Remarks by the President on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation
Fort Lesley J. McNair - National Defense University, Washington, D.C.
* The transcript
* Would you prefer the speech in audio, or full audio & video?
* The associated fact sheet, summarizing action points and recommendations from the speech.
* Online Q&A session at whitehouse.gov that followed President Bush's speech. Jim Wilkinson, Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications, hosting and answering.
Finally, for background on why this is a serious issue and the alarming dynamics of proliferation around the world, "Fibonacci's Nukes" remains an excellent primer.
It wasn't amazing - but it is definitely bulding the case against Iran and N.Korea - what is now truly needed is that after the fake election on February 20th and country-wide boycott, the Administration should immediately address the regime and declare it illegitmate in the eyes of the Iranian people - then going on to discuss the relationship of the Mullahs to the future of democracy in the middle east and the inability of stabilizing Iraq while such a regime exists.. Otherwise, if they don't make the case - then who knows... guess in the end it's up to a miracle..
I don't like depending on miracles, myself. And I would really like to hear that speech you're talking about.
It would never come from John Kerry, that's for sure.
I'm just amazed that Bush can point to the way Musharraf handled Khan and call it a 'good thing'. The guy sold nuke tech to every member of the 'Axis for years. He put the world in general (and the US in particular) in far more dnager than Saddam could ever dream of, so Musharraf gives him a full pardon AND lets him keep all the money he 'earned'?!?
And these are our ALLIES in the war on terror?!?
Who needs enemies...
Yeah, legion, we've kind of noticed that too. That's why we've been sounding the warning bells over Pakistan for a while now here at Winds of Change.NET.
Looks like one of those "best of a bad situation" things by Bush, given Musharraf's position and the limited non-diplomacy options available. Still sucks, though. Now that we've rolled up his network, can someone kindly put a bullet or 3 in Khan's head?
It is also a false notion that G. Musharraf and his military entourage has nothing to do with all that Khan did or was doing. The whole nuclear thing in South Asia is military driven and controlled so if someone tells me that a civilian scientist was the one who proliferated the science of WMD I would be very much hesitant to believe that. Besides it was the G. Musharraf who continuously talked about using nukes to deter the Indians and supported the program and Khan for so long. Tell me how would a civilian scientist be able to send the technologies and such necessary to others by military planes without permission from the military head honchos? The whole thing stinks and the US administration(s) is making a big mistake by neglecting the whole ‘Islamic Bomb’ idea put forward by Pakistan.
We need to work towards putting a democracy in that place before we do elsewhere.
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What we know about this is undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg. The point is, yes we're "behind schedule" uncovering this type of thing and appropriately responding to it. But due to aggressive forward positions taken, most obviously typified by Afghanistan and Iraq though other less high-profile aspects as well, we've begun making some substantial progress.
This could have begun much more aggressively than it did post-WTC '93 but did not largely because of a naivete and because the prior administration did not wish to detract from its domestic agenda or, even if it did feel inclined to subtract from its domestic agenda, it did not possess the resolve to withstand the onslaught of criticism it would have received from various Leftist quarters. Is there any doubt in the least about those assertions? I don't think so, even though forming those statements as such is not intended to reduce everything to a simple, one-dimensional pov either.