Pakistan Is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, U.S. Says

[IDemo]

Source: New York Times

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

“Yes,” he said quickly, adding nothing, clearly cognizant of Pakistan’s sensitivity to any discussion about the country’s nuclear strategy or security. Inside the Obama administration, some officials say, Pakistan’s drive to spend heavily on new nuclear arms has been a source of growing concern, because the country is producing more nuclear material at a time when Washington is increasingly focused on trying to assure the security of an arsenal of 80 to 100 weapons so that they will never fall into the hands of Islamic insurgents.

The administration’s effort is complicated by the fact that Pakistan is producing an unknown amount of new bomb-grade uranium and, once a series of new reactors is completed, bomb-grade plutonium for a new generation of weapons. President Obama has called for passage of a treaty that would stop all nations from producing more fissile material — the hardest part of making a nuclear weapon — but so far has said nothing in public about Pakistan’s activities.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/asia/18nuke.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

[grantcart]

1. I have a lot of sympathy for Pakistani politicians but this is fucking unbelievable.

[Mari333]

2. no military aid to Pakistan!

christ. at least someone is questioning this insanity.

[bemildred]

3. Yellow cake, yellow cake! Unplugged baby incubators!

Someone tell this moron that having nukes is not an unusual accomplishment these days, thank to the disastrous US policy of not agreeing to and enforcing treaties that reduce nuclear weapons.

[IDemo]

5. No treaty to enforce here, from further into the article:

Pakistan has never agreed to any limits and is one of three countries, along with India and Israel, that never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

[bemildred]

6. I'm talking about the USA, not Pakistan.

Pakistan is a piker when it comes to nukes. This is propaganda designed to get us worked up about Pakistan, I think these fuckwits are starting to think about invading Pakistan. I mean, we haven't been kicked in the nuts enough times with this sort of horseshit yet? Do you remember all the crap about Iraq and WMD? The constant stream of horseshit about Iran? North Korea HAS nukes. So does India, Israel, China, France, the UK, and Russia, to name a few. So what? What is the one country on the planet that has ever deliberately used nukes against someone else? Who has the most nukes by far of any country on the planet? Same answer for both. You only get one guess.

[IDemo]

8. While I never agreed with the Bush pile-on over Iranian nukes, Pakistan bears watching

The situation in the country is bad and deteriorating rapidly. It doesn't take a severe stretch of the imagination to anticipate that forces; Al Qaeda, Taliban, or even sympathizers
working inside the government (Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the ISI, for example) could compromise one or more nukes in the event of an opening. And one is all it would take.

[bemildred]

9. So, do you think the USA "bears watching", or is that just for other countries?

I just pointed out that there are "compromised" nukes all over the place, about which we can do nothing, and that minimizing the number of nukes on the planet is not one of our objects, since we have made far and away the most of them. But you think we need to keep a close eye on the fundies in Swat ...

[Turborama]

10. Not just Swat...

Research by the BBC Urdu's service into the growing strength of Taleban militants in north western Pakistan shows that only 38% of the area remains under full government control.

This map of the area is a snapshot of the current situation. However, with ongoing fighting between the Pakistan armed forces and the Taleban the situation on the ground could change in the future.

More in depth analysis: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8046577.stm

-- --- --

BTW when you say there are ""compromised" nukes all over the place", where specifically are you talking about?

[bemildred]

12. You tell me what "compromised nukes" means first, you used it first.

Did we "trust" Pakistan back when they were shopping nuclear technology around? Back when they were still our buddies? Were their nukes "compromised" then?

[Turborama]

14. #9 (your post) "I just pointed out that there are "compromised" nukes all over the place,"

So, if you want your claim to be taken seriously, please define what you meant by "compromised" and specify what you mean by "all over the place". It's a worrisome claim and it deserves to be cleared up.

Are those hindsight 20/20 questions meant to be answered or are you simply being rhetorical?

(Edited to add the post number)

[bemildred]

25. IDemo in post #8 introduced the term, I was quoting him in post #9.

That's why the word in in quotes. So I have a perfect right to ask him what he means by it.

[Turborama]

33. Which makes all this 'who said what 1st' irrelevant, because I'm not IDemo

However, I am still waiting for answers to the questions raised in post #14, which are:

Please define what you meant by "compromised" and specify what you mean by "all over the place".

[closeupready]

35. I presumed that was a reference to Russia and North Korea, primarily.

n/t

[closeupready]

37. Sen. John Rockefeller in 2005:

Half of Russia's nukes 'lost'
21/02/2005 14:09 - (SA)

Washington - Half of Russian nuclear material is not accounted for and may have found its way into the hands of plotters against the United States, a US senator charged on Sunday.

John Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said loose Russian radioactive materials and possibly other components of nuclear weapons made him wonder whether Russia was a greater proliferation threat than North Korea, which has publicly claimed to have a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Members of the committee received last week a detailed classified briefing from Central Intelligence Agency officials on security threats the United States faces.

"In the sense that half of the nuclear materials, pieces and parts of it, are unaccounted for by the Russians - and a lot of them, these places are in rural areas - I think you can... have a real debate as to which is more threatening to the world right now," said the Democratic senator.

http://www.news24.com/News24/AnanziArticle/0,,2-10-1462_1665376,00.html

[bemildred]

39. Well, any that are not in the possession of our "friends", I would think.

And since who are "friends" are in this regard tends to vary over time, I think it's a bullshit term really, a propaganda term. The implication is that they are somehow not under control, not under control of people we trust. It sounds like a borrowing from the notion of a "compromised" intelligence asset, or something of that sort.

But I would be more comfortable if the poster in #8 gave his definition, since I think there probably is one. It isn't my term and I am only speculating.

[bemildred]

40. Demand away.

[IDemo]

11. Of course the US bears watching

The question would be: by whom?

But ignoring the situation in Pakistan or any other place where a genuine threat exists, either because of the Bush who cried wolf or because not everyone in the nuclear club
can claim the requisite moral superiority would be foolish.

[bemildred]

13. The only genuine threat in Pakistan is that it provides a safe haven for our enemies in Afghanistan.

But it does not follow that widening the war to Pakistan will make us safer. It just means we will have a bigger war that we will still lose.

[IDemo]

15. You could stand a bit of study on the political situation in Pakistan

And nobody is suggesting the US handle this with the bluntness of the former administration, or with a simple expansion of the existing war.

[bemildred]

26. Do educate me. nt

[PurityOfEssence]

17. Pakistan is seriously unstable

and the Islamists are happy to provide "stability", which is part of why they're doing so well.

The very idea of a religious government getting their mitts on the 60 plus warheads is simply something that CANNOT be allowed to happen. These aren't some lazy-assed pikers like most Christians when it comes to the afterlife, they REALLY BELIEVE IT. Fantasists who believe in this kind of thing will DEFINITELY USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

There are really only two things that have kept nukes from being used in the last almost 64 years: the stark visual evidence of human survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the threat of nuclear reprisal. Reprisal doesn't mean squat to suicide bombers and crazies looking for the big sky daddy to love them; it'll just whip up the fervor even more for some of these music-hating lunatics. That's the danger of asymmetric warfare: it defies most sensible tactics.

Please don't equate "compromised weapons" in this arena; there's NOWHERE where such extreme extremists are close to getting control over this many nukes.

If the situation deteriorates too much, their nukes will be hit or an attempt will be made to "secure" them.

[bemildred]

28. Well, perhaps we ought to stop destabilizing it then?

Do you think they just sort of lost their equilibrium somehow, by accident?

[bemildred]

42. "By whom" is a good question.

I don't think there is really anybody but the US voting public in a position to do much in that line, I mean anybody can watch, but it's not at all clear that even the US voting public could do much about anything they might see and not approve of when it comes to the conduct of our foreign policy. On the whole, I think we probably could not.

I'm not in favor of ignoring the situation in Pakistan, it is quite serious. But the risk runs more in the direction of the place formerly known as Yugoslavia, or the USSR perhaps, than, say, the Shah's Iran. What I oppose is "chicken-little-ism" about Pakistan. Panic will not help. The utility of military methods is very limited, and the natural tendency is for the military mess to get ever bigger.

The risk that jihadis might use a nuke if they got their hands on one is very real too. But ANFO bombs are so cheap and easy that one almost wonders why they would bother. In any case, it does not follow that forcing the country deeper into chaos is a good way to keep the nukes safe.

The best shot to keep the Pakistani nukes safe is the Pakistani military. They have possession, means, and motive to keep them safe. They are their ace in the hole.

[InfiniteThoughts]

16. different ...

US, Russia, UK, France, India, Israel, China having nukes is different than Iran, North Korea and Pakistan having nukes.

The first group is a host of nations that have been responsible with their nuclear weapons while the second group have given us no reason to believe that they will be responsible with nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has entered this list because of the following reasons:

1. ISI is a rogue organization. It created Taliban. They are sympathizers of Taliban/militant Islam. It isn't well known if ISI listens to the politicial leaders anymore.
2. Ambivalence of the Army. Gen. Kayani has not shown his hand in the world's most dangerous poker game.
3. Weakness of Pakistan politicians. There is no politician in Pakistan who can stand up to the ISI and Army and live to tell the tale.

I want Pakistan to succeed in it's war against Taliban but fear that Taliban will end up winning if the three above mentioned classes don't pull up their socks.

[twitomy]

21. Good to see someone here "gets it" same as post #17

Lot of people think the Taliban was created by the CIA to fight the Soviets. It wasnt. The Pakis created the Taliban after the Soviet pullout. The Pakis wanted someone friendly to take over Afghanistan as the country was embroiled in civil war after the Soviets left. These mujahadien fighting amongst themselves WERE supported by the US when they were fighting the Soviets. When the Taliban came into the picture they started kicking their collective ass, causing the these feuding parties to join together as the "Northern Alliance". They were holed up North in a stalemate with the Taliban. Two days before 9/11, Al Queda/Taliban had their leader, the "Lion of Panjshir" Ahmad Shah Massoud assasinated, probably because they figured the US would be wanting to team up with him and his Norther Alliance after 9/11. It was to no avail as the Northern Alliance with US airpwer and special forces defeated the Taliban. So actually the Afgahnis who run the country now are actually the same people we helped during the Soviet occupation. No doubt some of these Muji we supported during the Soviet days are now Taliban or Al Queda, but generally speaking this is how it went down.

The Pakis now are fighting the monster they created...

[ronnie624]

24. Your 'analysis' is far from complete.

Afghanistan, the Taliban and the United States

VI. The Covert-US Taliban Alliance

Western motives become clearer when one recalls that it was the US that originally trained and armed the faction in Afghanistan - even “long before the USSR sent in troops” - which now constitutes the “leaders of Afghanistan”.<40> The record illustrates the existence of an ongoing relationship between the United States and the Taliban. AI reports that even though the “United States has denied any links with the Taleban”, according to then US Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel Afghanistan was a “crucible of strategic interest” during the Cold War, though she denied any US influence or support of factions in Afghanistan today, dismissing any possible ongoing strategic interests. However, former Department of Defense official Elie Krakowski, who worked on the Afghan issue in the 1980s, points out that Afghanistan remains important to this day because it “is the crossroads between what Halford MacKinder called the world’s Heartland and the Indian sub continent. It owes its importance to its location at the confluence of major routes. A boundary between land power and sea power, it is the meeting point between opposing forces larger than itself. Alexander the Great used it as a path to conquest. So did the Moghuls. An object of competition between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century, Afghanistan became a source of controversy between the American and Soviet superpowers in the 20th. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become an important potential opening to the sea for the landlocked new states of Central Asia. The presence of large oil and gas deposits in that area has attracted countries and multinational corporations... Because Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot what happens there affects the rest of the world.”<41>

Raphel’s denial of US interests in the region also stands in contradiction to the fact that, as AI reports, “many Afghanistan analysts believe that the United States has had close political links with the Taleban militia. They refer to visits by Taleban representatives to the United States in recent months and several visits by senior US State Department officials to Kandahur including one immediately before the Taleban took over Jalalabad.” The AI report refers to a comment by the Guardian: “Senior Taleban leaders attended a conference in Washington in mid-1996 and US diplomats regularly travelled to Taleban headquarters.” The Guardian points out that though such “visits can be explained”, “the timing raises doubts as does the generally approving line which US officials take towards the Taleban.”<42>

Amnesty goes on to confirm that recent “accounts of the madrasas (religious schools) which the Taleban attended in Pakistan indicate that these links may have been established at the very inception of the Taleban movement. In an interview broadcast by the BBC World Service on 4 October 1996, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto affirmed that the madrasas had been set up by Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Jihad, the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.”<43> Similarly, former Pakistani Interior Minister, Major General (Retd) Naseerullah Babar, stated that “ CIA itself introduced terrorism in the region and is only shedding crocodiles tears to absolve itself of the responsibility.”

<http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html#6>

[twitomy]

29. There is nothing here that contradicts the fact that the Taliban

was created and supported by the Pakis. The Taliban wanted to be recognized by the US as the legitimate rulers of Afghanstan. Supposed US contacts with them does not define a "Covert-US Taliban Alliance"...something which is quite laughable as there is no evidence that the US aided and/or supported the Taliban.. If you recall, after the Soviets left, the US and the west abandoned Afghanistan, allowing Pakistan to fill the void with its proxy.

[ronnie624]

50. See post #47.

From autorank's link:

The Big "Con": Taliban About to Defeat Pakistan, Take Control of Nukes, and It's Another 9/11

By Michael Collins

Fundamentalists in the rural, mountainous regions have sought Muslim law (Sharia) for decades. The largely urban population of Pakistan and its central government oppose this. Armed conflict has ebbed and flowed over time. This issue and conflict is a distant second to Pakistan's overriding focus on its hostile relationship with India. Three major wars with India and an ongoing tension between the nations since Pakistan was formed on August 14, 1947 account for this.

Pakistani fundamentalists in the volatile northwestern provinces gained strength during the 1980's due to their utility in fighting the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained this to Congress on April 25, 2009, "Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union."

Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, worked with the United States to fund religious extremists from Pakistan and elsewhere that were willing to fight the Soviet Union's forces occupying Afghanistan. Billions of dollars were committed to this effort by the United States.

Respected journalist Ahmed Rashid noted that, "CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujahideen." A prime recruiting area was the sparsely populated, conservative Muslim population in Pakistan's border provinces.

<http://inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10646/2009-05-09.html>

[twitomy]

58. Why yes,

Some of these people were fighting the Soviets, as I said in my post. But not as the "Taliban".
The Taliban organization did not exist when the Soviets were there. So there is no direct link
between the CIA and Taliban, However the CIA did support the precursors to the Taliban and
Northern Alliance.

[Raskolnik]

55. You may want to brush up on your facts, bemildred.

Russia has more active nuclear warheads than the U.S., and far more total nuclear warheads in its arsenal.

[bemildred]

56. You appear to be correct, mea culpa.

Although I submit that those numbers are guesses.

[closeupready]

30. Totally with you on this and every other of your posts in this thread.

It's just gotten beyond laughable - it's downright offensive, all this anti-Pakistan spamming we get here and in the media every single day of the week. I'm not even bothering to debate on the merits anymore, so transparent has become the motives behind those posting this crap.

[bemildred]

43. Hey.

:hi:

[stillcool]

4. I can't believe a single word...

how sad is that?

[frog92969]

18. We have the government that cried wolf

That was my first thought too.

And that does alot to destablize this country,
since alot of the same hacks are still rumnning it.

[cosmicone]

7. American aid to Pakistan over several decades has caused this

problem. Pakistan needs to be completely cut off and face the music it has created by founding, funding, arming and training the terrorists and using terrorism as official state policy.

Sharing intel with India and Israel to take out their nukes will be a lot cheaper -- then Pakistan can just wither on the whine or reform itself to become a civilized and peaceful nation.

[Turborama]

19. French nuclear ‘offer’ (for Pakistan)

Dawn Editorial
Monday, 18 May, 2009 | 07:02 AM PST

According to Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, France has offered a civilian nuclear technology deal to Pakistan on the same lines as the US-India agreement signed earlier. This announcement is bound to create a lot of excitement not just in Pakistan but also in countries that have strong reservations about Pakistan’s nuclear programme

Before discussing the implications of the deal, it is important to point out that there has been no announcement from the French government’s side on this issue so far. Exactly what has been offered and on what terms, is not known. However, there are reports that an official from Mr Nicolas Sarkozy’s office observed that the French president had confirmed his willingness to ‘cooperate with Pakistan in the area of nuclear safety’.

In the light of this, it appears that the Pakistan government is counting its chickens before they’ve hatched. The major concern of the nuclear powers at the moment is the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and how it can be safeguarded from falling into the hands of militants. This contingency has been debated in strategic circles and evidently came up in Paris as well prompting Mr Qureshi to assure the world that Pakistan is a ‘responsible nuclear power’ that can handle the safety of its nuclear arsenal and proliferation concerns.

Be that as it may, an agreement with France has very far-reaching implications for Pakistan’s relations with Paris as well as a number of other countries. Before India tested its nuclear capability in 1974 and Pakistan embarked on its quest for the bomb, Islamabad’s nuclear programme enjoyed the support of many foreign powers. In 1976, France had even signed a deal to supply a reprocessing plant to Pakistan, which was subsequently torpedoed when then American national security adviser Henry Kissinger entered the scene threatening to make a ‘horrible example’ out of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Thereafter nothing has been the same again. Pakistan turned to clandestine sources and allies like China for nuclear supplies until it managed to develop nuclear capability indigenously and detonate a bomb in 1998 following in India’s footsteps.

Read more: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/16-french-nuclear-offer-hs-01

[Turborama]

20. India thinks Pak N-sites already in radical hands: Report

Source: Times of India

WASHINGTON: India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan's restive frontier province are "already partly" in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington's confidence in the security of the troubled nation's nuclear arsenal.

Claims about the high-level exchange between New Delhi and Washington were made in the Debka, a journal said to have close ties with Israeli intelligence, under the headline "Singh warns Obama: Pakistan is lost." The brief story said the Indian prime minister had named Pakistani nuclear sites in the areas which were Taliban-Qaida strongholds and said the sites are already partly in the hands of "Muslim extremists." A sub-head to the story said "India gets ready for a Taliban-ruled nuclear neighbor."

There was no official word from either Washington or New Delhi about the exchanges, with India in the throes of an election and US winding down for the weekend. But US experts have been greatly perturbed in recent days about what they say is Washington's misplaced confidence in, and lackadaisical approach towards, Pakistan's nuclear assets. The disquiet comes amid reports that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear arsenal even as the rest of the world is scaling it down.

"It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach," Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. "Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions... and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world." Windrem, a former producer with NBC whose book "Critical Mass" was among the first to red flag Islamabad's proliferation record going back to the 1980s, referred to recent reports and satellite images showing Pakistan building two large new plutonium production reactors in Khushab, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country's nuclear arsenal. The reactors had nothing to do with power-production' they are weapons-specific, and are being built with resources who diversion is enabled by the billions of dollars the US is giving to Pakistan as aid, he said.


Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-thinks-Pak-N-sites-already-in-radical-hands-Report/articleshow/4537037.cms

[closeupready]

32. Times of India? OMG.

What's your next source - the National Enquirer? :rofl:

[Turborama]

34. What's wrong with The Times of India?

I'm genuinely curious.

[closeupready]

38. It's like India's NewsMax.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Crowman1979]

22. They collect nukes while their people starve!

Gee, the military industrial complex sure knows how to get people back on their feet. :sarcasm:

[peace_to_world]

23. US looking for reasons to attack Pakistan

Let me tell all the Americans,US might look for support among dummy govt officials but there is no support for US among the people.Our nuclear weapons are safe from Taliban but not from the greedy American eye.What most people now feel here in Pakistan is that US a bigger enemy than Taliban.

[peace_to_world]

27. US intentions

Benazir was put to death in order to roll back Pakistan nuclear programme and the take over its nukes and India, Israel and the US, were making hectic efforts to deprive Pakistan of its atomic capability so as to bring to under their control.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/18-May-2009/US-special-squad-killed-Benazir

They will fail to do this as long as ISI stands.Therefore US has come up with a new policy.

Moreover Obama administration has same intentions in Pakistan as that Bush administration had.Death squad chief now in Afghanistan.

[closeupready]

31. And I do so love all the pontificating about Pakistan from those WHO HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE.

:rofl: The Pakistan-hating contingent on this board is seriously self-delusional.

[Turborama]

36. "The Pakistan-hating contingent on this board is seriously self-delusional". Who's "hating" here?

Seems to me like your just after a flame war.

[autorank]

41. Hysteria run wild. Here's some accurate informaiton

http://inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10646/2009-05-09.html

[closeupready]

44. Thanks for the link. Very informative.

n/t

[autorank]

46. Welcome, I wrote it;)

[bemildred]

45. That's a good piece. nt

[autorank]

47. Thanks!

I was just appalled to hear Holbrooke, an additional signatory on the PNAC screed, threatening us with another 9/11 if we don't go agree with his hair brained hypothesis. That's an awful thing to wave in the face of the public with little basis, sort of like that NYC fly over a few weeks ago.

Looks like the people of Pakistan are pushing the government to get this straightened out, which is good. They don't like us, due to the drone attacks, etc., but they despise the Taliban. If they do this on their own, it will work. There's no reason why we shouldn't have a good to excellent relationship with Pakistan, which is primarily urban and moderate.

I got a kick out of the report of Mullen and Holbrooke to Pakistan:

"In an interview on National Public Radio on April 21, even Shuja Nawaz from the establishment oriented Atlantic Council was driven to exasperation when describing the Holbrooke - Mullen mission. 'This is probably the worst-ever visit by an American team to South Asia in history. It was a complete disaster. And if this is how you want to win friends, I just wonder how you want to create enemies'" NPR, Apr 21, 2009.

Quite a distinction;)

[ronnie624]

49. Excellent article. Thanks for posting. n/t

[Eric_323]

52. Great job and thanks for your work. NT

[ohio2007]

48. US congress subsdised Pak nuke program as well as nations attending the doner conference in Tokyo

lets give them more so they can raise the stakes against their Indian adversaries.
:sarcasm:

[Eric_323]

51. Bill Moyers Journal

had a good piece on Pakistan. It's thirty minutes, but the two gentlemen are very informative.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05152009/watch.html

[ronnie624]

54. Thank you very much for posting.

Juan Cole is very informative, and adds a rational perspective to the issue. A number of posters to this thread need to watch this video.

[Turborama]

57. Thanks for that interesting perspective...

In my opinion, civilian development is clearly the answer to the problems in both Pakistan & Afghanistan. However, civilian development can only occur in a safe and stable environment...

BILL MOYERS: So what does the United States do?

JUAN COLE: Well, the important thing to underline is the Pakistani public doesn't like some US policies, like the war in Afghanistan. But opinion polling shows, and I quote this in my book, that they like the United States. And if you ask them, "Well, what would you, what would make better relations with the United States?" They say, "Well, give us civilian development aid. We don't need any more weapons from you." If we can do things for the Pakistan public that they need done for them, they say in opinion polls that that's going to really raise their view of the United States. And we've seen this happen elsewhere, in Indonesia and so forth. So that's got-- has to be an important part of it. I think the Obama administration is right about that.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I am calling upon Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that authorizes $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years — resources that will build schools and roads and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan's democracy.

=snip=

SHAHAN MUFTI: I think, Bill, that winning the hearts and minds part of the Pakistanis is not going to be a tough-- it's not a tough job at the end of the day. Like you were saying, a lot of these people, especially the urban population that we talked about, these large cities are already sold. They will-- they wouldn't mind a few of the freedoms that are enjoyed here. And if, and especially if, development aid that's going in-- I think that is really not going to be that hard once the strategic planning, once the strategic planners in Pakistan have been convinced to really come on our side.

JUAN COLE: With regard to the civilian aid, you know, if USAID and the US government does its job, and has accountability, you know, because we don't just give the money to the Pakistan government and say, "Spend it." The problem in the last eight years was that we really just did hand the money over to the Pakistani military. The US government wasn't doing its job with regard to accountability.

[proteus_lives]

53. I've said before and I'll say it again.

If WWIII starts in the next five years, it will start in Pakistan.