Are Pakistans Nuclear Weapons Safe?
November 8, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Featured
The prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of al Qaeda or the Taliban in Pakistan is perhaps the most immediate threat facing the US. It’s thought that Pakistan has an arsenal of nearly 100 missiles, however; no one is certain of the total, or for that matter where many of the nuclear weapons are located. While government officials have publicly stated that our military is poised and ready to enter the country should it appear the safety of Pakistan’s nukes is at risk, the challenge to locate and protect each missile and missile site would be daunting if not impossible should this nuclear nightmare ever begin to unfold.
Seymour M. Hersh has written an article in the New Yorker detailing the situation
In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
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North Korea Thought To Have 13 Biological Weapons
As if the nuclear threat from North Korea is not bad enough for it’s neighbors, The Straits Times is reporting that North Korea is thought to have up to 13 types of viruses and germs in their weapons arsenal which can be used in biological weapons, as well as up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons. This according to South Korea’s defense ministry, says the report.
From The Straits Times
The chemical weapons could be deliverable by artillery or missile to cause massive civilian casualties in South Korea, the Brussels-based think-tank said.
The stockpile includes between 2,500-5,000 tons of mustard gas, phosgene, blood agents, sarin, tabun and persistent nerve agents and can be delivered by long-range artillery, missiles, aircraft and naval vessels, it said.
In a report to parliament, the ministry said the communist North has one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
The list of diseases that could be caused by the biological weapons includes cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, eruptive typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery, it said.
The ministry estimated its neighbour’s stockpile of chemical weapons at between 2,500 to 5,000 tons.
via N.Koreas 13 biological weapons.
Does Iran Have A Second Uranium Enrichment Plant?
September 25, 2009 by national
Filed under World Report
This won’t be good if true. Fox news reports in a breaking news headline that Iran apparently has a second uranium enrichment plant. Not good news.
Apparently the second plant may only be under construction however. Harretz.com reports a senior Iranian atomic official said on Sunday that Iran has chosen the site, for and started designing a new 360 megawatt nuclear power plant.
You can read that story at here.
Another story is here
AQ Khan Blows The Whistle On Pakistan…In 2003 Letter
September 21, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under World Report
The Times of India is reporting that A.Q.Khan has made public and official what some had long alleged: his nuclear proliferation activities that included exchanging and passing blue-prints and equipment to China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya was done at the behest of the Pakistani government and military, and he was forced to take the rap for it.
''The [edited] first used us and are now playing dirty games with us,'' Khan writes about the Pakistani leadership in a December 2003 letter to his wife Henny that has finally been made public by an interlocutor. ''Darling, if the government plays any mischief with me take a tough stand,'' he tells his wife, adding, ''They might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things they got done by me.''
Read Full Article
Nuke-o-meter, How Many Nukes Within Range of Your Location
Nuke-o-Meter
North Korea has sent tension soaring across Asia by launching missiles and testing warheads.
So, what does the nuclear world look like? These figures are from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and show the best estimates for the big five nuclear powers: the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. We’ve also included estimates for other nuclear powers like India, Pakistan and Israel – and for the so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iran. These are just the active warheads – both Russia and the US have thousands more in storage and pending dismantling.
Hit the link on the spreadsheet for how the figures changed between 1945 and 2006. In the mid-1980s, there were over 70,000 warheads out there – each with the power of eight times that which destroyed Hiroshima at the end of the second world war. There are many less now – but do you feel any safer?
Wondering how many nukes are within range of your location? Check out the nuke-o-meter
Panel Opposes No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
President Obama wants the world to get rid of its nukes, eventually. But, for now, it’s still official U.S. policy that America reserves the right to drop the first Bomb in an atomic war.
During the early 1980’s — the peak of the late Cold War — the Soviet Union declared that it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Many of America’s strategic lions — most famously Robert McNamara, George Kennan, Gerard Smith, and McGeorge Bundy — said we should do the same. But we never did. Why not? Primarily because we thought we might actually use the weapons first. In my view, one of the three most likely ways that World War III would have started would have been with Red Army troops surging west across Europe. American conventional weapons probably couldn’t have helped the French or West Germans stop them. But nuclear weapons could have.
Experts Predict Pakistan’s Collapse
If anything keeps you awake at night, this should. What could be worse than Iran or North Korea having a nuke..? How about Pakistan collapsing and terrorists having access to over 100. This is a serious, serious problem.
A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there’s little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists.
“It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity.
Pakistan’s fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American Army, and the headquarters of al-Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
“Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,” agreed the U.S. intelligence official. “It’s a developed state.”
He added: “The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.”
