Poo-poohing Nukes

I think skepticism is generally a good thing. And people underestimate probabilities of routine events and overestimate catastrophic ones all the time--it's human nature. Given how difficult it is to even predict the weather we can understand the pitfalls. There you may lose a few lives, or even thousands. But can you imagine if the National Hurricane Center underplayed the severity of an approaching storm? How responsible would that be? And assessing risk is a deadly serious business when you're talking about nukes, and downplaying the probabilities of terrorists getting their hands on one is a risky business.

We are talking millions dying if they do.

What if the terrorists run the government? Pakistan still has AQ/Taliban sympathizers in influential positions, including their ISI--intel group--and their military, and President Musharraf's position continues to be shaky. The scientist who developed their nuclear capabilities, Pakistan's Dr. A.Q Kahn, still a national hero held only under "house arrest", spirited nuclear information to Libya and probably North Korea, which in turn may have armed Iran. Iran itself is a terror state and has been for over 30 years. Meanwhile, the Pakistan government has arrested two accused terrorist killers of Pakistan presidential candidate Benazir "Pinky" Bhutto, the Harvard-educated daughter of a former (assassinated) dictator, who at least was going to allow us to interrogate Dr. Khan. Bhutto was killed in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Meanwhile the Pakistani government is negotiating with the same terrorists accused of assassinating Bhutto:

Her Pakistan People's Party meanwhile condemned the government for "double standards" after it emerged that officials were to hold peace talks, via tribal leaders, with militants in South Waziristan who are under Mehsud's command.

So what if your professor is wrong? Should we trust our life to this guy?

Just the other day National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, in a public forum, not a secret briefing, openly warned that AQ is planning to attack the United States. That sounds very alarming to me. And he reopened the subject of the NIE report on Iran:

At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence director, Michael McConnell, said, "If I had 'til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things." He later added, "I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted."

Mr. McConnell was referring to the specific Iranian program to design potential nuclear warheads, which the December estimate said had halted in 2003. But in his opening testimony, Mr. McConnell noted that two other components of the nuclear program were moving ahead — the enrichment of uranium, which he said was the most difficult part of making a bomb, and the development of long-range missiles capable of hitting North Africa and Europe.

As others have pointed out--the terrorists only have to be right once. But what do I know, I'm no professor, engaged in serious pursuits, I just surf the net, read multiple open sources.

The risk is real, if you want to see it.