03-10-2004, 11:26 PM
<b>THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Nuclear 9/11
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF</b>
Published: March 10, 2004
EXCERPTS:
A10-kiloton nuclear bomb (a pipsqueak in weapons terms) is smuggled into Manhattan and explodes at Grand Central. Some 500,000 people are killed, and the U.S. suffers $1 trillion in direct economic damage.
That scenario, cited in a report last year from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, could be a glimpse of our future. We urgently need to control nuclear materials to forestall that threat, but in this war on proliferation, we're now slipping backward. President Bush (after ignoring the issue before 9/11) now forcefully says the right things â but still doesn't do enough.
there's the real rogue nation of proliferation, Pakistan. We know that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Islamist father of Pakistan's bomb, peddled materials to Libya and North Korea, and we don't know who else.
"It may be that A. Q. Khan & Associates already have passed bomb-grade nuclear fuel to the Qaeda, and we are in for the worst," warns Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute.
It's mystifying that the administration hasn't leaned on Pakistan to make Dr. Khan available for interrogation to ensure that his network is entirely closed. Several experts on Pakistan told me they believe that the administration has been so restrained because its top priority isn't combating nuclear proliferation â it's getting President Pervez Musharraf's help in arresting Osama bin Laden before the November election.
"We're at this crucial point," warns Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "And how we handle these situations in the next couple of years will tell us whether the nuclear threat shrinks or explodes. Perhaps literally."
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Nuclear 9/11
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF</b>
Published: March 10, 2004
EXCERPTS:
A10-kiloton nuclear bomb (a pipsqueak in weapons terms) is smuggled into Manhattan and explodes at Grand Central. Some 500,000 people are killed, and the U.S. suffers $1 trillion in direct economic damage.
That scenario, cited in a report last year from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, could be a glimpse of our future. We urgently need to control nuclear materials to forestall that threat, but in this war on proliferation, we're now slipping backward. President Bush (after ignoring the issue before 9/11) now forcefully says the right things â but still doesn't do enough.
there's the real rogue nation of proliferation, Pakistan. We know that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Islamist father of Pakistan's bomb, peddled materials to Libya and North Korea, and we don't know who else.
"It may be that A. Q. Khan & Associates already have passed bomb-grade nuclear fuel to the Qaeda, and we are in for the worst," warns Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute.
It's mystifying that the administration hasn't leaned on Pakistan to make Dr. Khan available for interrogation to ensure that his network is entirely closed. Several experts on Pakistan told me they believe that the administration has been so restrained because its top priority isn't combating nuclear proliferation â it's getting President Pervez Musharraf's help in arresting Osama bin Laden before the November election.
"We're at this crucial point," warns Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "And how we handle these situations in the next couple of years will tell us whether the nuclear threat shrinks or explodes. Perhaps literally."