Homo sapiens may have less than two years before the mushroom clouds start to rise.

In 1994, a private French company with strong government links, DCN, agreed to help the Pakistanis build and learn to operate a rather amazing shipyard. It was a next-generation facility building next-tech, Agosta 90B stealth submarines. As of today two of these subs have been built and a third was scheduled for launch a month ago.

Each sub is able to carry Harpoon Stand-Off Land Attack missiles. And, guess what? Since Pakistan built its first nuclear bomb in 1998, every nuclear device it's made has been a missile warhead.

According to Defence Journal, Pakistan's subs have a range of close to twelve thousand miles…they can travel to the Hudson River or the Chesapeake Bay, unleash their missiles on New York and Washington, then still be able to take refuge in the Indian Ocean and to threaten other world capitals with a similar fate.

The United States operates a network of hydrophones scattered all over the Atlantic and Pacific seabed. We are listening for subs like these. But we may not be able to hear them. The Pakistani subs use a methanol-and-liquid-oxygen engine bedded on a suspension system that quiets its purr to a whisper. We may not be able to detect their silent running beneath the sounds of zebrafish fanning their tails.

Many a Pakistani would love to see us fry. Pakistan has one of the most violently fundamentalist and anti-American populations of any of the world's 57 Islamic states. And that's saying something.

From 1979 to 1995, Pakistan was the headquarters for a group of "Afghan freedom fighters" who were not Afghans at all. They were an international army paid for by the US, Saudi Arabia, and China and trained, in part, by China's Peoples Liberation Army. We trained an army of 50,000 men from 30 nations to bring down the Soviet Union's most advanced military machines. Why? Our mutual goal was to embarrass a common enemy--the Russians. Chief among the recruits to our proxy Jihad were Osama bin Laden and the founding members of Al Qaeda.

Pakistan is the nation whose citizens rioted in the streets in 1989 over the title of a novel they didn't like--The Satanic Verses. Yes, it was Pakistan's street activists who forced the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a Fatwa offering five million dollars to the Moslem who killed Salman Rushdie. The Pakistanis were more extreme than the most extremist Islamic leader of his day. And that was fifteen years ago! Since then anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism has grown.

Pakistan is also the nation that educated a generation of Afghan refugees who later went home to take over their country in the name of Islamic purity and justice. We know those refugees as the Taleban.

Today Osama bin Laden is one of Pakistan's two biggest pop-culture heroes. The other is "The Father of the Islamic Bomb", Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan and Osama have reportedly met in Afghanistan. Khan is the weapons expert. Osama is the weapons user.

Osama bin Laden may soon have his hands on three Agosta 90B next-generation stealth submarines capable of carrying sixteen sea-to-land cruise missiles each. Those missiles can deliver atomic warheads. And Osama, I suspect, will have access to the forty nuclear warheads constructed by Pakistan. Washington and New York, two primary targets for Al Qaeda, are near bodies water from which these nuclear-tipped missiles can be launched. So are many other major American cities.

Many a Pakistani militant fundamentalist cell identifies itself as an Osama ally. One of the strongest among these Osama-loyalists is Pakistan's most popular leader, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the man who told 60 Minutes that "God has ordered us to build nuclear weapons."

On the other hand, the base of Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, is a slender reed. According to Syed Adeeb, head of Information Times, a militant Pakistani press outlet based in the National Press Building in Washington DC, "an Urdu- language letter written by Pakistan Army officers on a Pakistan Army letterhead and sent to many members of the Pakistan Parliament" calls, "'Pervez Musharraf and his clique…a band of thieves and looters…imposed on this nation'" by the United States.

Adeeb himself calls Musharref, "a self-appointed 'President,' military dictator, army tyrant, human rights abuser, traitor and highly paid mercenary of war criminal George W. Bush".

Musharref was nearly assassinated the same day Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003. Yet only he stands between Osama and the Islamic submarines. Only Musharraf stands between Osama and the cruise missiles Pakistan's subs can carry. And only Musharraf stands between Osama and the 40 or more nuclear warheads Pakistan has built since it exploded the first Islamic atomic bomb.

Which means that only Pervez Musharraf stands between Osama and his dream endgame--nuke a few key cities in the United States to blind and devastate the Great Satan. Then watch while France, Germany, Italy, and England capitulate. Capitulate to what? To Osama's dream, his passion, his vision of truth and freedom--to a global Islamic caliphate.

I want a world of peace. So do you. But until our understanding of ourselves goes a good deal farther, we have to face the fact that we live in a world of violence. If we pledge to remain non-violent, those who've declared themselves our enemies and who love "death more than you love life" will chuckle at our weakness…and use it to cheer their comrades on to new atrocities. They will fight the battle of the faithful and the good--the fight for justice, manners, and purity-the battle for the truth of God's messenger. They will assert the truth expressed by an al-Qaeda-allied author, Seif Al-Din Al-Ansari, that we live on an expendable "speck of dust called Planet Earth." They will use our reticence to make the mother of all wars. And it will not be environmentally friendly.

The agosta 90b submarine
(click pics to return to top)

The agosta 90b launching a cruise missile with 165 kg shaped charge warhead

"The Agosta 90B submarines are being equipped with a SUBTICS fully integrated combat system. This is supplied by UDS International, a joint subsidiary of DCN International and Thales (formerly Thomson-CSF). SUBTICS processes signals from the submarine's sensors, determines the tactical situation by track
association, fusion, synthesis, trajectory plotting and management and handles all weapon command and control functions."

The agosta 90b--coming soon to a shoreline near you?

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