Good Luck With Pakistan

No one noticed-- right next to a military base, 35 miles north of the capital?

Other than Fox News and the Bush and Cheney families, no one has benefited as lucratively from 9/11 as Pakistan and it's parasitic ruling class. God only knows how much taxpayer money has been flushed down the Pakistani rat-hole and wasted on that country's corrupt-beyond-reason ruling elites since 9/11. We do have some idea that between 2002-'10, Pakistan received at least $18 billion in military and economic aid from the U.S. In February 2010, Obama requested an additional $3 billion in aid, for a total of at least $21 billion.

It's fairly well-known that right-wing American plutocrats directly funded the rise of European fascism in the 1920s and '30s. Henry Ford may have been the most conspicuous, but countless scumbags from among America's ruling elites-- Averell Harriman, Irénée du Pont and Prescott Walker Bush most notoriously-- were helping to fund Hitler and Mussolini before either had achieved any power. Less well-known that their obsession with "anti-communism" also inspired the Harding, Coolidge, Hoover Administrations' brain trusts to help finance Mussolini's takeover of Italy. That worked out badly for America-- and everyone else concerned. So it was with great trepidation that I watched first crazy right-wing billionaires and then U.S. governments funding al-Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden as, like Mussolini and Hitler, "bulwarks against godless communism." I would be a lot more careful about how we use "foreign aid" if it was up to me.

Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom

I've driven all through that area of Pakistan and I never visited Abbottabad. It's kind of like a garrison town where retired military officers go to live out their lives. Pakistan's West Point is there. Or like Simi Valley in California. What was bin-Laden doing in that town, living in the biggest, fanciest villa in the town? Glad you asked.

The Abbottabad location is important for two reasons. Bin Laden could not have lived in a compound in Abbottabad without official Pakistani government sustenance. Abbottabad is an upscale area and a garrison town, but not so large as to be impersonal. Bin Laden was living in protected luxury. Many people had to know that and probably will come forward in a little time.

On 7 December 2001, Bin Laden escaped from the tunnels in Tora Bora, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, with the help of a local warlord named Hazrat Ali, who betrayed US forces who had hired him to help capture bin Laden and is now a member of the Afghan Parliament for Nangarhar. Bin Laden and his gang crossed the Tora Bora mountains to Parachinar, Pakistan, where a Pakistan Army brigade was deployed to ensure his capture if he crossed the border. They failed, of course. He headed east to Kohat, another Army garrison town and disappeared.

The distance from Kohat to Abbottabad is several hundred kilometers by road, but the two towns are part of the Pakistan Army network of garrison towns in the northwest. Bin laden reportedly moved around in the northwest, but one inference is that bin Laden has been in the safe keeping of the Pakistan Army for a decade. The news reports suggest the compound was specially built for him and his enterprise, which had to have been subsidized by Pakistan and, through Pakistan, by US aid to Pakistan.

Secondly, his compound could not have been attacked from Afghanistan, him killed and his body taken by US Navy SEALs flying US helicopters so close to Islamabad without official Pakistani government cooperation. The US insisted Pakistan played no part in the operation and that the team flew from Afghanistan. That clearly is a cover story for Pakistani public consumption to try to avert overwhelming anti-Pakistan and anti-US demonstrations, which are probably inevitable in any event.

Abottabad is not some remote village on the border. It is a large town in eastern Pakistan, on the main road to Kargil and the north as well as to Muzaffarabad and Pakistani Kashmir to the east. It is northeast - towards India - of Islamabad and within the Pakistan air defense intercept zone for the national capital which is protected by the Pakistani integrated air defense system. Nothing can fly in that region without detection and without permission from the Pakistan Air Force, even from Afghanistan.

The conclusion is inescapable that the Pakistan Army protected bin Laden and recently decided to give him up, rather than sacrifice the Army's relationship with the US. The terms are not known as yet, but there certainly is a trade in which bin Laden was sacrificed. The trade might involve an end to US drone attacks across the border, which humiliate the Pakistan Army, or a new coordination regime for drone attacks into Pakistan.

Bin Laden was a hero in Pakistan. He stood up to the United States and lived …for ten years. Readers should expect an enormous backlash against Americans.

If the Pakistan civilian government survives, it will be because of the cover story that the US acted unilaterally. If the cover story works, on the surface, the US and Pakistani relationship will appear in the international media to take a nose dive. That will not be the truth, though few Pakistanis will know the truth. If the cover story is not believed, the government will not likely survive. There will be investigations by the National Assembly.

One person who foreign aid disbursements have been, at least partially up to is Michigan's senior senator, Carl Levin, who presides over the Senate Armed Service Committee and is in on every decision in this area. Yesterday, like many of us, he came to the conclusion that bin-Laden was probably living under the protect of Pakistan's multi-faced version of the CIA (the ISI). Diplomatically, he says questions have been raised by how and where bin-Laden was caught.

"I think that the Pakistani army and intelligence have a lot of questions to answer, given the location, the length of time, and the apparent fact that this facility was built for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central location to the Pakistani army," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs the Senate Armed Services committee, in a Capitol briefing with reporters Monday morning.

"I think the Pakistani president's statement today was a very reassuring statement-- when he very specifically said that he thinks that it's a great victory and a success, and to congratulate us on the success of the operation," Levin added. "So reassured by his statement, not necessarily suspicious that he knew, or the civilian leadership knew. But I must tell you I hope that he will follow through-- that the President of Pakistan Hardari will follow through and ask some very tough questions with his own military and his own intelligence. They've got a lot of explaining to do."

And now even the White House is acknowledging "probable" ISI complicity. Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said it's "inconceivable" that Pakistan wasn't helping bin-Laden.

Despite a sense of relief inside the Obama administration and around the country, Brennan said many questions still remain about the incident, specifically about bin Laden's connections in Pakistan.

Brennan confirmed that the Pakistanis were kept out of the loop on the attack until U.S. forces were out of their airspace. Pakistani forces did not engage with Americans involved in the mission, he said.

UPDATE: Who Read Turkmeniscam?

With their treachery exposed, what will Pakistani leaders do to keep our taxes flowing into their pockets? Lobbyists, of course! It sounds an awful lot like Turkmeniscam, Ken Silverman's hilariously chilling book about shady DC lobbyists working for shady foreign powers.

Pakistan will likely call upon Washington lobbyists to help repair its fraught U.S. relations after Osama bin Laden was found and killed in the country Sunday.

Locke Lord Strategies has been lobbying for the Pakistani embassy since May 2008, earning more than $1.9 million in fees, according to Justice Department records. 

The firm’s lobbying team for Pakistan has been led by Mark Siegel, a veteran Democratic Party operative, Carter White House aide and close friend to Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated in 2007 as she campaigned for her old seat.

Siegel told The Hill that he is planning to talk to lawmakers to combat what he terms “speculation” from some in the media that Pakistan’s government must have known of bin Laden’s hiding place.

“It’s these consultants that all these networks have hired to talk about terrorism who are making all these speculations,” said Siegel, a partner at Locke Lord. “We have some education to do on the Hill. We don’t want this speculation to end up being considered as fact.”

And, no doubt, some palms to grease. In other words, the U.S. gives Pakistan billions to help catch bin-Laden and Pakistan hires the crooks at Locke Lord to use some of it to placate corrupt congressmen who are making a fuss that Pakistan was hiding bin-Laden and keeping him safe for years-- part of what kept the cash flowing in their direction.