UK Report – Obama May Be Preparing Deep Cuts To US Nuclear Arsenal

The UK’s Guardian newspaper is reporting President Barack Obama wants the Pentagon to review the U.S.’s nuclear-weapons doctrine to prepare for deep cuts to the country’s nuclear arsenal. The report suggests The President rejected the Pentagon’s first draft of the review as being too timid, and not consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether.

In asking for more options, among the goals to be considered, according to the report:

• Reconfiguring the US nuclear force to allow for an arsenal measured in hundreds rather than thousands of deployed strategic warheads.
• Redrafting nuclear doctrine to narrow the range of conditions under which the US would use nuclear weapons.
• Exploring ways of guaranteeing the future reliability of nuclear weapons without testing or producing a new generation of warheads.

Read Full Article -  The Guardian

We have been unable to confirm this report through U.S. sources.

Senior Adviser Warns of Armageddon in Islamabad

A senior adviser on South Asia to three U.S. presidents is now warning about “Armageddon in Islamabad.”

At the request of President Obama, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA expert on the region, also chaired an interagency policy review on Afghanistan and nuclear Pakistan. His latest assessment says, “A jihadist victory in Pakistan, meaning the takeover of the nation by a militant Sunni movement led by the Taliban … would create the greatest threat the United States has yet to face in its war on terror … [and] is now a real possibility in the foreseeable future.” It would bolster al Qaeda’s capabilities tenfold, Mr. Riedel concludes. It would also give terrorists a nuclear capability.

Pakistan’s “creation of and collusion with extremist groups has left Islamabad vulnerable to an Islamist coup,” concludes Mr. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy in a lengthy study in the July/August issue of the National Interest. An Islamist coup would not be possible without the collusion of at least some army units in Rawalpindi, the garrison town 20 minutes from Islamabad. Pakistan has suffered four military coups in 60 years, living half its existence under military rule.

Beginning with the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Islamization of Pakistan was organized by the late military dictator Zia ul-Haq, and encouraged and funded by Saudi Arabia and the United States as a counter to communist ideology. This spawned thousands of single discipline madrassas (free Koranic schools) that, in turn, spawned thousands of jihadis brainwashed to hate American, Indian and Israeli apostates. It also led to the creation of such nationwide terrorist groups as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JEM) under the supervision of ISI for the Kashmir front against India. Officially banned, they moved underground.

Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) also “volunteered” some 10,000 young jihadis from the Mohmand tribal agency to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but the Taliban had already collapsed and the untrained youngsters were quietly shipped back to Pakistan with denials on all sides.

After U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2000, ISI spread the word among tribal chiefs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that “Pakistan is next.” A two-star ISI general “briefed” tribal chiefs after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 on U.S. plans “following the conquest of Afghanistan.” This reporter was briefed by one of the chiefs the next day. The Bush administration, the general had explained, plans to attack Pakistan in an attempt to seize its nuclear arsenal and “leave it naked to Indian aggression.”

Read Full Article