Pakistani who sold nuke tech can keep wealth

[zimv20]

link (http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-pak08.html)


President Pervez Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world.

Just days after Musharraf provoked worldwide consternation by pardoning Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, he told the Sunday Telegraph he would also spare the scientist's property or assets.

"He can keep his money," Musharraf said, adding there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Khan's suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. "We wanted the bomb in the national interest, and so you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb."

Khan is thought to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through bank accounts in the Middle East. His assets include four houses in Islamabad worth an estimated $2.5 million, a villa on the Caspian Sea, a luxury hotel in Mali and a valuable vintage car collection.

(more)


nice ****ing War on Terror we've got going here. bush is so outraged by this, he went on tim russert's show and defended the iraq war. :rolleyes:

[Sayhey]

zim,

this part of the story I believe.

The Pakistan People's Party, led from exile by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, doubts the authenticity of Khan's admission, which it says was made "under duress."

Khan was initially reported to have told government investigators that he did nothing without the knowledge of Pakistan's military chiefs, including Musharraf. In his televised confession, however, he said he had no authorization from the government.

Imran Khan, a former cricket star who leads the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf Party, claims Musharraf pressured Abdul Khan in order to safeguard his own reputation. "It could not be possible that nuclear technology was transferred without the knowledge of top military officials," he said.

I have no doubt Musharraf and his friends in the General Staff knew all about it and probably both approved and benefitted from the sale of the technology.

[zimv20]

Originally posted by Sayhey

I have no doubt Musharraf and his friends in the General Staff knew all about it and probably both approved and benefitted from the sale of the technology.

nor do i. which makes the bush administration's stance on iraq that much more outrageous.

[yamabushi]

At least this gives people a little bit clearer picture of the transfer of nuclear weapon technology.

[Sayhey]

Originally posted by zimv20
nor do i. which makes the bush administration's stance on iraq that much more outrageous.

If I recall correctly, some of us (you and I included) were saying the real threat for the spread of WMDs and terrorism came from our good friends in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - and that was more than six, seven months ago. Nice to see some folks in the press are covering at least some of this mess as it comes unraveled.

[zimv20]

Originally posted by Sayhey
If I recall correctly, some of us (you and I included) were saying the real threat for the spread of WMDs and terrorism came from our good friends in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - and that was more than six, seven months ago.

almost a year ago...

it's amazing to me -- take the two of us, for example. we don't have access to classified information, we live in a society w/ substandard access to real news, and it's plain to us where the real problems lie.

when i think of musharraf and his nuclear scientist, and bush and his cronies, i get the impression everything in world affairs is done with a wink and a nudge (much like bush's so-called "business career"). heads of states everywhere must have known what high ************ the iraq war was, but they all understood how things actually work.

so in this case, bush and musharraf cook up a plan to have qadeer khan issue an apology and everything remains hunky dory. (though, surely, bush gets something in return for not raising a public wink-wink-nudge-nudge stink about it).

if it's all really such a game, i wonder if it's worth me getting all worked up about world affairs. it's not like my view will change anything, eh?

[pseudobrit]

Originally posted by zimv20
if it's all really such a game, i wonder if it's worth me getting all worked up about world affairs. it's not like my view will change anything, eh?

Not as long as we all stick to our part in the game.

[zimv20]

Originally posted by pseudobrit
Not as long as we all stick to our part in the game.

but that's based on the idea that the US is a democracy. i'm really beginning to doubt that it is. i'm thinking of those times in my life where i was part of a leadership of some group. in each case, we always welcomed the opinions of those who were affected by decisions, maybe even allowed them to vote, but it never made a damn bit of difference in what we did. the decisions were always made ahead of time.

[mactastic]

Originally posted by zimv20
it's not like my view will change anything, eh?

Not like we could do anything about it now anyway. Our troops are already busy, so even if Bush wanted to do something about this he couldn't, not to mention Pakistan has nukes already so the 'usual solution' ie. bomb them into submission won't work anyway. Diplomacy is the only way to solve these kinds of problems. And remember, Musharraf is MUCH better than some other people who could be leading Pakistan right now. He has publicly acted against al Qaeda, thereby making his life forfeit if he ever loses power to that faction.

It does, as you have alluded, expose the immense hypocrasy of 'Dubya Dubya II' however. On the one hand we have a declared nuclear power selling nuclear technology to terrorist states. On the other you have a nation who might or might not have had chem/bio weapons within the last 10 years, and at best had a mothballed nuclear program and very limited missle technology. And who do we attack? Not to mention the Saudi problem, where our hypocrasy is on display every day to the Arab world as the autocratic members of the House of Saud oppress, torture and suppress free speech on their way to the top of the oil heap. With allies like these, who needs enemies. Or the French or Germans for that matter.

[Sayhey]

Originally posted by zimv20
if it's all really such a game, i wonder if it's worth me getting all worked up about world affairs. it's not like my view will change anything, eh?

It is easy to despair over the state of the world, and extremely hard to do something about it. However, people do make real differences. I could point out the wonderful changes that have occurred by the determined struggle of people with little power in situations like South African apartheid, police state Chile, martial law Poland, and yes - the US during both the civil rights and Vietnam struggle, but I think you can see that some changes in the events of the last month around Bush's supposed "inevitable" election.

I've been at this "game" since my teenage years - some 35+ years ago and the one thing I've learned (warning - old man talking) is that it does make a difference to try to make a difference.

[diamond geezer]

Is Halliburton going to loose any of their wealth for dealing with so-called "Axis of Evil" states, via the almost non-existant Cayman Islands subsidiary?

One would think not.