his friendly neighbor was A.Q. Khan, father of the Pakistani nuclear program,...Khans are a busy little bunch...
The nuclear club is growing out of control
Sep 16, 2004
What're we going to do when everyone has a nuclear weapon? Well, OK, not everyone, but, say, twice as many countries as have them now? Short answer: America will need to reassess its national security situation.
The "nuclear club" contains seven acknowledged members: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, and Pakistan, plus an eighth unacknowledged member, Israel. And since 2002, it's been apparent North Korea has a nuke or three. And now come reports that South Korea has been working on a nuclear program since 1982.
John Blackton, a longtime foreign-affairs hand who once oversaw aid to anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan while operating from Pakistan-where his friendly neighbor was A.Q. Khan, father of the Pakistani nuclear program-suggests that the South Koreans might not have actually built nukes, out of deference to the U.S. But, Blackton continues, the South Koreans, ever mindful of the threat from the North, "are not going to get caught flat-footed." That is, the Seoul government, sitting atop the world's 11th largest economy, is able to assemble A-weapons on a moment's notice.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vppin163972591sep16,0,5921309.column?coll=ny-news-columnists
Off-topic- kudoes to Free Republic sleuths!
This is an excerpt from a posting I just saw at rumormillnews:
"Yes, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal belatedly advanced the story. But they weren't by any means the chief agents of the allegations' demolition. That credit goes to America's "citizen journalists" - the amateur sleuths who are sitting in their homes and pounding out web logs, exposing what they see as the institutional biases of the Establishment media.
Seventy years ago, the celebrated American commentator A.J. Liebling wrote that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one". Now, thanks to the internet, everyone does, and politics and the media can never be the same again.
The flap over Bush's purported service records explains why.
No sooner had Dan Rather broadcast images of the documents than a poster at the right wing bulletin board FreeRepublic noted that the typeface was that of a modern personal computer, not a 70s-era typewriter.
Other posters piled on, bringing their own multiple varieties of expertise. The memos weren't in standard US Air Force format and the paper wasn't Pentagon-issue size. One of the commanding officers supposedly critical of Bush's performance had retired from the service 18 months earlier. Other documents, official ones, were available for downloading that further contradicted the forgeries' timeline.
Rather and CBS reacted angrily. Who were these people to question Murrow's heir, a network exec sneered? Why, nothing more than strange little men who sit at home and "write in their pyjamas".
It did no good; the flap refused to subside. Powered by the internet, it expanded.
Bloggers and FreeRepublic-types checked the credentials of the one expert CBS quoted as confirming that its documents were genuine. He turned out to be not only unqualified but something of a nut. Show him a woman's signature, he had written, and he could tell if she was likely to be good in bed.
As news organisations joined the hunt, the pyjama-clad legion set the pace. Who manufactured the damning documents and why? Tapping into the internet's wealth of public records and old news stories, they soon established a network of personal connections leading straight back to Rather."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3592355&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue