Freaked out about the insecurity of its nuclear arsenal, the Pakistani military's Strategic Plans Division has begun carting the nukes around in clandestine ways. That might make some sense on the surface: no military wants to let others know exactly where its most powerful weapons are at any given moment. But Pakistan is going to an extreme.
The nukes travel "in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic", according to a blockbuster story on the US-Pakistan relationship in The Atlantic. Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write that tactical nuclear weapons travel down the streets in "vans with a modest security profile." Somewhere on a highway around, say, Karachi, is the world's most dangerous 1-800-FLOWERS truck.
If I said the Pakistanis are nuts, it would be an injustice to the mentally unstable everywhere who go about their business every day with the benefits of modern prescription drugs to aid them.
Sleep well. And if you can, contemplate the security of our Middle East oil supplies when Iran goes nuclear, and Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lord knows who else in the region follows suit.
Tell me that stopping mullah-led Iran from going nuclear even if we have to use force is too great a risk to take.
