So Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, has signed a detailed confession about how he provided a great deal of nuclear how-to, including lots of details, to Iran, Libya and North Korea. (NY Times story here)
President Musharraf is of course shocked, shocked! to find out that this was going on.
The American and Pakistani statements, of course, put the blame squarely on Khan, and not on any members of the government, since we’ve found ourselves in the unenviable position of needing Musharraf to stay alive and in power since he’s far and away the best of several options for the rulership of Pakistan. (For one, he’s somewhat opposed to the fundamentalists, despite the fact that they control the army and de facto a good fraction of the country.) Unfortunately, quite a few of his countrymen disagree with that last estimation, or at least so it would seem given the number of people who have tried to kill him in the past few months.
So is anyone at all surprised by any of this?
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
Maybe we should get Fidel Castro to go over there and give Musharraf a lesson on staying alive? Although I guess out-manuevering the CIA is really nothing compared to out-manuevering half the population of a large country.