Latest on the “Father” of the Nuclear Bomb, A.Q. Khan

“Pakistan has virtually shelved a US-aided, multi-million-dollar plan to reform seminaries considered nurseries of jihad, faced with uncooperative Islamists.”

From Dawn

A comeback?

“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment,” Clinton was quoted telling senior Pakistani journalists in Lahore. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they (al Qaeda leaders) are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she said.

From Reuters

Peter Bergen reports a sobering read at the New Republic about the state of affairs in Afghanistan. Winning in Afghanistan is critical to defeating Al Qaeda.
And yet, as President Obama weighs whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can …

“I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious.”

“The stakes are high in this nuclear armed country.”