WMD proliferation is the West's fault

[dArKeR]

The interesting question is not whyAbdul Qadeer Khan became a villain. That's easy. Money, money, money. Nuclear physicists toiling away on L15,000 tend to run short of it. No, the real question -- the one with the legs and authentic weapons of mass destruction (WMD) mushroom cloud -- is why, to this day, he remains a hero to his own people.

What, after all, is so heroic about flogging your country's nuclear secrets and surplus kit to the likes of North Korea, Libya and Iran? Why should the average Pakistani peasant revere this clever, arrogant, corrupt creature of the army, an exporter of mass destruction?

And yet, clearly, he does. There are, of course, plenty of seamier reasons why President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned Khan and banned any independent inquiries into his activities. The international "nuclear supermarket" now revealed was big business, and Pakistan's generals, from Musharraf down, are big businessmen during and after their years of service. They clearly can't countenance any kind of open investigation. Even Butler of Brockwell would set them trembling.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/02/12/2003098458