PAKISTANI NUKES, THE WORRY - AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  From the McClatchy newspapers:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons program even as Islamic extremists in northwest Pakistan continue to advance in the direction of several highly sensitive nuclear-related sites, U.S. officials and other experts said this week.

Pakistan's government is completing two new nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for weapons that would be smaller, lighter and more efficient than the 60-odd highly enriched uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan is now thought to possess, the officials and experts said.

"In the current climate, with Pakistan's leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question," said an April 23 report by the Institute for Science and International Security .

Some of the officials and experts are more worried that Islamic radicals or sympathizers inside Pakistan's military might get their hands on radioactive material that could be used to make a crude dirty bomb than they are about a theft of one of the heavily guarded weapons themselves.

COMMENT:  President Obama assured us at his news conference this week that the Pakistani nukes are secure, and would be secure.  But he pointedly refused to go into detail.  It's hard to accept the president's statements at face value.  How could the U.S. even know where all the nukes are?  Or all the enriched materials needed to make them? 

Watch this one very closely.

May 2, 2009