As journalists and bloggers comb through the trove of leaked US diplomatic cables nuggets continue to surface everywhere including “concerns that Pakistani nuclear material may be given by a state employee to groups opposing Western governments”, or that Pakistan may threaten India.
The cables also seem to indicate how success governments have been in making terrorism the first priority in the minds of the public
In one cable sent in early 2009, Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, told Washington: “Our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon”.
‘Deep concerns’
A September 2009 US diplomatic cable stated that in a meeting between US and UK foreign office teams, Mariot Laslie, a senior UK official, said: “The UK has deep concerns about the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”
The cable added that Leslie had asserted that nuclear proliferation was the biggest danger to other nations, but that it “ranks lower than terrorism on the public’s list of perceived threats“.
Nuclear proliferation may seem less of a threat than terrorism to Pakistanis victimized by US drone strikes. The US is being sued for $500M by a Pakistani father whose son and brother were killed when an unmanned drone fired on his home.
Kareem Khan said that a CIA-operated drone fired missiles at his house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan on New Year’s Eve in 2009, killing his son 18-year old son Zaenullah and his brother Asif Iqbal.
In a legal notice to US officials, including the heads of the Pentagon and the CIA, Khan’s lawyer has demanded a staggering $500 million in compensation.
“We say to them that these drone attacks you are carrying out are killing innocent people,” Khan told the Reuters news agency, describing the message he wanted to convey to the Americans.
The question still remains as to what the American people will do with this deluge of information? As Wikileaks peals away the layers of our mysterious, invisible government, will we, as a people, collectively act and stop our country from running amok at home and around the globe? Do we have the fortitude and the character to act?
