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Our Man in Pakistan
By Robert Scheer
11/07/07 "Truthdig" -- -- So, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, treated
ever so respectfully by George Bush throughout his
administration, in which he became the first Pakistani leader to
visit Camp David, has turned out to be just another crummy
dictator. But he was our dictator, kind of a modern, even
westernized one who could stand up to all those bearded Islamic
terrorists.
Well, not exactly. Not that anyone bothered to remember, but
Musharraf seized power in Pakistan, ending democratic rule, two
years before the 9/11 attacks and did nothing to end his
nation’s support of the Taliban rulers next door, who were
harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida. Before that he was
part of a military elite that had, as the 9/11 Commission report
would later conclude, been one of the main sponsors of the
Taliban. Nor did Musharraf as dictator-president do anything to
undermine the nut cases that he continued to diplomatically
recognize as the legitimate rulers of the neighboring country.
“On terrorism, Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban,” the 9/11
Commission reported, adding: “Many in the government have
sympathized with or provided support to the extremists.
Musharraf agreed that Bin Laden was bad. But before 9/11,
preserving good relations with the Taliban took precedence.”
True, after 9/11 Musharraf did provide minimal support for the
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in return for considerable aid and
the lifting of the sanctions that had been imposed on his nation
for developing nuclear weapons. Odd that a nation that had
nuclear weapons and that had actively supported the terrorist
haven in Afghanistan was welcomed back into America’s good
graces only three weeks after 9/11—at the very same time that
the Bush administration was drawing up plans to overthrow Saddam
Hussein, who was bin Laden’s sworn enemy.
Oh, yes, sorry, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I
forgot, there was that guy “Curveball,” the guy in Germany who
told us that Saddam had those mobile biological weapons labs
that Colin Powell relied on so heavily in his U.N. address. But,
as CBS’ “60 Minutes” reported Sunday, the German government had
told the Bush administration very clearly that its great weapons
expert was a just another immigrant trying to hustle a green
card.
As for nukes (the real WMD), although Iraq didn’t have them,
Pakistan did—at least 70 ready to explode—as well as the
airplanes and missiles that could deliver them. Worse, the
“father of the Islamic bomb,” Abdul Qadeer Khan, whom the 9/11
Commission called Pakistan’s most revered nuclear weapons
expert, “was leading the most dangerous nuclear smuggling ring
ever disclosed.” It was Khan who provided the key technology,
uranium enrichment materials crucial to the nuke programs of
Libya, Iran and North Korea. And it was Musharraf who pardoned
him, made him to this day unavailable to U.S. intelligence
agents and, after a very loose form of house arrest, recently
announced that he was now, as in the slogan of Southwest
Airlines, free to move about the country.
No problem—why hold a little nuclear proliferation against our
favored dictator when he’s doing such a good job denying al-Qaida
and other religious fanatics a base of operations in Pakistan?
Except that he did nothing of the sort. The all-important
Pakistan border territory adjoining Afghanistan is more
hospitable now to terrorists than ever before. As for bin Laden
and the others Bush was going to get “dead or alive,” U.S.
experts routinely concede that those terrorists have found a
haven on Musharraf’s side of the border.
So where did the $10 billion go, and that’s not counting covert
funds, that Bush gave Musharraf to beef up his military to
better combat the terrorists? Well, clearly the Pakistani army
is very strong—just look at the martial law it has been able to
impose on judges and other folks who actually believe in the
rule of law. But wait, Musharraf will back down; a deal was all
but brokered, and Benazir Bhutto, whose adherence to democracy
is as compelling as her family’s rich history of corruption, is
waiting in the wings.
Condi Rice is on the phone, so hopefully Musharraf can be bought
off and the free world once again served by the nation Bush
designated “a major non-NATO ally.” But there is a bright side,
for one adviser traveling with Rice was quoted in The Washington
Post as saying, “Thank heavens for small favors,” meaning that
compared with Pakistan, “Iraq looks pretty good.” Talk about
lowered expectations.
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