According to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, North Korea had three working nuclear devices five years ago.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology around the world, has told his interrogators that during a trip to North Korea five years ago he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices, according to Asian and American officials who have been briefed by the Pakistanis.
Does this shock anybody? Given the fact that North Korea is a paranoid isolated country, this is not a stretch to imagine.
A former American official noted that if North Korea produced three actual weapons by 1999, it was either more skilled at using its then relatively small supply of plutonium than experts thought, or it had obtained an additional source of the bomb-making material.
North Korea definitley has the desire for WMD. So let's assume that they've had the nukes since then. Wouldn't you think North Korea would be at the top of our priority list, given the fact that our security is of the utmost concern?
American officials have known about the Pakistani reports for at least three or four weeks, Asian and American officials say. But they have kept them quiet, and President Bush has not mentioned the country in public for weeks. Many Democrats say they believe that Mr. Bush is trying to play down the issue in an election year, especially because North Korea may be making more bombs as talks drag on.
More of the same. Iraq, has no WMD. North Korea, has WMD. Going into Iraq makes sense only in bizarro world.
Mr. Bush's aides say that they are making progress, and that there is no use publicly denouncing North Korea while diplomacy continues. If the country already has a few nuclear weapons, they say, a few more would not make a strategic difference."It's an untenable argument," said Samuel R. Berger, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser. "There's a difference between two or three and eight and it's called the market in weapons for global terrorists."
I thought we were supposed to worry about Iraq giving WMD to terrorists?