Many of you know that I have been warning that Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran for years and now we have yet another trail leading to Pakistan. Al Qaeda is sheltered there, the Taliban move openly throughout the country, they have burned the US embassy killing a Marine guard. They already have The Islamic Atomic Bomb including a delivery system, one of the most unstable governments in the world, and an army and intelligence service riddled with Taliban sympathizers. The nation is virulently anti-American even though we give them $Billions in aid and supported them with modern weapons during their wars with India. They shelter the physicist who illegally distributed nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, Syria and others. He is technically under house arrest but is considered to be a national hero. Pakistan is implicated in the terrorist Delhi bombings in India. Supposedly Pakistan is fighting jihadist in the mountains but they have a very cozy relationship with many of the groups they are supposed to be at odds with. Now we have Pakistani terrorists attacking the US directly. There is nothing good about the Pakistan situation, which has all the signs of getting worse. While there is hope that internal dissent in Iran could bring about the collapse of the mullahs and a return to a secular government, the prospects of a revolution in Pakistan are very real and it would bring about a jihadist government armed with nuclear weapons. The prospects of Israeli or American nuclear exchanges with Pakistan in the next 10 years looms as a major possibility. It will not be pretty.
i know pakistan has nuclear weapons, but exactly are their delivery capabilities, and what is their stockpile like?
i shouldnt be critical of obama here, because he is pretty decent with regard to pakistan. but i will be complimentary of bush, because bush has shown repeatedly that he is not afraid to back up his threats with war. and that is exactly what we need. we need a leader with some meaning behind his words. thats why bush was so spectacular at foreign policy. he simply was not ****ing around. i cant really expect that the pakistan and the world will take threats from obama as seriously, but i wish him the best.
I agree with Reds post for the most part but you can't just single out one country. All roads lead to the middle east not just Pakistan. I believe their is plenty of Anti-West sentiments in all countries other than Isreal. I have said that Pakistan is a big problem, that is where a lot of this hate towards western civilization has been taught. It is a war between Muslim extemists and the civilized world. Al Qaeda is everywhere, sheltered everywhere but that is supposedly where their schools of hate are located. BUT since we have taken Saddam out of Iraq there is no one left to keep Iran in check. Iran is where OBL is probably located, I pointed that out five or six years ago in this forum. Iran is growing everyday as just a big of a threat as Pakistan. Its not hard to see a nuclear detonation somewhere in the world possibly this country tied to Iran. There are plenty of terrorist extemists with ties to Iran. I can easily see a gloomy future for the world if someone doesn't do something about these 2 countries. You wanna say global warming, Why not global warning instead!
The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that Pakistan has built 24-48 uranium-based nuclear warheads, maybe as many as 55. According to Carnegie, Pakistan has also produced a small but unknown quantity of weapons grade plutonium, which is sufficient for an estimated 3-5 nuclear weapons, but are not known to have prepared a plutonium weapon. Pakistani authorities claim that their nuclear weapons are not assembled. They maintain that the fissile cores are stored separately from the non-nuclear explosives packages, and that the warheads are stored separately from the delivery systems. The Pentagon contends that "Islamabad's nuclear weapons are probably stored in component form" and that "Pakistan probably could assemble the weapons fairly quickly." Pakistan has about 300 short (750km) and medium (1500 km) range missiles that can carry a small nuclear warhead. The have French fighter-bombers that can carry larger weapons, but they wouldn't survive long versus US or Israeli air supremacy. Mostly these weapons are targeted at India, their traditional enemy. But they can threaten Israel, too. Pakistan's nightmare scenario is a joint Israeli/Indian strike on their nuclear arsenal. Technically Pakistan could hit US bases in the middle east, but it would not only be national suicide from US retaliation, but it would also enable India to invade them almost unopposed. A rational Pakistani government is no real threat to the US directly. Of course, a radical Pakistani government might try to sink a carrier with one. Which is why the Paks know that we have a pre-emptive strike option, too. It's a very volatile situation. A jihadist revolution in Pakistan could quickly involve four nuclear powers using weapons . . . with religious nutjobs in control of the trigger.
He has stepped up missile strikes inside pakistan, we don't even call them covert anymore. And put a ton of pressure on the Pak Army to prove that they control their own mountain territories. He's got them out of their barracks and into the fight, at least under this Pakistani Government. Bush kissed their ass for far too long on the Al Qaeda thing. Only if they are short, sweet, overwhelming victories. If they are costly quagmires against the wrong enemy we call them unprecedented failures. How is that "spreading democracy through the middle east" going. Still staying that course? Still tilting at WMD's, Don Quixote? Hillary does the big stick. Obama does the speaking softly. They are like Shatner and The Big Deal. Only Hillary is really scary.
so does our (or the islaeli) intelligence know where the weapons/warheads are stored i wonder? if so, it seems like it would be worth taking out as much as we can in the event of a revolution, if we (or the israeli's) could get to them rapidly. i know that would be "condemned" by other nations, and seen by many as an act of war, but really, who all wants nuclear weapons in radical islamists hands? saudi would likely object, but when it comes down to it, the ruling family is doing a balancing act to stay in power too. the hard core islamists dont like them either, thinking that saudi arabia should be theocratically controlled. russia? hell, the "stans" around them are producing islamic militants that are hitting russia. it is in NO ONE'S best interest for radical islamists to come to power.
Not all of them. They have a few missiles in hardened silos to give them a theoretical second-strike capability but they have more on mobile launchers that they can move frequently and hide easily. They can store warheads almost anywhere and rather easily. To defend against airstrikes they must disperse them, but this increases the potential for having one stolen. Deterrence is all that works once a nation possess a weapon and a delivery system. That and costs. South Africa gave up a nuclear capability right after achieving it because of its vast expense. It almost bankrupted the Soviet Union and Britain, Russia, and France are greatly burdened by the expense of keeping in the game. So are we, which is why we are downsizing rapidly. If Pakistan goes over to the jihadists, we will have to start inspecting every single container that enters the US . . . at vast expense to us all.
This is real simple, ** disclaimer** all you soft hearted libbys turn the other way before I scar your retinas; barackie boy needs to put on his big boy pants and just bomb the shiza [its german look it up]out of them. Big Mother Effing Bombs, all day every day from every direction. Bombs in the mountains, the goat trails, right smack dab atop the dome of the largest masque. If one of those moo moo's pulls the lid off of his trash can a GD Bomb should be in there and hopefully someone catches the video as his azzhole passes through his nasal cavity. F**K em all. Okay, you can look again libbys.
