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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (124494)	2/8/2004 10:56:47 PM
From: John Soileau	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<<May I point out that without our invasion of Iraq... we would never have learned about AQ Khan's little discount operation?>> Yes you may, but that claim is simply not true. We knew prewar. From the Sharma article: "Those who went to CIA Director George Tenet’s rare public lecture discovered that the CIA and British intelligence had penetrated the Pakistani proliferation network some years ago." The March 2003 (obviously prewar) Cato report discusses the Pakistani proliferation problem in some detail. We did NOT need the Iraq war to catch the scent of Pakistani proliferation. <<You'll notice that we are doing our best to change Pakistan's behavior>> No we're not. At most we're tut-tut-ing them, with no invasive independent verification. Exactly the process you claim was insufficient with regard to Iraq. They put nuclear tech into the hands of our enemies, and we've known it for years--isn't that one of your big Iraq war justifications (to paraphrase, "we couldn't wait until Saddam gave WMD to our enemies, we had to invade to prevent that")? If as you say (and I agree) proliferation of WMD to our enemies is a sufficient reason for war, why did we not occupy _Pakistan_ when we learned years ago what they were doing? Or embargo them? Or cut their US aid? Or censure them? Or recall a few diplomats? Or, at least, take them off of the WH Christmas card list? Guess we were busy elsewhere...