Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Nuclear Terror Legacy of A. Q. Khan Lives On

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Pakistani metallurgist A.Q. Khan helped his home country develop their small nuclear arsenal throughout the 1990's. He is also believed to have shared the knowledge with other rogue nations including Libya (who has since said they abandoned nukes because Qaddaffi didn't want to sufer the same fate as Saddam), North Korea and Iran.

His lasting legacy may be the obliteration of Tel Aviv and a nuclear war in the Mideast. Swiss authorities have discovered 1,000 gigs of plans on a computer that detail how to make a nuke warhead that would fit existing missiles of the aforementioned rogue nations. This is not making me feel all warm and fuzzy:

The computer contents -- among more than 1,000 gigabytes of data seized -- were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report's author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.

"These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world," Albright wrote in a draft report about the blueprint's discovery. A copy of the report, expected to be published later this week, was provided to The Washington Post.
I have no fear because the IAEA is on the case. Note heavy sarcasm.

One has to imagine that the Saudi's have a copy and potentially Syria who had a nuke site obliterated by the IAF last year. In other words, proliferation is going to happen and quickly. You may want to think about that if you plan on pulling the lever for Obama.

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