Evil Weaponry
Remember how evil nuclear weapons were supposed to be? Here is George Bush from November 2001:
This is an evil man that we're dealing with, and I wouldn't put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it.
It would be hard to expect the President of the United States to deem the vast arsenal under his command as evil, but one does wonder whether these weapons are evil only when certain people have them, because it is more and more apparent that our friends, despite myriad flaws, are immune from real criticism.
Take Pakistan, an erstwhile democracy that is in its eighth year of military coup. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists now estimates its nuclear arsenal at 60 weapons and counting.
Like other nations that have developed
nuclear weapons, Pakistan does not seem content with a first generation nuclear weapon that uses [highly-enriched uranium]; it has been pursuing plutonium-based designs for at least a decade....preparing to increase and enhance
its nuclear forces in the coming years, especially if it attempts to match India's
ambitious plans to deploy a nuclear triad of aircraft and land- and sea-based missiles. It is difficult to estimate precisely how many nuclear weapons Pakistan has produced and what types they are, and it is equally troublesome to guess what its future plans might be....
In addition to the nuclear-capable aircraft that it currently has, Pakistan is developing ballistic and cruise missiles that will be perfect for deploying nuclear weapons in new and clearly beneficial ways. What friends of democracy we have in the Pakistani military, and clearly what forces for good they are.
Labels: Bush, Musharraf, nuclear weapons, Pakistan
