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Latest Featured Article REVIEW & OUTLOOK WMD Breakthrough Post-Iraq, the worlds proliferators are on the run. Friday, February 6, 2004 12:01 am EST Pardon us for interrupting the Beltway brawl over Iraq intelligence, but has anyone else noticed the recent landmark progress against nuclear proliferation? The latest breakthrough came this week in Pakistan, where a scientist confessed on television to his nuclear weapons deals during the 1990s. Intelligence debates are good political drama, though CIA Director George Tenets speech yesterday is a persuasive rebuttal to the charges that United States intelligence was politicized. The news in his remarks is that the United States had prewar information from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle that Iraq had WMD. While Iraq lacked a nuclear bomb, the source said Saddam was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon and had berated his Nuclear Weapons Committee for not getting one. That source and others may have overestimated the immediate nuclear threat, but we elect Presidents to make difficult security calls based on such imperfect information. And in any case, lets recall why everyone cared about Iraqs WMD in the first place. The nightmare scenario, all too plausible after September 11, is that a dictator who trucks with terrorists will give them a nuclear weapon to explode on American soil. In recent weeks, the United States has made dramatic progress in busting up the global proliferation network that would make this possible, and much of the progress flows from President Bushs decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. Abdul Qadeer Khans TV tell-all on Wednesday established links among Islamabad, Tripoli, Tehran and Pyongyang, and showed how the fall of Baghdad damaged this network. Khan disclosed that he had traded nuclear know-how with North Korea, Iran and Libya in exchange for money and missile technology. His testimony will be invaluable in upsetting these channels of proliferation and putting further pressure on these would-be nuclear states. These WMD dominoes began to fall last year at about the time Saddams statue in Baghdad did. Libyas Moammar Gadhafi suddenly got serious about pledging to halt his burgeoning weapons program. Gadhafis decision followed an interception of nuclear centrifuge parts under Mr. Bushs Proliferation Security Initiative, a post-9/11 policy that seeks to disrupt weapons transfers on the oceans and in the air. The PSI has been derided by the same Clinton-era proliferation experts under whose noses Mr. A few weeks after Gadhafi cried uncle, Irans mullahs invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to send scientists to inspect their nuclear facilities. Tehran needs to do much more, but its decision to at least pay lip service to IAEA inspections speaks volumes about how much the international security environment has changed. United States inspectors who jetted to Tripoli and Tehran did not take long to find signs of Mr. According to the Los Angeles Times, blueprints traced to him were found in both countries.
Khan also turned to North Korea, probably because its missiles are among the most advanced in the axis of evil. Pyongyang continues to resist global pressure to end its nuclear programs, but thanks to the falling WMD dominoes we know a lot more about them. Regarding Pakistan, some in the West will want to criticize President Pervez Musharraf for pardoning Mr. No doubt the Pakistan military, of which General Musharraf is the ranking member, was aware of Mr. The generals wanted a nuclear bomb to counter Indias and they werent going to let proliferation rules get in the way, especially in the 1990s when they were paying no price for it. The Pakistan President risked upsetting nationalists even by putting Mr. If he now lets United States officials debrief the scientist and track down his network, the intelligence windfall will count for much more than any punishment for Mr. All of this anti-WMD progress contrasts dramatically with what took place during the late 1990s, when the United States was supposedly just as worried about nuclear proliferation. Khan spread his nuclear wares, when Gadhafi gathered his centrifuges, when Iraq kicked out United States inspectors and Iran deceived the world, and when North Korea was preparing to enrich uranium even while it negotiated new disarmament deals with the Clinton Administration. One obvious conclusion is that none of these proliferators believed the United States or United States were serious about confronting them. All of that changed with the Bush policy of challenging terrorists and the states that support them after 9/11. With the fall of the Taliban and Saddam, the worlds dictators have learned that protecting terrorists or pursuing WMD can interfere with lifetime tenure. So they are deciding to turn states evidence, against themselves and others. Or to put it in terms even Washington may understand: The Bush strategy is working. RESPOND TO THIS ARTICLE READ RESPONSES E-MAIL THIS TO A FRIEND PRINT FRIENDLY FORMAT HOME TOP OF PAGE ARCHIVE SUBSCRIBE TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE OR TAKE A TOUR .
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