August 27, 2005 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Thanks to the Dear Leader’s continuing intransigence in over his nuclear weapons programme there is considerable pressure on the Pakistani government to come clean on the extent of Khan the Centrifugist’s collaboration with North Korea. Gen Musharraf has been compelled to admit a little more of the truth.
“Dr. A. Q. Khan’s part is only enriching the uranium to weapons grade,” General Musharraf said. “He does not know about making the bomb. He does not know about the trigger mechanism. He does not know about the delivery system.” But investigators who dismantled Libya’s nuclear program, also provided by the Khan network, found blueprints of a nearly complete Chinese design for a nuclear weapon apparently obtained by Dr. Khan. It is unclear whether North Korea received the same design. [NYT]
Here’s a man Musharraf pardoned owing to him being a national hero, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. While Pakistanis continue to revere him as the man who built the bomb, Musharraf would have the rest of the world believe that apart from spinning uranium in centrifuges, Khan didn’t know much else.
Musharraf would also have the world believe that Khan shipped entire centrifuges using the largest aircraft in the Pakistani air force (supplied by the United States) without the knowledge of the military authorities.
And the good people at Stratfor are wondering if Musharraf is lying to the United States?
Tailpiece: When is a chicken a chicken? Ask Benazir Bhutto.
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