Failed Coup In Pakistan

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf returned from his book tour in the US to discover a coup plot against him based in the Pakistan Air Force. The plot unravelled when a rocket was fired at the President's home in Rawalpindi. The rocket was launched remotely by cell phone. When the rocket was recovered, its activation mechanism yielded the cell phone number of an Air Force officer. His arrest led to the arrest of more than forty other plotters, most of them field grade Air Force officers. One of the civilian plotters was the son of a general officer. All of them were Islamists.

More rockets were recovered from other high security zones, including the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad, which is infested by Islamists. Apparently, this was more than a simple assassination plot, of which this is the fifth known attempt, but part of a larger Islamist plot to overthrow the government.

Islamists previously tried to kill Musharraf in Rawalpindi in 2003 by blowing up a bridge as he crossed it in a convoy. Evidently, electronic jammers in the convoy interfered with the radio signal to detonate it until after the convoy passed, when the bridge exploded. Eleven days later, the Islamists sent two suicide bombers in separate cars to kill Musharraf in his car. They got close enough to crack Musharraf's windshield and kill sixteen innocent people, but not close enough to draw Musharraf's blood.

It bodes ill for the future that murderous Islamists have so thoroughly penetrated major organs of the government such as the ISI and air force. Once Musharraf and his cohort of British-trained officers have passed from the scene, the wild men in beards and turbans take over. Pakistan has nukes, about forty to sixty of them. They may have enough nuclear fuel for another fifty nukes. And they're spinning more fuel in three thousand centrifuges.

Even under Musharraf, who is somewhat sympathetic to the West, Pakistan spread nuclear bomb technology to villianous countries such as North Korea, Libya, and Iran via a black market run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani atom bomb. One of Khan's agents offered atom bomb technology to Iraq. Three Pakistani nuclear scientists in Khan's program met with Osama bin Laden to consult on Al Qaeda's pursuit of an atomic or radiological bomb.

Part of the reason that Pakistan spread it's nuke know-how around is that it raised the funds for atom bomb development by pitching it as an Islamic project to Libya, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Iran. Pakistan feels a religious obligation to share the technology to make its "Islamic Bomb" with other Muslim countries. Muslims of all nations see Pakistan's nukes as a weapon to be used against infidel countries. The Imam of Al-Aqsa mosque preached that test detonation of the Pakistani bomb marked "the beginning of the resurgence of Islamic power."

When Musharraf is overthrown, Pakistan and its nukes passes into the hands of Islamist nutcases intent on prosecuting the jihad against non-Muslims. Rather than informal consultation with terrorists interesting in acquiring nukes under Musharraf, we can expect full cooperation with terrorists from an Islamist-ruled Pakistan. America is about one heartbeat away from a nuclear attack by Islamists.