TALKING POINTS: Dangerous Double Standard?

What happened in Pakistan?

• On November 3^rd, 2007, Gen. and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan suspended the Constitution of the country and installed emergency rule and martial law.
• Musharraf feared a ruling on 6 charges against him by the Supreme Court about his being the Head of the Army and the President of the country.
• Musharraf shut down all television stations not controlled by the government, ordered the arrests of thousands of political opponents and pro-democracy activists, fired judges not supportive of his crackdown, jammed mobile phone networks and ordered attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
• 12^th and 16^th Prime Minister of Pakistan, Ms. Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf’s political opposition and critic, was put under house arrest in Lahore, Pakistan, where barbed wire and cement barricades were used to keep her from staging a protest about the declaration of emergency rule and suspension of democracy form Lahore to Islamabad.
• Bhutto, on her arrival in Pakistan from a family trip in Dubai in response to the declaration by Musharraf, said “The extremists need a dictatorship, and dictatorship needs extremists.”
• Bhutto was kept under house arrest for about a week.
• Reuters, Nov. 16, 2007
  
• Wiki: Benazir Bhutto
• NY Times: Pakistan
  

Does Iran have the capacity to build a nuclear arsenal?

• In 2005, the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (produced by the National Intelligence Council and expresses the coordinated judgments of 16 intelligence agencies which make up the U.S. Intelligence Community) stated that Iran was 10 years from making a nuclear weapon.
• In 2006, Germany’s head of intelligence Ernst Uhrlau said Tehran would not be able to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb before 2010 and would only be able to make it a weapon by about 2015.
• In May, 2007, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei said that Iran could take between 3 and 8 years to make a bomb if it decided to do so.
• The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate is said to state that Iran will not be able to build a nuclear bomb until at least 2010 and possibly 2015.
• In October, 2007, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei reasserted that if Iran was trying to develop a nuclear bomb, they would require 3 to 8 years more to succeed, an assessment he says is shared by all the intelligence services.
• Wiki: Iran and Weapons of Mass Destruction
• NY Times: Iran
• The Guardian: Iran
  

How many nuclear warheads does each country have?

• Former Soviet Union (Russia): 5,830 active - 16,000 total
• United States: 5,163 active - 9,938 total
• United Kingdom: 750
• France: 350
• China: 130
• India: 70-120*
• Pakistan: 30-80*
• North Korea: 1-10*
• Israel: 25-200**

(* is a country that is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is a known nuclear power or has a record of proliferation)

(**is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not confirmed or denied possession of nuclear weapons)

Interesting to NOTE: The US strongly supports Israel, Pakistan and India as allies, three states which are developing or have developed nuclear weapons outside the confines of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Wiki: Nuclear Weapons

See Web Resources for further analysis.