Given how the current Administration has waged war on the CIA and the national security institutions that are supposed to be gathering this information, and how many of those who are in the Administration or cheerlead for the Administration have previously sought to handcuff the CIA and other national security institutions from gathering intel on the ground that would be beneficial to determining the safety of those nuclear weapons, the failing of the CIA to know the deal isn’t surprising.

We’ve been dealing with this mess for decades (think back to the Church Commission and how it damaged US national security). Now, we’re facing a set of circumstances that requires intel on the ground and in real time that satellites simply can’t provide. We can’t make back that deficit now, and while the CIA fought the Bush Administration over ideological grounds, they’re now fighting the Obama Administration because the Obama people made it personal by leaking details of the measures to which the CIA went to gather intel needed to keep the nation safe.

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in trouble because the Zardari government is incapable of doing what is necessary to stop the Taliban precisely because it has courted the Islamists for far too long to prop up its own power. Zardari has run the cycle of violence thing as far as he could take it, and now it’s within miles of Islamabad. Don’t think for a moment that the Taliban will stop short of the prize when they know that they have a chance of taking Islamabad itself. The military has been sidelined for much of the fighting, and the ISI is thoroughly penetrated by the Islamists.

If anyone ever wanted an example of a regime that should never have been allowed to ever obtain nuclear weapons, Pakistan is it.

The IAEA and UN have the chance to prevent Iran from going the same route, but show no interest in doing so, despite the genocidal intent and statements from Iranian leadership - something absent in Pakistani politics. Still, the Pakistani situation is imminent compared with Iran, and yet the IAEA and UN don’t know what to do, despite the dire outcomes that could happen should the nukes fall into the wrong hands.