Here's the latest on the missiles for nukes swapping arrangement between Pakistan (Muslim) and North Korea (Atheists) that appears to have escalated after the 1993 Somalia debacle, the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, and the 1994 US-North Korea framework agreement brokered by Billy and Jimmy, two of the greatest marks (read: suckers) in the history of mankind.
What's a liberal to do when confronted with this kind of easily verifiable facts? The usual sleight of hand, hide-behind-semantics and change-the-topic-and- hope-they're-too-dumb-to-notice tactics that endear them to their core voters.<g>
........Khan told two generals who jointly questioned him last month that three army chiefs of staff, including Musharraf, had known of his dealings with North Korea, according to the friend of the scientist. "Throughout his debriefing, Dr. Khan kept asking the generals why he was not being asked specific questions about the material he passed on to the North Koreans," the friend said.
U.S. officials have long suspected that Pakistan supplied uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for help with its ballistic missile program, and that Khan acted as the principal agent of the arrangement. After stating in 2002 that it had a program for enriching uranium for use in weapons, North Korea more recently has denied it.
A retired Pakistani army corps commander said Monday that the barter arrangement dates to December 1994, when then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto traveled to North Korea at the request of Gen. Abdul Waheed, the army chief of staff at the time. A few months later, Khan led a delegation of scientists and military officers to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, according to the retired general and a senior active duty officer, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. Musharraf was serving at the time as Waheed's director general for military operations.
In January 1996, Waheed was replaced as chief of staff by Karamat, who secretly visited North Korea in December 1997, according to the retired corps commander. Four months after the trip, in April 1998, Karamat presided over the successful test-firing of a medium-range missile the Pakistanis called a Ghauri. According to U.S. intelligence officials and a former Pakistani nuclear scientist, the Ghauri was simply a renamed North Korean-supplied Nodong missile. Pakistani officials maintain publicly that the Ghauri missile is indigenous to Pakistan.
The senior investigator said Khan claimed that Karamat was privy to the details of the barter arrangement through which Pakistan received the missile, and that Khan had insisted that Karamat's role also be examined.
Khan also has asserted that Musharraf had to have been aware of the agreement with North Korea because Musharraf took over responsibility for the Ghauri missile program when he became army chief of staff in October 1998, according to the scientist's friend and the senior investigator.
According to Kidwai's account to journalists, senior military commanders did not get wind of Khan's nuclear dealings with North Korea until 2000, when the ISI conducted a raid on an aircraft that the laboratory had chartered for a planned flight to North Korea. Although a search of the aircraft turned up no evidence, authorities were sufficiently concerned that they warned Khan against pursuing any clandestine trade with North Korea, Kidwai told the journalists.
That concern deepened, according to Kidwai's account, after U.S. officials in 2002 and early 2003 presented evidence that Pakistani nuclear technology may indeed have found its way to North Korea.......
washingtonpost.com |
