PAKISTAN AND THE U.S.A.-- A STORY OF TREACHEROUS DECEPTION

I spent a couple years starting in 1969 driving a VW van from Germany to India. I fell in love with Asia. I absolutely was nuts about Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal. If you know geography you know that there's a country-- one-- that I left off that list. That's because it was an alien hellhole and I didn't like it one bit-- nothing about it. It had the worst of everyplace else I visited and none of the charms. And that place was Pakistan.

Pakistan was so creepy in every way that I could never understand why the U.S. was always backing Pakistan, a relatively small, hopelessly backward, anti-democratic, militaristic, fanatic pseudo-country against gigantic, powerful, progressive, idealistically-democratic India. In fact, in a few weeks I'm going to visit India again, my fourth trip to that incredible country. I've certainly never considered going to Pakistan again; very few Americans do.

Now that you know my biases, I want to tell you about a book I'm reading, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark. When I was a dj, there was nothing like getting an advance of a record and turning people on to it before it was out. To this day I meet people from San Francisco who tell me that the first time they heard The Ramones, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Buzzcocks, Gen X, the B-52s, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Joy Division, Ministry... it was on my radio show. People don't get quite as worked up over books, but Deception won't be out for another week or so and I've been reading the advance. It's a powerful read-- and somewhat startling in scope-- worth your attention.

Levy and Scott-Clark go deep and come up with horrifying news: the last 5 presidential administrations-- Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and, needless to say, the current imbecile-- have convinced Americans that Pakistan is our ally, an ally we shipped billions of taxpayer dollars to-- while it has been working against us, with the complete knowledge of those five derelict presidents. Each of their administrations has engaged in an active cover-up that has included rewriting and even destroying evidence from the CIA and from bona fide allies about how Pakistan was working with Iran, Libya, North Korea to provide them with nuclear weapons technology. Each of these presidents lied-- and Chimpy continues to lie-- to Congress about what Pakistan is up to so as to circumvent laws that prohibit U.S. aid flowing to any countries doing precisely what Pakistan has been doing: endangering the U.S. from nuclear-armed terrorists.

On Nov 8 the World Affairs Council in DC will present a lecture featuring Levy and Scott-Clark. It's one I hope to get to. I have a feeling that there will be plenty said that will be useful in the eventual Bush Regime treason tribunals.