Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 07 Feb 2004

suryavir · Post by **suryavir** » 11 Feb 2004 00:54

Have no desire to get side-tracked but here's a brief response: (Dr.) Tim Hoyt is the only person on this forum who as far as I know has been invited to testify in Congress as a security expert. We may all be experts and have credentials in our particular spheres, but this forum is not intended to address our areas of expertise: medicine, science, engineering, etc. This forum is primarily about security matters, in which (Dr.) Hoyt is the only acknowledged expert. It's a matter of elementary courtesy.

Kanu · Post by **Kanu** » 11 Feb 2004 01:11

This is really disturbing. I'm mean I'm studying International Relations and Politics at university, but they never teach us about this. I learn more about realpolitik here than in class. It's quite sickening acctually, not sure if this is what I signed up for when I started the course.

Sunil · Post by **Sunil** » 11 Feb 2004 01:26

Kanu,

please email me

breadomlette at yahoo dot com

Raj Singh · Post by **Raj Singh** » 11 Feb 2004 01:28

Quote ..................

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB11Df04.html

If Dr Khan were in India ...

In this lies the fundamental issue of how Indian society has developed much differently from Pakistan since partition created the two countries in 1947. In this is also an insight into the way corruption is viewed in both the countries, as well as systemic checks and balances in place. Also at issue is why Pakistan needs to be treated in separate terms, instead of the Western predilection to hyphenate India and Pakistan in their viewing of the two countries.

.......

The episodes of Khan and Gandhi are, as said, not related in any way. But in their stories lies a critical difference in the way corruption or moral standards in public life are viewed separately in the two nations. It is not as if corruption is not endemic in India - it is, as evidenced by a slew of recent scams involving tinkering with the stock market, spurious stamp paper, ministers being caught on camera accepting bribes, and many more. Government officials make it a habit to harass the public for little benefits.

But corruption is never justified, whatever be the ends, through any quibbles, arguments or public platforms. A recent analysis titled "Why Indian N-tech wont leak" in The Times of India, reads: "In the past, other countries like Iraq and Iran have expressed interest in Indian nuclear and missile technology, but have been politely shown the 'not for sale' sign. How do Indian scientists resist the lure to flog WMD technology around the world? According to a former nuclear scientist, there are several reasons for this - foremost being the strong culture of bureaucratic control by the PMO [Prime Minister's Office] and cabinet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The writer hit the nail on the head. Look at the pedestal this Khan guy had been raised on in Pak.

In a nutshell, equating Pak to India is most insulting. To a normally intelligent person. Hey, we ain't even in the same league."

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 11 Feb 2004 01:45

Pak army never controlled nuclear programme: Mirza Aslam Beg

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/10pak2.htm

Look at this con artist... These RAPE army lives in tehir own makeup world. They won't even grasp of any thing. I think their brains are smaller than probably ant brains.

Asked who was controlling the nuclear programme at the time he was army chief, Gen Beg said, "It was the chief executive, Benazir Bhutto. The then president,

Ghulam Ishaq Khan, had been part of the programme since 1976 when Z A Bhutto initiated it and he remained with it until 1992, when he retired."

Umrao · Post by **Umrao** » 11 Feb 2004 01:46

I dont understand suryavir at all, what is the curtsey that is not accorded here to any one?

DO you think Dr. Tim does not know the truth?

Do we have to hold a beacon for him to see the truth?

Do you think that he testifies in front of select panel without being privy to SD briefings and documents?

DO you think he will change his mind by arguments and passionate appeals to see the truth, we see as truth and nothing but truth?

Everybody frequents this forum for overt or covert information about RAW knowledge.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 11 Feb 2004 01:48

Originally posted by raj singh:
"The writer hit the nail on the head. Look at the pedestal this Khan guy had been raised on in Pak.

In a nutshell, equating Pak to India is most insulting. To a normally intelligent person. Hey, we ain't even in the same league."

Unfortunately the outside world when they see the face of a Paki and an Indian; for them it looks similar. They assume that the brain inside both the heads also is similar and the thought process is also similar.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 11 Feb 2004 01:49

Originally posted by vijayk:
Pak army never controlled nuclear programme: Mirza Aslam Beg

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/10pak2.htm

He also justified his description of himself as 'an Islamic nationalist'.

"Is there anything wrong with it? And if you know my background, with all I am doing after retirement, I am heading a think-tank, which is the only one of its kind which is totally independent and autonomous, run by funds and resources that I created for myself."

Rangudu · Post by **Rangudu** » 11 Feb 2004 01:51

I am heading a think-tank, which is the only one of its kind which is totally independent and autonomous, run by funds and resources that I created for myself.

...which I paid for by selling drugs and nukes...

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 11 Feb 2004 01:51

Typical behaviour whether Paki, Indian or American males. Make a mess of the world and abuse sisters and mothers for it.

Whoa, wait a minute! We ain't playing tiddlywinks here. If Dr. Khan wants his family safe then he better start traveling by himself when he meets up with the boys at the mosque or goes to the laboratory for a shot of plutonium tea. We won't deliberately target his family but on the other hand he better not be trying to hide behind any skirts either. This is a high stakes poker game and the good(?) Doctor has done bet the ranch.

Umrao · Post by **Umrao** » 11 Feb 2004 01:59

Hold on weight watchers , the Mossad is going to get Dr. Khan and debrief him completely to get to the naked truth about his selling bums to Al Qaeda.

Its building up towards that end...

Rangudu · Post by **Rangudu** » 11 Feb 2004 02:05

Mansoor "I got snake oil" Ijaz was on Fox News' Brit Hume show last night.

Link to transcripts

Good evening, Mansoor. Tell us about what happened here?

MANSOOR IJAZ, FOX NEWS FOREIGN POLICY ANALYST: Well, thank you Brit. I think my part in this started in the summer of 2000, as I was negotiating the cease-fire in Kashmir. And as I came into contact with certain elements of the Jihadi groups in Pakistan and members of the intelligence services there, it became very clear to me that a widespread metastasis of Pakistan's nuclear technology was, in fact, taking place to countries that they should never been doing it with.

I immediately then briefed Sandy Berger (search), our national security adviser at that time, other members of the senior National Security Council staff.

And we did this again when the Bush administration came into office in 2001, with a number of the people at the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council and so forth.

So I would say that we certainly gave them a lot of data and information: names, places, times of meetings, dates, people that were involved in these meetings, countries that were involved, other officials and so forth, to make sure that we were, you know, well on the way to unraveling what Dr. Khan had done. Which I think is just an absolutely unforgivable sin.

HUME: Now, having done that, we now know from other reporting that once the administration has established that everything you were telling them was true to their satisfaction, they pressed Pervez Musharraf to crack down on this and deal with Dr. Khan and so on.

IJAZ: Yes.

HUME: Can we assume that Dr. Khan has stopped doing what he was doing, Point 1?

IJAZ: Well, I think that the nuclear horse is out of barn. The real question now is whether or not we can get in this little horse trade and very well orchestrated pardon that took place last week.

Whether or not we can get the information out of Pervez Musharraf's government about precisely where the tentacles of this nuclear black market extended to.

Now, they didn't have control over everything, I grant them that; but they know enough. And the nerve center was right there in Pakistan and Dubai and other places, where the transit forces were and so forth that we have to get that information out of them.

Because the problem here is very simple. The terrorists and people that they gave this to that should not have these types of weapons capabilities, now know we have got their number. Which means that if they've got anything, they're going to want to speed up the timetable over which they try to use it, because they don't want anybody to be able to get their hands on the stuff that took them so long to be able to get into the place.

HUME: Question. What about this pardon? Why did Musharraf feel called upon to pardon the guy after what you described as an "unforgivable sin?"

IJAZ: Well, let's assume for the moment that Pervez Musharraf continues to work with the United States government quietly behind the scenes. This weekend, it was reported that the last several months, an anti-proliferation -- a secret team anti-proliferation has been in place in Pakistan helping to secure its nuclear materials. But that's only half the problem.

The other half of the problem is that we've got to make sure that we find out where the hell all of this other stuff went. And in that context, I think, Pervez Musharraf's pardon may yet still be folly.

As I understand it, he's only given a legal pardon for very specific circumstances that Khan outlined in his confessional statement. If they find things outside of that, Khan still may be on the hook. And they still may be able to prosecute him for something else later on.

HUME: So he is under some pressure as a result of the terms of this pardon to come clean with everything he knows. Is that the idea?

IJAZ: And I think we ought to -- absolutely. And I think we ought to impose more pressure on him. If I were President Bush, I would go to Congress tomorrow and immediately announce, unconditionally and without any notice to Pakistan, that the $3 billion aid package, that the American taxpayers are footing the bill for, is now put on hold until General Musharraf provides all the evidence that is necessary.

Everything is out in the open. Colin Powell can give the affidavit for that when he goes out there in two weeks. And then ensure that they have brought in all the nuclear safeguards in to protect their information and their technology, and nuclear weapons and so forth. Because it wasn't just nuclear fuel cycles that they were building.

We found out from Libya -- we have got the evidence in our hands now that Khan was actually giving bomb designs, giving the blueprints for how to make them and the components for how to build warheads. Now you can't get any worse than that in terms of proliferation, in terms of what goes on around the world.

HUME: But if we did that, wouldn't that complicate our current, ongoing cooperation with Pakistan in the search, for example, for Usama bin Laden (search)?

IJAZ: Well, Brit, I'm afraid that this now comes to a very difficult point at which I would have to say that the larger problem that we're dealing with is preventing the advent of radiological, dirty bombs popping up in places all over the world. Because the bad guys have them, they know how to use them.

And they want to get out there and get them done before - - you know, explode them and detonate them before we get our hands on where they are. In that context, I would say that we have got a much higher magnitude problem of trying to control them than we do worrying about al Qaeda.

HUME: If I say Libya, North Korea, Iran. Is that about complete the list, real quick?

IJAZ: I'm afraid not. There are at least three more countries that I can tell you for sure are on the list.

HUME: Got to take a break.

IJAZ: I can't tell you which ones because of the investigations...

HUME: Got to take a break. Thank you, Mansoor. All best to you. Got to take a break. Thanks for coming in so late at night over there.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 11 Feb 2004 02:08

This is really disturbing. I'm mean I'm studying International Relations and Politics at university, but they never teach us about this. I learn more about realpolitik here than in class. It's quite sickening acctually, not sure if this is what I signed up for when I started the course.

Kanu, if there is anything that I have written that upsets you, allow me to apologize. This forum is, for all practical purposes, a men's debating society dedicated to the Indian military (although a few women have posted here as well). And as such, strong feelings come into play with firm convictions vigorously defended. It's not really about international relations because if it was, the diplos would rule and we would be posting elsewhere. Diplo-speak is uh, not held in high esteem here as it would be in say, college debating societies, professional associations and formal drawing room receptions. Therefore the sine qua non mission of the forum is to "say what you mean and mean what you say" and it had better be in favor of India unless you have a very, very, good reason. So please, do not apply this in your world at the present. Take your courses in college and learn them well. Sincerely, TJ

laxmibai · Post by **laxmibai** » 11 Feb 2004 02:19

TSJones
Irrespective of which ridge over the civilisational divide you inhabit, the cussing preferences appear to be curiously similar. Same species, afterall.

btw, do you happen to see any connection between $2 billion of American taxpayer money and houris in paradise becoming a USP among AQ Khan's most fervent supporters? If one is now reduced to threatening their earthly women, one can only say 'how are the mighty fallen'.

(last off-topic digression)

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Feb 2004 02:21

TSJ,

"sine qua non mission of the forum "

Why do I get the feeling that you are an intellectual masquerading as a redneck?
Country folk dont use educated talk like Latin. More like prep school background.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 11 Feb 2004 02:25

Let me put it like this:

if Lashkar e-Toiba member AQ Khan, and Harkat ul Mujahideen member Bashiruddin Mahmood can be pardoned - one after intimating nuke tech to OBL and the other to all and sundry... we have a little problem.

If Hamid Gul, honorary president of Ummah Tameer e-Nau, who sat along with its operational chief and plutonium processing specialist Bashiruddin, uranium expert Abdul Majid, Ayman Al Zawahiri and OBL in Afghanistan one month or so before 9/11 (to discuss agriculture no doubt)... we have a little problem.

The big problem is that we know that all this was going on for years, much before 2001. We can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that the ISI was passing on all kinds of nuclear expertise and equipment for OBL and cohorts to fiddle with at his farm base some 40 km from Kandahar. We also know that, in the meantime, OBL was trying his damnedest to get something from the Ukrainians (judging from the latest Al Hayat piece, maybe he succeeded).

So what do we have? I think we can safely say that, at the very least, Al Qaida is sitting on a dirty nuke delivery capability, and almost certainly they have one or two deliverable fission weapons. Where will they use it? Uncle Sam and Mother India are easy targets. Hard to pick one.

The curious irony is that now we have a nook-nude Pakisatan and nuke capable Al Qaida.

Kanu · Post by **Kanu** » 11 Feb 2004 02:31

Yes I kind of picked up on that. I can't say half of this stuff in a class discussion b/c mainly people won't believe anything they don't read in the Times or see on the big news channels. Disturbing bit to me is the sheer short sightedness of certain govts. They totally fail to see the threat posed by some countries. Countries like Pakistan have perfected the art of just spacing their attacks or atrocities just far enough so that the West doesn't strike back.

3-4 quick bombshells like this and Pakistan will find itself in deep sh!t, they space it off so its all good when it comes to the West. With India they just go for multiple small cuts and the occasional big bullet.

How long will it go on? I mean WTF? When are they finally going to draw the line in the sand and tell the I dare you. Im just being idealistic I guess, but after 50+ years I'm personally getting fed up of the whole situation!!!

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 11 Feb 2004 02:40

Originally posted by laxmibai:

If Pakistan had really wanted to give nuclear technology to Muslim countries, why didn't it do so wholeheartedly, instead of being half-hearted and putting these countries through long development cycles?

a) There is no evidence Pakistan had the fissile material to spare. In any case it is unlikely that Iran or Libya would have been willing to have their deterrent permanently dependent on the Pakistanis.

b) Pakistan is not in a position to export heavy water, or the technology needed to build unsafeguarded heavy water reactors and reprocessing plants. Such plants are in any case far harder to conceal than uranium enrichment routes. For example the scale and the scope of the Iraqi programme as revealed by inspections after Desert Storm came as a real surprise.

*

Originally posted by kgoan:
Johann, I'd make 2 points:

1. Minor changes in the missile characteristics still lead to major levels of work in the warheads. A minute change in the physical geometry could easily nullify all the timing mechanisms to give them a very large and expensive dirty bomb, not a nuclear warhead. The precise charcteristics of missile delivered warheads in terms of understanding stress and vibrational characteristics do *not* leave much room for error.

Given that however, it is only an opinion which I can't, of course, back up with anything more than circumstantial evidence. So perhaps you might be correct. My view is that the odds are against it, but it is an unknown.

2. PAEC seems to be almost totally insulated from the current situation - this despite the guys arrested for contact with al-qaeda last year being from PAEC not KRL.

The issue there is that, broadly speaking, PAEC was the Chinese missile people, with KRL being the N Korean folk. I haven't seen anything to counter that specialisation yet.

Clearly there were two "paths" laid out, with the only common denominator being the chinese between them.

We need to wait for more data/leaks or whatever. I don't think the situation has played itself out yet, in *Pakistan*, although it may not cool off in the western media as the US election begins to hit it's stride and Iraq and Afghanistan keep being easeir alternative news sources.

A number of nuclear powers initiated crash courses to acquire basic capability, and the first results were not really first choices. Yet the political masters believed that deterrence worked well enough that they would have the time to go after reliability, survivability, etc. After all would someone else take the risk that it wouldn’t work?

Apart from the production of fissile material, what is the most challenging part of a nuclear weapon? The ‘physics package’ – the complex calculation that determine the size and shape of the fissile core, the requirements and design of the neutron trigger, the timing and sequence of the conventionally driven implosion.

Given Pakistan’s weakness in such high level areas, shortage of supercomputing resources, and inability to test frequently, I would agree that they would find themselves in trouble if they mucked around with the physics package.

The Chinese transferred the design of CHIC-4 to the Pakistanis around 1982. It has been described as a ‘solid core implosion’ design. It was certainly more advanced in every respect than the 5,000 kg monster dropped on Nagasaki, but the ‘conventional’ elements of the weapon still represented the best that the PRC could build in 1966.

The evidence of AQ Khan’s procurement suggests that they did not set out to build a carbon copy of the Chinese weapon. The high speed krypton switches for example. Does it matter if they differ from the original components, so long as they function the same way? Of course there would be problems, but those could be discovered and corrected through cold tests. It was reported back in the 1980s and 1990s that the CIA obtained copies of the revised design (down to part numbers) from AQ Khan in a black bag operation when he was on one of his foreign trips in the early 1980s. It was also reported that the American labs built models and run simulations, and reported the basic design to be ‘inelegant’ but extremely ‘robust’, and that it would work even with minor manufacturing flaws. It seems very plausible to me as a non-expert that KRL convinced itself that it managed to trim weight and volume without interfering with the physics.

KRL might have shared those views. Other sources have also corroborated that KRL conducted significantly fewer cold tests than PAEC and its ‘Wah Group’, possibly because although their design was bulkier they seemed to have chosen less challenging goals. Because in contrast to the remarks about ‘crude’ and ‘inelegant’ designs there were also reports in the late 1980s of Pakistan cold testing weapons ‘under 400 lbs’, and Pakistani acquisition of tritium. This was around the same time the Pakistanis had started to build the ‘research’ reactor at Khushab.

Reports also seem to agree that Nawaz Sharif and the establishment chose PAEC to conduct the May 1998 tests over KRL, something that infuriated and depressed AQ Khan. After throwing a tantrum Khan and KRL were given a token seat. If there was a fizzle, it appears that it was PAEC’s failure. It might explain why AQ Khan’s status actually seemed to grow within Pakistan after the tests he had so little to do with. Why weren’t Mubarak Mand and PAEC hailed as heroes? Why did Zia go public with the claim of Pakistani nuclear capability in 1987, a milestone year for KRL fissile material production rather than PAEC?

KRL’s weapon, and its integration with Ghauri/No-Dong may fail in the moment of truth, but it seems to have represented the first Pakistani capability and it hasn’t been seen to fail, perhaps unlike its rival that was intended to replace it. It was probably cheaper, and AQ Khan’s methods may have helped it pay for itself.

amdavadi · Post by **amdavadi** » 11 Feb 2004 02:42

Three countires in question are saudi,syria,turky...You dont need cia,nsa,MI-6 & years of intelligence gethering to figuret that out.

I am putting my bet on mexico,congo,vietnam?

Umrao · Post by **Umrao** » 11 Feb 2004 02:42

based on gem of an anlysis, It looks like Musharaf
has sold two bums worth CKDs to AL Qaeda.

I am sure they are holding the parts in different warehouses and working on the least cost method to do the shipment.

One might ask if NSA is capable of reading the "Made in China" label on the golf balls Mushy carries in his pant pockets(or say uses) why cant they detect the ingredients which may glow in the dark (imagine OBL carrying a glow ball from cave to cave like in the Lord of the Rings)?

I think the scenario painted by N guru/ramana garu or was it Mohan Raju who disclosed in 1997/98 thread that terrorists do have) a "samsonite" option aka suitcase bum might happen.

Once again BRF ahead of the curve.

IMHO
The possibility of dirty nuke going off
a) in India 55%.
b) in Israel 35%.
c) in mainland US 10%.

The objective in doing so is to create panic and terror.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 11 Feb 2004 02:46

Campaign against Pakistan over
Nuclear Proliferation

The CNN aired 'Insight' programme on February, 9 on Dr A.Q. Khan. The BBC
Newsnight programme the same evening addressed the news of the visit of Prince
Charles to Iran. On the CNN programme, an American Hindu of Asia Pacific
Foundation was the invited expert. On the BBC programme, the expert was a Jew -
David
Frum. Both programmes gave publicity to Indo-Israeli view point and urged
'confrontation' although the government in both cases have come out in favour of

'engagement.'

That the Indo-Israeli lobby has control over the media and would eventually
prevail undermines the efforts of USA and UK when they want to restore normalcy
in world affairs. However, the Governments of Muslim countries have been
unable or unwilling to neutralise the Indo-Israeli propaganda to demonise Islam
and Muslims in the media. Muslims living in Europe and America have to rise to
the occasion and take up the challenge.

The case of Pakistan is that its nuclear programme - like in every other
country - was its top-secret. Very few know top-secrets and those who do are
sworn
not to go public. The Washington Post criticism that Pakistan lied (about its
nuclear programme) is ridiculous. The truth is that Pakistan did not impose
adequate restrictions on those holding top-secret information coming into
contact with foreign spies (often as journalists).

Pakistan's nuclear programme was a response to India demonstrating its
nuclear capability by exploding a device in 1974. India is eight times bigger
than
Pakistan in population and maintains three to five times superiority over
Pakistan in conventional weapons. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by India
disturbed
the already precarious balance of power in South Asia. Pakistan could not
ignore the peril it faced.

When America found out about the nuclear programme of India and Pakistan, it
imposed crippling economic sanctions on Pakistan, but not on India. Pakistan's
economy was already under strain from the burden of international debt. It
was clearly a hostile act by America aimed at crippling its capability to defend

itself as well as the economic health of Pakistan.

The leaders of Pakistan at the time decided that they would judge America by
its conduct and face the pressure it applied. They decided to redouble their
efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability that required urgent development
of reliable missiles. It was a matter of life and death for Pakistan as its
erstwhile friend (USA) became the friend of its sole enemy (India).

Pakistan has not signed the NPT; its nuclear programme is not under control
or supervision of IAEA except in the case of reactors supplied by USA and
Canada. Supply of nuclear materials to signatories of the NPT like Iran and
North
Korea is not a violation of International Law. As for Libya, it was trapped by
an American sting operation the details of which are slowly coming to light.

Like Pakistan, which is threatened by nuclear India, North Korea and Iran are
threatened by the US. North Korea (whose efforts to unite with South Korea
were vetoed by the Bush Administration) and Iran (whose efforts to seek European

help to ward off America have been repeatedly frustrated) have an impeccable
case for acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Whatever help Dr Qadeer Khan provided - with or without permission - was for
civil nuclear programme of friendly countries; it is Jewish slant to allude
that he provided designs for nuclear warheads. His KRL had no role in the
development of warheads. His laboratories enriched Uranium which is the fuel for

modern nuclear power plants. If North Korea or Iran have enriched Uranium to
weapon grade, they have violated the NPT, not Pakistan.

The vicious propaganda against Pakistan in the American press over the A.Q.
affair is a proof that America would ultimately do what the Indo-Israeli lobby
wants. The USA is on the side of military occupation by Israel and India. By
invading Iraq, it has now become a party in the Arab Israeli conflict and
expanded the area of that war to the entire world. The American press leaves no
one
in doubt that Islam is the enemy in this 'perpetual' American 'war on
terror.'

America does not want countries to have nuclear weapons because it would help
them feel safe and resist pressure. Until the rise of Neo-cons to power,
America preferred a balance of power in every region of the world - without
nuclear weapons if possible, with them if necessary. Now America wants world
domination. The whole world is troubled by the new twist in American policy and
no
country is more secure. America is more radical and more divided and faces the
prospect of losing all the power and influence that it enjoyed in the world.

If America really wants peace in the world and stop proliferation of nuclear
weapons it should disarm Israel, stop destabilisation of Iran and Syria, lift
the threat of invasion from Iran and North Korea. It must disarm India before
it seeks nuclear disarmament of Pakistan.

All the current candidates seeking nomination of the Democratic Party to
contest Presidential elections talk about tackling 'special interests'. One
hopes
they realise that the most evil special interest is the influence of the
Indo-Israeli lobby that has got America to fight wars on their behalf. It is for

American Muslims to underline the one 'special interest' that needs to be dealt
with urgently.

+ Usman Khalid +

Umrao · Post by **Umrao** » 11 Feb 2004 02:48

If the postulates of Johann are true then why would USSR USA France and China conduct so many tests.

Conversely the very same western experts phopohed that India by conducting 5/6 tests could not have mastered the technology.

Something doesn't gel here.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 11 Feb 2004 02:59

Originally posted by JE Menon:
Let me put it like this:

I think we can safely say that, at the very least, Al Qaida is sitting on a dirty nuke delivery capability, and almost certainly they have one or two deliverable fission weapons. Where will they use it? Uncle Sam and Mother India are easy targets. Hard to pick one.

The curious irony is that now we have a nook-nude Pakisatan and nuke capable Al Qaida.

I would agree that Al Qaeda has within it the capability to buil a dirty bomb. The question is how dirty, and what is its ability to deliver it outside the Muslim world?

As far is known the Ukranians completed handing over all nuclear weapons to the Russians by the mid-1990s. One of the incentives was that they lacked the means to arm them, which resided in Moscow.

While Al-Qaeda does take its time in planning operations, if they had acquired a usable weapon in the late 1990s from the FSU there is no doubt they would have used it by now. If one really has been somehow lost, stolen and sold to Al Qaeda, then it has not yet worked out how to arm and deliver it to the target of its choice.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 11 Feb 2004 03:05

Originally posted by John Umrao:
If the postulates of Johann are true then why would USSR USA France and China conduct so many tests.

Conversely the very same western experts phopohed that India by conducting 5/6 tests could not have mastered the technology.

Something doesn't gel here.

It might help if for once you read the post carefully and with an open mind, rather than rely on your assumptions and judgements about the postor.

- None of the aspiring or established nuclear powers were prepared to accept their initial capability as sufficient. They continued to test in order to produce higher yield, lighter, smaller and more reliable designs. The Pakistanis didnt intend to settle for AQ Khan/Chic-4 either. They clearly hoped for better things via PAEC, but with far fewer options and they have met with far more disappointments.

-The Pakistanis havent 'mastered' nuclear weapon design - that is precisely my point. There doesnt seem to be any available evidence that they have the ability to generate new 'physics packages' or even extensively modify existing ones. However I tend to agree with those who suggest that the Pakistanis could and did use illegally acquired technology to slim a reliable 1960s vintage Chinese bomb.

-I'm not an 'expert', and I have never 'phopohed' India's nuclear capabilities

Umrao · Post by **Umrao** » 11 Feb 2004 03:20

-I'm not an 'expert', and I have never 'phopohed' India's capabilities

I was not talking about you , I was talking about western experts.

Recall the MSNBC bubble about Indian nukes.

your rather testy post with a precept is also reflective about you(r bias), not having read my post ......

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Feb 2004 03:32

Wilson John in Pioneer 2/11/04....
Revealed: How to make a N-Bomb
--------------------------
Revealed: How to make a N-Bomb

The man wearing sack cloth and ashes to apologise before Pakistanis, Dr AQ Khan, is no "father figure." Wilson John unravels his role in a deadly blackmarket which thrived with official backing in Islamabad and more than a wink from Washington DC.

LET'S GO BACKWARDS

The least reported link in the otherwise raging controversy over Pakistan's nuclear proliferation happened on January 1, 2004, at the Denver International Airport, Colorado, USA. Asher Karni, 50, a Jewish businessman from South Africa, was snared in a sting operation launched by the US Commerce Department and other federal agencies. The allegation against him was that he was involved in selling 400 spark gaps to a firm in Pakistan run by an arms dealer. Spark gaps are electrical devices used in breaking kidney stones and in triggering nuclear detonations.

What had put the federal agencies on the trail of Karni was the elaborate subterfuge employed by him and the customer in camouflaging the deal. Karni owns Top-Cape Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, a firm dealing in military and aviation electronic equipment. Last year, he was contacted by Pakland PME (2nd Floor, Muhammadi Plaza, Jinnah Avenue, F-6/4, Blue Area, Islamabad) for buying spark gaps from Perkin Elmer Optoelectronics, Salem, Massachusetts. A sales brochure of Perkin Elmer describes spark gaps as useful "for in-flight functions such as rocket ignition, warhead detonation and missile stage separation." But Perkin Elmer told Karni that the sale would require a US license. Karni decided to adopt a more devious method. He subcontracted the deal. He asked Giza Technologies of Secaucus (600 Meadowlands Parkway, Suite 19 Secaucus, NJ 07094, US A) to buy 200 spark gaps from Perkin Elmer. He said the spark gaps were meant for a hospital in South Africa, the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. The spark gaps were received by Karni at South Africa who repackaged them and dispatched them to Pakland PME, Islamabad.

The deal wouldn't have attracted the attention of the intelligence agencies but for the antecedents of the owner of Pakland PME. It is owned by businessman Humayun Khan, known to be a regular supplier of military hardware to Pakistan military. Some of the emails intercepted by the agencies only confirm his linkages with the military establishment in Pakistan. These mails, produced in the US District Court, Columbia, where Karni's bail was decided early January, showed Khan discussing the possibility of buy infra-red sensors for jet fighters. The court affidavit said: "This case represents one of the most serious types of export violations imaginable. Karni has exported goods that are capable of detonating nuclear weapons to a person he knows has ties to the Pakistani military."

THE WORST KEPT SECRET

Karni is the latest link in the wide and expanding network of the nuclear blackmarket which has been exploited by Pakistan over the years to develop its nuclear weapons development programme which, incidentally, has not really been as secretive as is being made out by the western media. It was the Dwight Eisenhower's Atoms For Peace Programme in 1958 which gave Pakistan the impetus to embark on a nuclear development programme. The first light water research nuclear reactor was, in fact, set up with the help of the US. Pakistan was given a grant of $ 350,000 for the reactor. Though not much is known about the progress Pakistan made in the development of its nuclear programme, there is clear evidence that Pakistan had already begun tapping the nuclear blackmarket. This became evident in a secret note prepared by the US State Department a decade later. The note (since declassified) titled Pakistan and the Non Proliferation Issue pointed out that Pakistan was negotiating with the Belgians for a heavy water facility, with the Canadians for a fuel fabrication plant and with the French for a chemical separation plant. The note cautioned that these facilities would "give Pakistan a virtually independent nuclear fuel cycle and the opportunity to separate a sufficient amount of plutonium to build a nuclear weapon."

There is irrefutable evidence that Pakistan either tapped the nuclear blackmarket or persuaded governments to make illegal deals. Pakistan set up a number of shell companies, both at home and abroad, employed a network of agents and smugglers in Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and the United States to smuggle, steal and trans-ship dual purpose materials. Pakistan got a Canadian firm, Canadian General Electric Company, to complete the 137 MW CANDU power reactor for the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant in 1971. A British firm, British Nuclear Fuels, designed the plutonium separating facilities; a Belgian firm, Belgonucleaire, and a French corporation, Saint-Gobain Techniques Nouvelles, designed the pilot reprocessing facility called "New Labs" at PINSTECH. In 1976, under a highly secretive project code named 706, Pakistan bought components for centrifuges from the Netherlands; orders for 6,500 tubes of specially hardened steel were placed with Van Doome Transmissie. Other support components and subsystems were bought from Vakuum Apparat Technik (high vacuum valves) of Haag, Switzerland and Leybold Heraeus (gas purification equipment), Hanan, Germany. A year later, the British subsidiary of Emerson Electric sold 30 high frequency inverters to Pakistan for controlling centrifuge speeds.

THE EUROPEAN CONNECTION

So extensive was Pakistan's dealing with West German firms, for instance, that in 1989, well known German magazine, Stern, wrote "since the beginning of the eighties, over 70 (West German) enterprises have supplied sensitive goods to enterprises which for years have been buying equipment for Pakistan's ambitious nuclear weapons programme." First the official deals. The Federal Economics Office in Eschborn approved the export of an electronically controlled milling machine from a Munich firm, Friedric Deckel AG. The machine was used in the production of elements of a nuclear explosive system. The German government also approved the sale of special press to compact hard metal powder by Dieffenbacher GmbH, Eppingen in 1985. The Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Centre not only supplied a mass spectrometer to PAEC, an equipment used in determining the degree of uranium enrichment, but also trained Pakistani scientists.

It is no less important to know the story of Richard M Barlow, a CIA career officer whose brief was to monitor Pakistan's nuclear programme. In 1987, he discovered that US firms were not only involved in selling Pakistan dual-use equipment and materials, but the government of the day in Washington D C was not really keen on letting the US Congress know about the true picture. When he protested, he was forced to resign. He later joined as an analyst with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy from where too he had to resign under pressure after he raised strong objections to the administration's continued support to Pakistan's nuclear purchases in the US.

However, fearing exposure, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) quietly began employing nuclear traders and agents to buy materials and equipment otherwise banned by the US and international conventions. For instance, PAEC bought a tritium purification and production facility with a capacity to produce 10 g of tritium daily in 1987 from a West German firm, NTG Nukleartechnik GmbH. Tritium can be used to produce a thermonuclear device. The deal was struck with the help of a known nuclear trader, Alfred Hempel. Interestingly, it was NTG which procured 7,000 kg of fuel cladding material from India and shipped it to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant via Germany by falsely marking the consignment as "stainless steel tubing." Hempel, according to a German government report, had also negotiated with another firm, Ventron GmbH, to sell boron carbide, an absorber used in the construction of reactor, to the PAEC. The deal was struck on behalf of the PAEC by Pakland Corporation, a name intriguingly similar to the one owned by Humayun Khan who bought spark gaps from Karni in 2003. Another agent employed by PAEC was a former Brigadier in the Pakistan Army, Inam ul-Haq, who was caught buying 30 tonnes of aluminum tubing for a firm in Lahore called Multinational Corporation. A third agent employed by PAEC was Sulfikar Ahmed Butt whose identity was discovered when he tried to obtain 50 cryptons from EG & G Inc. of Wellesley, Massachusetts. He was known as the chief buyer for the bomb makers in Pakistan. The Pakistan Ambassador posted at Bonn facilitated these deals.

ROGUE BANK CHIPS IN

Brigadier Haq was financed by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) set up by a Pakistani financier, Agha Hasan Abedi, a known arms dealer. The BCCI, as investigations later proved, was a front organisation floated by financiers, smugglers and intelligence agencies of various governments including the CIA to launder money and supply arms to terrorists, insurgents and rebels at different hotspots across the world. In a report prepared for the US Senate on the BCCI in December 1992, Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown said one of the areas that required deeper investigation was "the extent of BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program. There is good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear programme through the BCCI Foundation in Pakistan as well as through BCCI-Canada." Brigadier Haq was not the only agent to be financed by BCCI. In 1987, BCCI funded two Americans, Rita and Arnodl Mandel, to buy $ 1 billion worth of oscilloscopes and computer equipment for Pakistan's nuclear programme. The same year, the bank had paid a huge amount to Ashad Pervez, a Pakistani-born Canadian, to buy specialty steel and metal used to speed up nuclear explosions.

The report said the BCCI gave $ 10 million to a private science and technology institute which was headed by Dr AQ Khan. There is ample evidence that Dr Khan too had employed agents and intermediaries to sell and procure nuclear materials and technology. A one-page memo from the Iraqi intelligence service (Mukhabarat) dated October 6, 1990, given to US intelligence by Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law who defected in 1995, mentioned a meeting between intelligence officials and a representative of Dr Khan, Malik. Dr Khan, the memo said, offered to give Iraq project designs for a nuclear weapon. Khan quoted a price of $ 5 million.

KHAN AND NORTH KOREA

Similar evidence is available on Dr Khan's deals in North Korea. It is now well known that Pakistan supplied nuclear technology and materials to North Korea for cash and against missile components and technology. An intelligence report in 2002 said: "Tens of thousands of dollars were deposited into the personal bank accounts of Pakistani scientists working at the Khan Research Laboratory, Kahuta."

Following the Dr AQ Khan episode, several intelligence and security agencies have once again taken up the clues left uncovered by the US Senate Committee investigations in 1992. The investigators are examining the records of the bank to identify the Pakistani nuclear scientists who were on its payrolls. One of the persons the investigation is focusing on is Mohammad Farooq, who was among the nuclear scientists under investigation. Farooq was the contact person between Dr Khan and the Iranians. Farooq, on his part, used Allama Ariful Hussaini, chief of the Tehrik-I-Nifaz-I-Fiqa-I-Jafaeria Pakistan, the largest Shia organisation in Pakistan. Farooq was a Director-General (Foreign Procurement) at the Khan Research Laboratory when Dr Khan sold centrifuges and other equipment to Iran, once again, through a network of agents - three Germans, a Dutch national and two Muslim Sri Lankan nationals. Investigations have uncovered Dr Khan's trail to Dubai, Turkey, Casablanca, South Africa and Malaysia. He travelled to these destinations on at least 41 occasions - he met North Korean scientists in Malaysia, Libyans in Casablanca and Iranians in Karachi.

In the third week of January 2004, the US officials investigating the network air freighted a small box containing warhead designs that were sold to Libya by Dr Khan and his coterie. This was the first hard evidence of the extent of the nuclear blackmarket network operated by Dr Khan. The blueprint, investigators believe, would have fetched $ 50 million, part of which might have reached Pakistani scientists.

A DAWOOD LINK?

Dr Khan's Dubai connection is yet to be made public. Dubai is a known harbour of transnational criminal syndicates including the one operated by Dawood Ibrahim. Most of the nuclear components illegally sold to Libya, North Korea and Iran, were routed through shell companies in Dubai. Considering Dawood Ibrahim's links with arms and drug smugglers, it is possible that his syndicate might have facilitated some of the nuclear shipments for Dr Khan.

However, it is the Malaysian link that could prove to be crucial in unravelling the global network of transnational criminal syndicates involved in smuggling nuclear materials and technology. According to reports, Khan had gone to Malaysia to attend the wedding of a Sri Lankan businessman, BSA Tahir. Now, Tahir is a nuclear trader. Farooq had engaged Tahir to persuade a Malaysian oil and gas conglomerate to set up a centrifuges component factory in Selangor, Malaysia. The Malaysian factory, Scomi Precision Engineering, refurbished centrifuge components before exporting them to firms in Dubai and elsewhere. Investigators have so far discovered that the Malaysian firm had supplied nuclear components to a firm in Dubai between December 2002 and August 2003. Scomi is headed by Tan Sri Asmat Kalamudddin, a former chief of Malaysia's International Trade Ministry. Incidentally, the largest shareholder in the company is Kamaluddin Abdullah, son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.w

(Wilson John is a Director with Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi)

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The mukut is off!!!

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 11 Feb 2004 03:52

Originally posted by Johann:
There is no evidence Pakistan had the fissile material to spare. In any case it is unlikely that Iran or Libya would have been willing to have their deterrent permanently dependent on the Pakistanis.

Johann, what constitutes "fissile material to spare"? Where do the figures for 50 Pak bombs come from? Also, while long-term Iran would not want to be dependent on Pakistan, wouldn't they have been happy to have a nuke or two 10 years ago?

Ramanujan · Post by **Ramanujan** » 11 Feb 2004 03:54

Some info on Selig Harrison. His views on paki role in Nuke prolifs are in reasonable resonance with BRF consensus. Lets hope his voice is heard and taken seriously on Penn Av.

It would be useful to track any news concerning his activities in the next few weeks (testimonies, lectures etc.)

Selig Harrison - a biographic sketch

SELIG S. HARRISON, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and director of the Century Foundation’s Program on the United States and the Future of Korea. He has specialized in South Asia and East Asia for fifty years as a journalist and scholar and is the author of six books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia, including Korean Endgame: A Strategy For Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, published by Princeton University Press in May 2002.
Harrison served as South Asia Correspondent of the Associated Press from 1951 to 1954, based in New Delhi, returned as South Asia Bureau Chief of The Washington Post from 1962 to 1965, and served as Northeast Asia Bureau Chief of the Post, based in Tokyo, from 1968 to 1972. From 1974 to 1996, as a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he pursued investigative assignments every year in a variety of countries, especially those where he worked as a journalist, such as India, Pakistan, China, Japan, and the two Koreas.

His reputation for giving “early warning” of foreign policy crises was well established during his career as a foreign correspondent. In his study of foreign reporting, Between Two Worlds, John Hohenberg, former secretary of the Pulitzer Prize Board, cited Harrison’s prediction of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war eighteen months before it happened. Hohenberg wrote: “What Harrison foresaw came to pass, and when it happened, American editors suddenly rose up in their wrath — as they always do at such times — and demanded, why weren’t we told about all of this? They had been told at great length, but because too many editors were bored with places like India, they weren’t listening. Terming Harrison “one of the few correspondents in all of Asia who was able to maintain a balanced point of view,” Hohenberg called him a model of the “first-rate correspondent who knows the past of the area to which he is assigned, writes with clarity and meaning of the present and has an awareness of the future.”

More than a year before the Russians invaded Afghanistan, Harrison warned of this possibility in one of his frequent contributions to the influential journal Foreign Policy. During the Afghan war, he was one of the earliest to foresee that the Soviet Union would withdraw its forces and became a leading advocate of a two-track policy designed to promote a withdrawal through a combination of military pressure and diplomatic incentives. He was also one of the few who predicted that the Kabul Communist regime would not fall immediately after withdrawal. Rep. Stephen Solarz, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, introducing him at a hearing on February 21, 1989, one year after withdrawal, observed that “with each passing day his reputation as a prophet is enhanced. I am sure it wasn’t easy for Mr. Harrison, in the face of a phalanx of analysts, academicians, and others who were all saying the opposite, to maintain his position, but he had the intellectual fortitude and moral strength to stick by his guns, his analytical guns, and I think he deserves credit for that.”

In the last week of May, 1972, Harrison, representing The Washington Post, and Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times became the first Americans to visit North Korea since the Korean War and to interview Kim Il Sung. Following the second of his five visits to Pyongyang in 1987, Harrison presided over a 1989 Carnegie Endowment symposium that brought together North Korean spokesmen and American specialists and officials for the first time and has reported on this meeting in his Endowment study, Dialogue with North Korea. In 1992, he led a Carnegie Endowment delegation to Pyongyang that learned for the first time that North Korea had reprocessed plutonium.

In June, 1994, on his fourth visit, he met the late Kim Il Sung for three hours and won agreement to the concept of a freeze and eventual dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program in exchange for U.S. political and economic concessions (for an account of his discussions in Pyongyang leading to the freeze concept, see Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, pages 321–22). President Carter, meeting Kim Il Sung a week later, persuaded the North Korean leader to initiate the freeze immediately, opening the way for negotiations with the United States that resulted in the U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreement of October 21, 1994.

In 1994 and 1995 Harrison directed a Carnegie Endowment program on “Japan’s Role in International Security Affairs” centering on a series of U.S.-Japan dialogues on global and regional arms control and nonproliferation issues.

Harrison is frequently invited to testify as an expert witness before congressional committees and lectures at the National Defense University, the National War College and the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. At the same time, his outspoken, constructive criticisms of administration policies often appear on op-ed pages of The Washington Post, the New York Times, and International Herald Tribune. He has appeared on “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” “Nightline,” and other TV programs as well as National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”

Harrison is the author of six books: India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton, 1960); China, Oil, and Asia: Conflict Ahead? (Columbia, 1977); The Widening Gulf: Asian Nationalism and American Policy (The Free Press, 1978); In Afghanistan’s Shadow (Carnegie Endowment, 1981); and Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement (2002). He is co-author with Diego Cordovez of Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (Oxford, 1995) and edited India and the United States (Macmillan, 1960); and Superpower Rivalry in the Indian Ocean: Indian and American Perspectives (1989). A former managing editor of The New Republic, he has served as senior fellow in charge of Asian studies at the Brookings Institution, senior fellow at the East-West Center and professorial lecturer in Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is currently adjunct professor of Asian studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

Manu · Post by **Manu** » 11 Feb 2004 04:03

Originally posted by John Umrao:

-I'm not an 'expert', and I have never 'phopohed' India's capabilities
I was not talking about you , I was talking about western experts.

Recall the MSNBC bubble about Indian nukes.

your rather testy post with a precept is also reflective about you(r bias), not having read my post ......

Here's a peace offering to Johann. It was a long standing demand afterall. And the weak-kneed GOI caved in, again.

Sorry for the digression.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040206/ids_photos_ts/r1442399184.jpg

Roop · Post by **Roop** » 11 Feb 2004 05:28

Originally posted by Suryavir:

This forum is primarily about security matters, in which (Dr.) Hoyt is the only acknowledged expert.

Oh really? Acknowledged by whom?

It's a matter of elementary courtesy.

It's a matter of elementary sucking up, is what it is. But go ahead, if that's your bag. Knock yourself out.

Rudra · Post by **Rudra** » 11 Feb 2004 05:37

dr.Hoyt got 'downsized' from an expert to a soldier (like all of us) long back. it started with a curious discovery by the old cat Jumrao...

Manu · Post by **Manu** » 11 Feb 2004 06:02

A letter in the 'upmarket Friday Times':

Nuclear fear

Sir,

We are heading towards a free market world, so why should Pakistan be punished for exporting a product in much demand? We have suffered under sanctions, our people been left to bleed, so surely in this situation where none of our needs are met we ought to sell the nuclear secret.

Qadafi capitulated, as did the mullahs of Iran, leaving Pakistan to take all the slack. We must not capitulate on the nuclear issue, rather we should use it as valuable political leverage in the peace process with India. If it scares the West that a nuclear dirty bomb may fall into fanatics’ hands, why should we soothe their worries? Let us channel their fear to our own advantage.

Fahd Shah,

Peshawar.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/

Tim · Post by **Tim** » 11 Feb 2004 06:17

Mohan,

Thanks. Iv'e said for a long time, at various times, that Tim is fine.

But I'll add the caveat I give to military students (who tend to call me "sir", which makes me feel really, really old) - call me what you're comfortable with, as long as it's not insulting <grin>.

Tim works. That's why I chose it as my "handle."

Tim

Tim · Post by **Tim** » 11 Feb 2004 06:28

John,

I don't get State Department briefings. If I did, I'd only be more confused. I am able, occasionally, to talk to Americans (and much more rarely, Indians and/or Pakistanis) who work on regional issues. Other than that, I know what I read - which is, in turn, curtailed by access to various sources and lack of time (because this isn't my real job).

That certainly doesn't give me a monopoly on the truth, and I've never pretended that. It may give me a different perspective on issues - which people can judge as they like, and over which I have very little control.

Tim

Jagan · Post by **Jagan** » 11 Feb 2004 06:32

Mohan,

I think we should leave it to the individual to use thier own terms of reference (as long as its not insulting). Let it be Suryavir's prerogative to use whatever terms he wants to and lets respect that. Calling that 'sucking up' is improper.

JMT

Jagan

Tim · Post by **Tim** » 11 Feb 2004 06:38

Rudra,

I'm not an expert (despite John's efforts to promote me

).

But I'm not a soldier, either. I teach soldiers. I have far too much respect for them to ever usurp that title.

That's pretty serious - hence, no grin.

Tim

suryavir · Post by **suryavir** » 11 Feb 2004 06:41

Jagan, Thanks. I don't frequent any other forum, so can't say how it is at other forums. But I must say I have more encountered more surly, prickly, and gratuitously rude personalities here than at any other place. To my foreign friends who frequent this forum, all I can say is that please do not form an opinion of Indians based on what you see here. It may be hard to believe...but Indians are genuinely nice, warm, and friendly people.

Rudra · Post by **Rudra** » 11 Feb 2004 06:47

so says who? only the roughest brawlers stick around here.

Victor · Post by **Victor** » 11 Feb 2004 06:49

Jeez. There goes my nice, warm persona.

Tim · Post by **Tim** » 11 Feb 2004 06:54

Rudra,

Nah. Some of us wimps have surprising staying power.

Look, the nice thing about the forum is the open exchange of views. But that can sometimes go over the line. Everybody has their own level of tolerance. But politeness - or some level of courtesy - isn't necessarily a sign of weakness. Right?

Seriously, this forum has scared off some people that it might like to have around - B. Raman, Mohammed Ayoob, and others. Some level of self-policing would probably keep more people like that active - and those are people who all of us could probably learn from.

Tim