Safer

Safer - One of the left's most pernicious slanders these days is that we're no safer now that Hussein is gone.

How do they want to explain this?:

Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government officials and arms experts.

The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China's long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, they said. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe.

The packet of documents, some of which included text in Chinese, contained detailed, step-by-step instructions for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could fit atop a large ballistic missile. They also included technical instructions for manufacturing components for the device, the officials and experts said.

This is important exactly why?

The package of documents was turned over to U.S. officials in November following Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction and open his country's weapons laboratories to international inspection. The blueprints, which were flown to Washington last month, have been analyzed by experts from the United States, Britain and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

So why do you suppose that happened?

If you answered "Because the UN negotiated for it", you're mistaken. They've been on the scene forever. Nothing happened until we deposed Hussein.

Suddenly, all sorts of dominos started falling into place. Had we never invaded Iraq, Libya would still be taunting the UN, and the Khan network would remain undetected.

How bad would that be?

the blueprints would have been far more valuable to the other known customers of Khan's network.

"This design would be highly useful to countries such as Iran and North Korea," said Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security has studied the nonconventional weapons programs of both states. The design "appears deliverable by North Korea's Nodong missile, Iran's Shahab-3 missile and ballistic missiles Iraq was pursuing just prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War," he said.

Such a relatively simple design also might be coveted by terrorist groups who seek nuclear weapons but lack the technical sophistication or infrastructure to build a modern weapon, said one Europe-based weapons expert familiar with the blueprints. While such a bomb would be difficult to deliver by air, "you could drive it away in a pickup truck," the expert said.

But other than that, are we safer?

If it puts a further hole in the notion that the UN is a competent regulator of such things? Yes. Honesty helps.

(Via Instapundit.com )

Posted by Mitch at February 19, 2004 05:01 AM