While Iraq smolders ...

[welshTerrier2]

All eyes in the US are focussed on Iraq ... and perhaps on Iran. But there may be huge trouble brewing in Pakistan.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons and serious internal political problems. Al Qaeda and deep hatred for the US are prevalent and growing throughout the country. And the Musharraf government appears to be sinking at about the same pace the bush government is sinking in the US. Tucked away in an article about the risks facing the Musharraf government was a most curious reference to a bush administration policy of using "Islamist radical elements in immature US-backed attacks in Iran." Has this been reported in the US media? One might even ask whether, if true, these attacks absent Congressional approval constitute a breach of bush's constitutional authority.

And now, there are new calls to reverse bush administration policy and possibly introduce US forces directly inside Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda strongholds. The problem with this, of course, is that such actions will greatly weaken the Musharraf government. If Musharraf permits US military intrusion into Pakistan, radical elements are likely to gain much greater political clout than they already have. And if they are able to gain power, they also gain control over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Where are all those anti-nuke people when we really need them?

Pakistan is heating up rapidly. The situation may not be critical yet but the current trend is very dark indeed. The US Congress does little more than make squeaky noises about going after Bin Laden. That may sound good on the surface but lacks any real analysis of the political realities inside Pakistan. One thing they better start thinking about is impeaching bush. He's created this crisis with his failed policies in the region and clearly has no idea how to proceed. We can't afford to wait another 18 months for a new president.

source: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070724&fname=pakistan&sid=1 (excerpt from page 4)

This abrupt volte face cannot, of course, detract from the fact of the continuous US policies of denial and obfuscation that directly contributed to the current conditions in Pakistan. Conciliation, the search for an oxymoronic ‘moderate Taliban’, deal-making with radical elements, and looking the other way on a range of unrelenting Pakistani misdeeds in the region--even as efforts were reportedly made to use Islamist radical elements in immature US-backed attacks in Iran--created the conditions for the massive consolidation of the Taliban-al Qaeda-radical Islamist phalanx that is now manifesting itself across Pakistan. It is useful to recall, also, that when Musharraf rigged elections in 2005 to help Islamists consolidate their position, particularly in the NWFP and Balochistan, but substantially in other parts of the country as well, this met with almost universal condemnation. The US, however, enthusiastically endorsed Musharraf’s fraud, which brought Islamist to power in the very areas that are now the epicentre of Islamist terrorist dominance. Self-serving and short-sighted US policies and unaccounted aid to a dodgy dictator, despite overwhelming evidence of duplicity and direct Pakistani support to and involvement in terrorism across the world, are the essential but neglected backdrop of the current crisis. All this was pointed out again and again, but was deliberately and obstinately ignored by the Bush administration on grounds that were anything but rational. The fact that US leaders are now singing a slightly different tune cannot exculpate them from almost six years of the most extraordinary and abysmal incompetence in their counter-terrorism policy in South Asia. <skip>

But the intellectual opinion in the US also appears to be shifting, and there are concessions, as Bruce Hoffman of the Georgetown University now notes, that "The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five-and-a-half years after 9-11, we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahiri to ground."

The US is now abruptly compounding Musharraf’s difficulties by threatening direct interventions on Pakistani soil. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell justified calls for direct US military strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal belt on the grounds that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding on the Pakistani side of the Afghan-Pakistan border. He criticized the peace agreement with radicals in Waziristan, saying, "because of this agreement, al Qaeda has been able to regain some of its momentum… The leadership is intact. They have operational planners, and they have safe haven. The things they’re missing are operatives inside the United States."

All these observations, however, come with reiterations of continued faith in Musharraf and his capacity "to correct" the errors of the past. Nevertheless, White House spokesman Tony Snow has declared that "There’s no doubt that more aggressive steps need to be taken." But ‘aggressive steps’ by the US at this very late stage will only accelerate Pakistan’s spiral into an Iraq-like situation.

[acmavm]

1. This friggin' administration doesn't understand anything but guns, bullets,

and bombs. These people have a thug mentality and they can't see past thier gradiouse schemes of empire. That they thought back in 2000 that they would rule the Middle East tells you something, or rather everything about their lack of morality and their twisted collective intellect.

[KoKo]

2. Thanks "Welsh" an important read.......K&R