Pakistan: 'Keep Accusing Us Of Harboring Terrorists And We'll Stop Pretending We're Your Friends'

U.S. relations with our 'ally' Pakistan took another ratchet downwards when Pakistan's foreign minister accused the U.S. of using Pakistan as a scapegoat after American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen testified before Congress and accused Pakistan's ISI agency of supporting the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network in planning and executing last week’s 22-hour assault on the US Embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers a few days earlier:

The Haqqanis are "veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency [ISI]," he said in opening remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding that it had provided the Haqqanis with support to conduct the Kabul attacks:


"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted the truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Mullen said of the recent attack on a base in Wardak that wounded 77 U.S. soldiers. "We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations."

Mullen said Pakistan's government has chosen to "use violent extremism as an instrument of policy," which jeopardizes its relationship with the United States and its role as a player in the region.

Speaking of its support for the Haqqani Network, Mullen said, "they may believe that by using these proxies they are hedging their bets, or redressing what they feel is an imbalance of regional power. But, in reality, they have already lost that bet."

He added that by "exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being."

Panetta said that in recent high-profile meetings with Pakistani officials, U.S. officials have conveyed "a very clear message to them and to others that they must take steps to prevent the safe haven that the Haqqanis are using.

"We simply cannot allow these kinds of terrorists to be able to go into Afghanistan, attack our forces, and then return to Pakistan for safe haven and not face any kind of pressure from the Pakistanis for that to stop."

Panetta called the existence of safe havens "not tolerable" and "unacceptable," and said continued U.S. pressure on Pakistan's leaders was the only way they would get that message. "The only way to deal with the Pakistanis, " he said, "is to keep giving them a clear message of where the lines are. "

The Pakistanis, of course, had their own things to say about where the lines are.Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik baldly denied Mullen's accusations about ISI involvement with the Haqqani Network, and warned the U.S. that Pakistan would not allow a U.S. attack over the border aimed at the Haqqanis,who are apparently a protected species in Pock-kee-stawn.

“The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never,” Mr. Malik said in an interview with Reuters. “Our government is already cooperating with the U.S. — but they also must respect our sovereignty.”

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar likewise warned the U.S. not to cross what she called 'red lines' and not to use Pakistan as a scapegoat. ”If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat,” she said, speaking to the American Government.

Khar spoke these lines with such conviction and inherent dishonesty that I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out she was related to Hillary Clinton somewhere along the line.

The Pakistanis have been nurturing, arming and training the Haqqani Network and other Islamist groups for years. In fact,things are so symbiotic that the Pakistani military and the Haqqani fighters both forces major bases practically next door to each other in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The ISI has a similar relationship with Islamist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and several others of that ilk.

Pakistan sees the Haqqanis in particular as an instrument of policy to attack India and protect their interests in Afghanistan, especially since they know that President Obama has a set-in-stone date for bugging out. He's going to want to campaign as the guy who killed bin-Laden and brought the troops home from those 'illegal' Bush wars.

The fact that Pakistan is a rogue basket case of a nation that actively supports terrorism (the Mumbai Attacks and the British 7/7 bombings are just two examples) and engages in a nice sideline of illegal nuclear proliferation to people like Iran and North Korea is also not exactly unknown to the United States. This isn't new information. That's exactly why we couldn't trust the Pakistanis with our knowledge that Osama bin-Laden had been hiding out in fancy digs with right to the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbotobad for six years, why Pakistan arrested five Pakistani informants who helped the CIA find out where Osama bin-Laden was hiding out and imprisoned them on charges of espionage and why almost every time we've let them know drone attacks are imminent the terrorists have safely moved away and we end up bombing an empty building.

We've essentially turned a blind eye towards Pakistan's treachery and enabled it because we need to bribe them. Around 75% of the supplies needed for our war in landlocked Afghanistan comes through the Pakistani port of Karachi and travels overland via the Torkhum Pass, which is why we've been paying Pakistan off to the tune of billions per year. And while we've finally begun the process of paying baksheesh to five countries instead of one to lessen the impact of our deteriorating relations withPakistan, it isn't nearly complete yet and will likely not have that much of an impact since our leaving Afghanistan is fairly imminent. So we'll do nothing now.

As for Pakistan, it's going to remain the same violent, corrupt Islamist hell hole it always was, with the added attraction of a civil war between various Islamist groups as the army splits apart into factions, with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal as the grand prize for the winner. You see, when Pakistan's powers-that-be got into in bed with various terrorist groups like the Haqqanis and Lashkar-e-Taiba, they thought they were going to be using them. Instead, they've made them strong enough that the Army isn't going to be either unified enough or powerful enough to take them on.

Our whole toxic relationship with Pakistan started because of our involvement in Afghanistan. Under the Bush Doctrine, we would have been more than justified in hitting Pakistan as well, and in terms of our war aims we likely would have been better off.

In the beginning it more or less worked because we had in Pervez Musharraf a dictator who at least stayed bought. Condi Rice, arguably one of the most inept Secretaries of State since William Jennings Bryan torched that arrangement by insisting that Musharraf allow the klepotocrat Bhuttos back in to the country as 'partners, to show more democracy', and the rest is history.

But as I've said before, it would be a nice touch if, as we left AfPak we took out Pakistan's nuclear facilities and perhaps kidnapped their rogue nuclear scientist AQ Kahn and took him to a nice, isolated interrogation room to find out exactly what he sold and to whom.

Of course, nothing remotely like that is going to happen under this president.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Pakistan: No More Drone Attacks, No More CIA Co-operation

The Pakistanis have let it be known that they want the US to suspend drone strikes against jihadis on their territory, thus eliminating one of the U.S.'s most effective weapons against our enemies.

Pakistan has also demanded that the U.S. to reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country.

Fighting the war in AfPak is problematic without the ability to go after jihadis who perform terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and then flit back over the border to Pakistan, where they essentially have a safe haven in places like Waziristan.

The way things have worked is that the Pakistanis have fingered selected jihadis, usually after someone like Dick Cheney or Richard Holbrooke went there and demanded they do something to start earning the $7 billion in aid we give them.

But only certain ones, like the Tehrik-e-Taliban's(TTP) founder,Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a CIA drone strike. And that was because the TTP had targeted the Pakistani government and security forces.

Islamist terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the the Haqqani Taliban group who concentrate on fighting us in Afghanistan and committing terrorist acts against India are a different matter,and they have deep ties with Pakistan's notorious ISI intelligence service.

Lashkar-e-Taiba,among things, was responsible for the 2008 attack on Mumbai, which was carried out with ISI connivance and support. And another sore point for the Pakistanis is that Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI has been subpoenaed a civil court case brought in New York in November in which Lt. Gen. Pasha was named as a defendant.

When CIA head Leon Panetta had a sit down with Lt. Gen. Pasha, one of the things on the agenda was that General Pasha wouldn't be summoned for questioning in the case during his visit this week.

The 'security arrangement' with Pakistan is crumbling steadily as the country goes more Islamist. This, essentially, is the fruit of Condi Rice torpedoing the administration of Pervez Musharraf in favor of Asif Zardari, whose nickname in Pakistan is "Mr. Ten Per Cent."

Now, Musharraf was not exactly a paragon of honesty, but he was, in the words of Tammany Hall founder William 'Boss' Tweed , 'a man who once you bought him stayed bought.' He kept things reasonably together, turned a blind eye when we needed him to and more importantly, kept the supplies flowing to Afghanistan. Things have gotten so far out of hand under Zardari that we can't even depend on our lifeline to Afghanistan staying open.

Because that's what it's really all about, and the reason we give Pakistan all that money and don't press them too hard over their nefarious activities.

At least 75% of the supplies for our troops in Afghanistan comes via the Pakistani port of Karachi and into Afghanistan via the Torkhum Pass. The $7 billion we give them is baksheesh, a bribe, nothing more, nothing less.

We're in this fix because one genius of a president went one country too far north to 'fight terrorism' and thought it was a brilliant idea to stick our men in a landlocked country surrounded by hostile territory. And then his clueless successor tripled down because he had to justify his idiotic campaign rhetoric on something he knew absolutely nothing about.

Remember? President Obama was going mend relations with our allies, and just because he was so awesome, our NATO allies were going to send more combat troops there. And he was going to pull American troops out of Iraq to go to the 'real war'.... he was going to 'invade Pakistan with a couple of brigades' and made much of the fact that he was going to 'follow bin-Laden to the ends of the earth" unlike Bush "who took his eye off the ball".

Remember all that?

At this point, we'd be far better off making deals with the individual Afghan tribal chiefs to buy their opium, give them a few arms to protect their turf and avoid paying taxes to the Taliban and then pulling most of our men and equipment out. And before we go, we'd do very well to apply a simple fix for the problem of Pakistan's nukes..it's called a pre-emptive strike. And while we're at it, grabbing rogue scientist AQ Kahn and having a nice conversation with him about what he sold and to whom might be a good idea. President Barack Obama would shudder in horror at the idea,but that's how we used to fight our wars. And win them.

To paraphrase a very wise man, only a fool leaves a loaded gun in the hands of an idiot - or a jihadi.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

US Contractor Raymond Davis Freed By Pakistan After Payment Of Baksheesh

It appears that the diplomatic standoff between the US and Pakistan over the imprisonment of US contractor Raymond Davis has been settled just like everything always is when it comes to Pakistan..with the payment of baksheesh, bribe money.

As you'll recall, Davis was a CIA contractor in Pakistan covered by a diplomatic passport who was arrested by Pakistani authorities after he gunned down two armed agents with Pakistan's notorious ISI intelligence service who were were tailing Davis as a spy.

The ISI is noted for aiding and abetting Islamist terrorists. My own reading of this is that Davis, who has a Special Forces background, was in fact likely doing something covert that needed doing, something the ISI didn't want done. Davis has a Special Forces background and runs his own private security company. When the ISI sent out two hired guns to make him conveniently disappear, they both wound up on the receiving end instead.

After Pakistani authorities jailed Davis, the US protested (correctly) that Davis enjoyed diplomatic immunity and demanded his release.

But Pakistan being Pakistan, the case created created a huge public furor, especially after the wife of one of the deceased ISI agents committed a nasty, dramatic and very public suicide by taking poison on Pakistani television after voicing an anti-American rant in front of the cameras.

What eventually happened was that Pakistani government leaned on the families to take some baksheesh from the US ( some of which undoubtedly went to people in the Pakistani government for 'handling' the transaction)in order to back off and let the matter drop.

The price? Between $770K and $1 million for three families (one additional ISI agent was hit by a car when Davis' CIA colleagues attempted to extricate him from the scene).

Punjab province law minister Rana Sanauallah told a Pakistani news channel that Davis was set free by the court after the blood money was accepted by the families of those killed, in accordance with what passes for law in Pakistan, whose legal code is based on sharia.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Major Incident Brewing Between US And Pakistan Over American Diplomat Held For Murder

According to Pakistani sources, Obama's National Security Adviser Tom Donilon summoned Pakistan's Ambassador Husain Haqqani to the White House and delivered an ultimatum - release American State department employee Raymond Davis, now being held in Lahore for killing two Pakistanis, by February 11th or face the consequences.

According to the Pakistanis, those consequences included declaring Haqqani persona non grata and revoking his visa, closing US consulates in Pakistan and canceling a scheduled visit by Pakistan's president to Washington.

For the record, Ambassador Haqqani formally denied that any l threats of extreme measures occurred.

Davis was in Pakistan on a diplomatic visa, and the U.S. has demanded his immediate release on the grounds of diplomatic immunity.

What happened depends very much on whom you talk to and what you believe.

Davis says he killed the two Pakistanis because they had been following his car and were trying to rob him. Davis is on tape after the killings showing his State Department credentials to Pakistani police officers and saying, "I'm a consultant."

Except the two apparently weren't just typical street thugs - according to the Pakistanis, they were agents with Pakistan's notorious ISI intelligence service, and they were tailing Davis as a spy.

According to them, Davis was asked to leave a restricted area of Lahore by the military. His cell phone was tracked, and a number of his calls were made to Waziristan tribal areas, where the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar e Taiba and other jihadist groups have what amounts to a safe haven.

Another interesting piece of the puzzle: If Raymond Davis' actions seem a bit aggressive for your typical State Department employee, it's because he has a Special Forces background and now runs a company called Hyperion Protective Consultants, whose stock in trade is similar to Blackwater, providing private security.

According to the US Embassy, Davis was a "member of the technical and administrative staff" of the embassy in Islamabad. They had no comment about why he was armed or what he was doing for the embassy.

As you probably know, relations between the US and Pakistan's ISI are not particularly good. There's a long history of the ISI covering for terrorists and hamstringing US efforts to bring them down. Back in October for instance, the ISI 'mistakenly' released the name of the local CIA station chief, forcing him out of the country.

Adding to the turmoil, the killings have become a political issue in Pakistan, where the mostly America-hating populace frequently accuses the Zardari government of being a US tool.Stories of US spies running amuck in Pakistan appeal to the paranoia/conspiracy theory fetish of the Pakistanis, so this story is made to order.

And to make it even more perfect, The wife of one of the dead men committed a nasty and very public suicide after being interviewed on television.

"I do not expect any justice from this government," Shumaila Kanwal said. "That is why I want to kill myself.

"I want blood for blood," she said. "The way my husband was shot, his killer should be shot in the same fashion."

What this smells like is that Davis probably was doing something covert that needed doing, something the ISI didn't want done. He was apparently doing too good a job, because the ISI sent out two hired guns to make him conveniently disappear.Instead, both of them wound up taking a dirt nap.

The fact that the Obama Administration is willing to go to the mat to get him released means he probably knows something we badly want to find out.If he was just your average American consultant, there's no question in my mind the the Obama Administration would just let him rot rather than - Allah forbid!- offend any Muslims.

It remains to be seen how this ends up. Davis was hauled before a Pakistani court without a translator and without prior notification to the U.S, according to the Islamabad Consulate. Both of those are extreme no-no's when it comes to dealing with persons under a diplomatic passport, but again, this is Pakistan.

The biggest carrot, of course is the $2 billion a year bribe we give the Pakistanis for 'helping fight the war on terror.' Of course, it's really just a handling fee, baksheesh to Pakistan because 75% of the supplies for our warriors in Afghanistan come through the Pakistani port of Lahore and byroad through Pakistani territory over the Torkhum Pass.

And that little factoid is what Pakistan has over us.

Davis is scheduled to appear in court again tomorrow.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!

Obama Administration Strikes Disgraceful Plea Bargain With Mumbai Jihadi

The thought that an American government would do this makes me physically ill.

News that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had reached a plea bargain with David Coleman Headley, who played a key role in the planning of the terrorist strike in Mumbai in November 2008 in which 166 people were killed, has caused an uproar in India.

The deal enables the US government to hold back from formally producing any evidence against Headley in a court of law that might have included details of his links with US intelligence or oblige any cross-examination of Headley by the prosecution.

Nor can the families of the 166 victims be represented by a lawyer to question Headley during his trial commencing in Chicago. Headley's links with the US intelligence will now remain classified information and the Pakistani nationals involved in the Mumbai attacks will get away scot-free. Furthermore, the FBI will not allow Headley's extradition to India and will restrict access so that Indian agencies cannot interrogate him regarding his links with US and Pakistani intelligence.

You remember Mumbai, of course. It was one of the more successful and horrific attacks carried out by adherents of the Religion of Peace armed and trained in Pakistan against a civilian city, where jihadis slaughtered civilians with no discrimination as to age or sex or anything else.

Headly, a Pakistani-born US national AKA Daood Gilani, was the point man for the operation, the one who scouted out the vulnerable targets for his Pakistani jihadi masters in Lashkar-e-Taiba:

David Coleman Headley personally visited every target site of the 26/11 terror strikes last year, carrying out a recce on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a police source said today.

Posing as a Jew, he even visited Nariman House, the Jewish Chabad centre, in July 2008.

The Mumbai police today carried out raids in Bandra, its adjoining suburb Khar and BPO hub Goregaon in search of Headley’s local acquaintances and contacts.

“He (Headley) mapped the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Taj and Trident hotels and Nariman House. We are interrogating (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son) Rahul to find out when he went to Leopold Café. That he did is certain — when he did that is what we need to know,” a top officer said.

Of course, they won't find out now...the Obama Administration has officially placed Headley under its protection.

Thanks to Headley, the Mumbai killers knew exactly where to go and even had their targets plotted out on GPS systems.That included the Chabad house, where Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his pregnant wife Rivkah, 28, were tied up and brutally tortured before they were murdered, along with 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, 50-year-old Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, Yocheved Orpaz, 60, who had been traveling in India with a daughter and grandchildren, and Bentzion Chroman, 28(HY"D).



The Obama administration's plea bargain with Headley was deliberately put together to shield him and his Pakistani handlers and raises some interesting questions:

The LeT began planning the attack on Mumbai sometime around September 2006. According to the plea bargain, Headley paid five visits to India on reconnaissance missions between 2006 and the November 2008 strike, each time returning to the US via Pakistan where he met "with various co-conspirators, including but not limited to members of LeT".

The plea bargain simply refers to the Pakistani handlers of Headley as A, B, C and D. But who are they? We will never know.

The LeT's close links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are legion and it is inconceivable that such a massive operation - with huge international ramifications and the potential to trigger war with India - could have been undertaken without the knowledge of the ISI, headed by General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, the present army chief, from October 2004 until October 2007.

The plea bargain says chillingly that after Headley's fifth visit to India, "Lashkar [LeT] Member A advised defendant [Headley] of a number of details concerning the planned attacks, including that a team of attackers was being trained in a variety of combat skills, the team would be traveling to Mumbai by sea and using the landing site recommended by the defendant, the team would be fighting to the death and would not attempt to escape following the attacks."

Yet, the operative part of the plea bargain not only rules out Headley's extradition to India but does not show that Headley gave any kind of formal commitment to the FBI to subject himself to interrogation by the Indians. He has merely agreed to give testimony in any foreign judicial proceeding that is held in US territory.

In essence, the Americans are saying that they will tell the Indians what Headley is saying and there is no need to interrogate him face-to-face.

A major part of the ten commandments of the Obama Administration - Thou must appease and protect Islam at all times,no matter what.

And just as with Israel, if that calls for alienating and disrespecting a loyal, long term ally, so be it.

Absolutely despicable.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!