't think there's any kind of an agreement we can count on," Gelb said.
Plantagenet
I wonder how many billions Obama will give to Pakistan in exchange for this "agreement"?
slmpirate
As if we could actually believe that the Pakistani ISI would even allow this to happen?
whipmawhopma
Plantagenet - More to the point, why does the New Yorker hate America?
slmpirate
Did Gelb site a source? And if this is not a dependable agreement, isnt it all specualation..therefore not news worthy?
BOKOBOT
It is of course impossible to tell whether anything in this story is true, and Seymour Hersh should know better than to trust any of these 'sources.' We'll never know what's really going on here. It's not going to appear in the New Yorker. Silly cover story. BOKO
bezvodka
First, Obama would have to give Pakistan a vast number of billions of dollars to equal what Bush gave them.
Second, in my opinion neither Pakistan or any other country in that part of the world can be trusted.
Housebird
Israel has instructed its puppet the USA to have contingency plans to "Take Over" Pakistan's Nukes.
It will happen in a preemptive co-ordinated strike when the time is right maybe to coordinate with an attack on Iran..
Notice the US neocon Media beating the rogue Nuclear terrorist threat from terrorists --- without a "delivery system" ??
Obama has said he was "gravely concerned" about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari.
When an Obama questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan's bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. "I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort," he said. "I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?"
Many Pakistanis believe that America's true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex.
Removing the Islamic Bomb in the "War on Islam" may be more than just wishful neocon thinking.
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh
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manticore1223
Why are you so stuck on this "war on Islam" theory?
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