we're not allowed to talk to Khan

*

"The world's first-ever court case against a presumed member of Khan's global nuclear weapons bazaar is beginning on Friday... Lerch stands accused of aiding and abetting the end of the world through nuclear Armageddon... Lerch, it is alleged, lent his support to the efforts of a number of dictators around the world to construct a nuclear weapon. He is charged with supplying plans, manuals and even entire systems... []
And now the intelligence agencies are stonewalling. It is becoming increasingly clear that the CIA and Britain's MI6 infiltrated the Khan network and that they probably even recruited some of the main suspects. How else, for example, could one explain the fact that vacuum pumps manufactured by Germany's Pfeiffer Vacuum, ended up in both Libya and Iran? The company, after all, never sent any vacuum pumps to Libya or Iran -- but did send some to the US nuclear weapons research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico." (link)

if iran bought stuff from AQKhan, surely america would know about it, or could find out. the 'we're not allowed to talk to Khan' thing is bullshit.

* stirling:

"Which leaves us with - what does an Iraq which, near the dawn of 2008, will have no effective military presense, merely the essentially paramilitary presences of Kurds, Shi'a and Sunni. Paramilitaries are not particularly suited for battles against each other, since they cannot break through and exploit without armor and mechanization. Instead they tend to form long running gun battles - and in a tradition that dates back at least to the bronze age - ways of striking at civilians to drive the lines of control out. Baghdad is the next Beirut. []
With the inevitability of a military vacuum, and the continued drive to establish dominance over not only oil fields, but over civilian population centers, holy sites with their revenues, and means of transport including both road and waterway - that merely fatigue will not be sufficient. As with Lebanon, the likelihood is overwhelming that at some point a neighboring state will find an excuse to enter into the vacuum. Iran being the most likely candidate. "