How Many More Billions In Taxpayer Dollars Will The Military Industrial Complex Waste On Pakistan's Corrupt Oligarchy?

Unless you read your NY Times in Pakistan, where the story was disappeared, you probably read about how the Pakistanis knew exactly where Osama bin-Laden was while they took billions of dollars in American aid and pretended to be looking for him. This wasn't really a secret, just another manifestation of the expensive dysfunction that the U.S. spy agencies have always been. Right from the beginning. Failure, failure, failure-- and billions and billions and unknowable billions of dollars wasted. The spy agencies aren't worth shit-- except for unconstitutional spying on American citizens.

Carlotta Gall, a Times correspondent who spent 12 years in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attack, excerpted parts of her upcoming book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 for her Times Magazine piece on March 19, "What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden." She knew all along-- as anyone remotely aware of history knew-- that the authors of Afghanistan's misery were located in Afghanistan, very much under the control of Pakistan's notorious local version of the CIA, the ISI, and the extremist "religious" schools or madrassas. Furthermore, bolstering all the circumstantial evidence, a former ISI chief and retired general, Ziauddin Butt, told her that he thought Musharraf had arranged to hide Bin Laden in Abbottabad.

“The madrasas are a cover, a camouflage,” a Pashtun legislator from the area told me. Behind the curtain, hidden in the shadows, lurked the ISI.

The Pakistani government, under President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was maintaining and protecting the Taliban, both to control the many groups of militants now lodged in the country and to use them as a proxy force to gain leverage over and eventually dominate Afghanistan. The dynamic has played out in ways that can be hard to grasp from the outside, but the strategy that has evolved in Pakistan has been to make a show of cooperation with the American fight against terrorism while covertly abetting and even coordinating Taliban, Kashmiri and foreign Qaeda-linked militants. The linchpin in this two-pronged and at times apparently oppositional strategy is the ISI. It’s through that agency that Pakistan’s true relationship to militant extremism can be discerned-- a fact that the United States was slow to appreciate, and later refused to face directly, for fear of setting off a greater confrontation with a powerful Muslim nation.

…The story they didn’t want out in the open was the government’s covert support for the militant groups that were propagating terrorism in Afghanistan and beyond… After years of nurturing jihadists to fight its proxy wars, Pakistan was now experiencing the repercussions. “We could not control them,” a former senior intelligence official told a colleague and me six months after the Red Mosque siege.

…Yet even as the militants were turning against their masters, Pakistan’s generals still sought to use them for their own purpose, most notoriously targeting Pakistan’s first female prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was preparing to fly home from nearly a decade in exile in the fall of 2007. Bhutto had forged a deal with Musharraf that would allow him to resign as army chief but run for another term as president, while clearing the way for her to serve as prime minister. Elections were scheduled for early 2008.

Bhutto had spoken out more than any other Pakistani politician about the dangers of militant extremism. She blamed foreign militants for annexing part of Pakistan’s territory and called for military operations into Waziristan. She declared suicide bombing un-Islamic and seemed to be challenging those who might target her. “I do not believe that any true Muslim will make an attack on me because Islam forbids attacks on women, and Muslims know that if they attack a woman, they will burn in hell,” she said on the eve of her return.

She also promised greater cooperation with Afghanistan and the United States in combating terrorism and even suggested in an interview that she would give Western officials access to the man behind Pakistan’s program of nuclear proliferation, A. Q. Khan.

President Karzai of Afghanistan warned Bhutto that his intelligence service had learned of threats against her life. Informers had told the Afghans of a meeting of army commanders-- Musharraf and his 10 most-powerful generals-- in which they discussed a militant plot to have Bhutto killed.

On Oct. 18, 2007, Bhutto flew into Karachi. I was one of a crowd of journalists traveling with her. She wore religious amulets and offered prayers as she stepped onto Pakistani soil. Hours later, as she rode in an open-top bus through streets of chanting supporters, two huge bombs exploded, tearing police vans, bodyguards and party followers into shreds. Bhutto survived the blast, but some 150 people died, and 400 were injured.

Bhutto claimed that Musharraf had threatened her directly, and Karzai again urged her to take more precautions, asking his intelligence service to arrange an armored vehicle for her equipped with jammers to block the signals of cellphones, which are often used to detonate bombs. In the meantime, Bhutto pressed on with her campaign, insisting on greeting crowds of supporters from the open top of her vehicle.

In late December, a group of militants, including two teenage boys trained and primed to commit suicide bombings, arrived at the Haqqania madrasa in the northwestern town of Akora Khattak. The madrasa is a notorious establishment, housing 3,000 students in large, whitewashed residence blocks. Ninety-five percent of the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan have passed through its classrooms, a spokesman for the madrasa proudly told me. Its most famous graduate is Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran Afghan mujahedeen commander whose network has become the main instrument for ISI-directed attacks in Kabul and eastern Afghanistan.

The two young visitors who stopped for a night at the madrasa were escorted the next day to Rawalpindi, where Bhutto would be speaking at a rally on Dec. 27. As her motorcade left the rally, it slowed so she could greet supporters in the street. One of the two teenagers fired a pistol at her and then detonated his vest of explosives. Bhutto was standing in the roof opening of an armored S.U.V. She ducked into the vehicle at the sound of the gunfire, but the explosion threw the S.U.V. forward, slamming the edge of the roof hatch into the back of her head with lethal force. Bhutto slumped down into the vehicle, mortally wounded, and fell into the lap of her confidante and constant chaperone, Naheed Khan.

As Bhutto had long warned, a conglomeration of opponents wanted her dead and were all linked in some way. They were the same forces behind the insurgency in Afghanistan: Taliban and Pakistani militant groups and Al Qaeda, as well as the Pakistani military establishment, which included the top generals, Musharraf and Kayani. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances of Bhutto’s death found that each group had a motive and merited investigation.

Pakistani prosecutors later indicted Musharraf on charges of being part of a wider conspiracy to remove Bhutto from the political scene. There was “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” that he did not provide her with adequate security because he wanted to ensure her death in an inevitable assassination attempt, the chief state prosecutor in her murder trial, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, told me. (Musharraf denied the accusations.) A hard-working, hard-charging man, Ali succeeded in having Musharraf arrested and was pushing to speed up the trial when he was shot to death on his way to work in May 2013.

Ali had no doubts that the mastermind of the plot to kill Bhutto was Al Qaeda. “It was because she was pro-American, because she was a strong leader and a nationalist,” he told me. A Pakistani security official who interviewed some of the suspects in the Bhutto case and other militants detained in Pakistan’s prisons came to the same conclusion. The decision to assassinate Bhutto was made at a meeting of the top council of Al Qaeda, the official said.

It took more than three years before the depth of Pakistan’s relationship with Al Qaeda was thrust into the open and the world learned where Bin Laden had been hiding, just a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s top military academy. In May 2011, I drove with a Pakistani colleague down a road in Abbottabad until we were stopped by the Pakistani military. We left our car and walked down a side street, past several walled houses and then along a dirt path until there it was: Osama bin Laden’s house, a three-story concrete building, mostly concealed behind concrete walls as high as 18 feet, topped with rusting strands of barbed wire. This was where Bin Laden hid for nearly six years, and where, 30 hours earlier, Navy SEAL commandos shot him dead in a top-floor bedroom.

…Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden’s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha’s or one about him in the days after the raid. “He knew of Osama’s whereabouts, yes,” the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so. Pasha had been an energetic opponent of the Taliban and an open and cooperative counterpart for the Americans at the ISI. “Pasha was always their blue-eyed boy,” the official said. But in the weeks and months after the raid, Pasha and the ISI press office strenuously denied that they had any knowledge of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.

Colleagues at The Times began questioning officials in Washington about which high-ranking officials in Pakistan might also have been aware of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, but everyone suddenly clammed up. It was as if a decision had been made to contain the damage to the relationship between the two governments. “There’s no smoking gun,” officials in the Obama administration began to say.

…America’s failure to fully understand and actively confront Pakistan on its support and export of terrorism is one of the primary reasons President Karzai has become so disillusioned with the United States. As American and NATO troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this year, the Pakistani military and its Taliban proxy forces lie in wait, as much a threat as any that existed in 2001… Pakistani security officials, political analysts, journalists and legislators warned of the same thing. The Pakistani military was still set on dominating Afghanistan and was still determined to use the Taliban to exert influence now that the United States was pulling out.

Today Musharraf Was Formally Indicted For Murdering Benzir Bhutto

Tuesday, there were three charges against Pakistan's former military dictator, Pervez Musharraf: murder, conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder, shocking in a country which has had an unwritten rule that top military men are NEVER held accountable for their crimes, no matter how serious the offenses. (There has also been a lot of speculation that he's always been a CIA operative, which complicates everything.)

Musharraf, who's been under house arrest in his palatial digs in Rawalpindi denies everything.

Musharraf was indicted during a short hearing at a court in the city of Rawalpindi, a move that adds to the problems facing the former president who returned from self-exile in March only to be entangled in three legal cases, barred from contesting elections and put under house arrest.

Public prosecutor Mohammad Azhar told reporters that the 70-year-old retired general was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and facilitation of murder during a short hearing.

Musharraf's lawyer said he denied all the all the charges and the cases against him were fabricated.

...Potentially far more troubling for Musharraf was the government announcement in June that the former president should be tried for treason, a capital offence.

Only the government can pursue a treason trial and many analysts had assumed newly elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif would avoid picking a fight with the powerful army that does not want to see one of its former leaders imprisoned or executed.

And there's another assassination charge-- this time for the murder of Akbhar Khan Bugti, the former Balochistan chief minister-- which is awaiting Musharraf. 

Pervez Musharraf Returns To Pakistan, Declares He's Running For President And Is Arrested For Crimes Committed Last Time He Was In Office

Well liked by the American popular media for his anti-Taliban militancy, Pervez Musharraf was a brutal military dictator who originally seized power in Pakistan in a 1999 military coup d'état. Since being forced to retire in 2008, he's been living in luxurious exile in London and Dubai until returning to Pakistan March 24 to run for president. There were arrest warrants pending when he returned including one for his involvement in the assasinations of Benazir Bhutto and Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti. Police arrested him and took him into custody Friday to face charges in regard to tampering with the judicial system. He had fled court on Thursday after a judge ordered his arrest on the spot.

Musharraf is accused of violating the constitution by placing judges under house arrest after he sacked the chief justice and imposed emergency rule.

Judges had signaled their intent to take a tough line with Musharraf on Friday when they ordered his case be heard in an anti-terrorism court on the grounds that detaining judges could be considered an attack on the state.

Police later transferred Musharraf into custody at a guest house at their headquarters in Islamabad after a senior officer failed to issue paperwork necessary for him to remain under detention at his home, his spokesman, Amjad, said.

Pakistan television broadcast footage of Musharraf leaving his farmhouse residence at an exclusive estate on the edge of Islamabad in a black SUV escorted by police vehicles.

The spectacle of a man who once embodied the army's control over Pakistan being forced to answer to judges was a potent symbol of the way power dynamics have shifted in Pakistan, which has been ruled by the military for more than half its history.

...While the sight of a former army commander being arrested is sure to rankle some in the military, who see the armed forces as the only reliable guarantor of Pakistan's stability, Musharraf's ill-starred return has bemused some former comrades.

"I don't think the army was in favor of him returning and tried to dissuade him," said General Hamid Khan, a former senior army commander. "But he decided to come, and now he has to face this. The army is staying out of it."

The army has been providing him with an elite unit of security personnel. The army is a state within a state and it will be interesting how far they allow this to go without interfering. As of this morning, after a night in real detention, Musharraf is back under house arrest-- for two weeks-- in the "sub-jail" known as his sprawling, luxurious estate. He'll be charged with high treason and appear before the court May 4.

Glad You Weren't Born In Pakistan?

Pick your poison

Forget for a moment that there's an on-going bloodbath in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, and that last week alone over 100 people were killed-- not in the tribal badlands but in the biggest city in the country. This weekend the news out of Pakistan began with two big stories: 1- a court ordered the seizure of former President Pervez Musharraf's assets for his involvement with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; 2- the deaths of at least 2 dozen Pakistani troops in a cross-border raid by Afghan Taliban fighters. Each an immense story... and each nearly buried by a third... the killing of al-Qaida #2 operative, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who has been running al-Qaeda's day to day operations, we're told. Supposedly essential for the functioning of the terrorist operation, Al-Rahman was killed August 22 in the tribal area of Waziristan. Just thought I'd mention-- obviously for no particular reason-- that after Musharraf had Bhutto murdered, he blamed Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. They usually revel in claiming credit for that kind of think but Mehsud and the Taliban denied any involvement. Almost immediately-- and exactly 2 years ago-- he was killed in a US drone attack, "one of the most high-profile casualties of the covert American campaign targeting al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border."

Back to 2011, an anonymous CIA agent told A.P. that "al-Rahman's death will make it harder for Zawahiri to oversee what is considered an increasingly weakened organization."

"Zawahiri needed Atiyah's experience and connections to help manage al-Qaida," the official said.

Al-Rahman was killed Aug. 22 in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, according to a senior administration who also insisted on anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.

The official would not say how al-Rahman was killed. But his death came on the same day that a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan. Such strikes by unmanned aircraft are Washington's weapon of choice for killing terrorists in the mountainous, hard-to-reach area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Rahman has been thought to be dead before. Last year, there were reports that Rahman was killed in a drone strike but neither senior U.S. administration officials nor al-Qaida ever confirmed them.

Al-Rahman, believed to be in his mid-30s, was a close confidant of bin Laden and once served as bin Laden's emissary to Iran.

Al-Rahman was allowed to move freely in and out of Iran as part of that arrangement and has been operating out of Waziristan for some time, officials have said.

Born in Libya, al-Rahman joined bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.

After Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, they found evidence of al-Rahman's role as operational chief, U.S. officials have said.

I as many people believe that al-Rahman was killed as believe that Musharraf had Bhutto offed (It's been rep[orted widely in Pakistan that two senior police officers arrested for alleged dereliction of duty apparently told investigators that Musharraf himself had ordered the removal of a security detail on the day of her death.) And no one really knows whether al-Rahman was really killed by an American drone or not... but whether he was or he wasn't, a growing number of Pakistanis are sick and tired of American aid with CIA strings, aid that never seems to dribble down to society at large, but always winds up in the Swiss bank accounts of a small, corrupt elite-- and in the coffers of well-connected U.S. firms. The middle class here was very American-centric before 9/11. It isn't any more.

Quote of the day: Say good night, Pervez

"I hope the nation and the people will forgive my mistakes."

-- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, announcing
in a televised address today that, as expected, he will resign

by Ken

Considering the mountain of all but insoluble problems Musharraf leaves behind, this seems like kind of a small gesture of apology buried in that hourlong speech. Still, it's more than we got from Richard Nixon when he resigned a step or two ahead of being booted out of the White House in disgrace, and it's more than we're likely to get when the current occupant finally ceases disgracing the office he stole.

According to the AP account,

Musharraf said he would turn in his resignation to the National Assembly speaker Monday. It was not immediately clear whether it would take effect the same day. Mohammedmian Soomro, the chairman of the upper house of parliament, was poised to take over in the interim.

It remains an open question whom parliament will elect to succeed Musharraf, partly because the ruling coalition has vowed to strip the presidency of much of its power.

There is speculation that both Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, the leaders of the two main parties, are interested in the role. However, neither has openly said so.

It was also unclear whether Musharraf would stay in Pakistan or go into exile.

#

BYE-BYE BUSHARRAF-- PAKISTANI VOTERS OBLITERATE MUSHARRAF'S POLITICAL PARTY

Sometimes you can't plausibly steal an election unless it's close. Bush came close and his team moved in for the kill in 2000 and again in 2004. In 2006 all Al Wynn had to do was show up with a couple of stuffed ballot boxes the morning after and he was "re-elected;" this year Donna Edwards was slaughtering him so badly from the first precincts counted that it just couldn't be done.

I was surprised last night to read that Musharraf's party was devastated at the polls in Pakistan yesterday. We all read how the fix was in and the election would be stolen. Apparently, the defeat was so massive that there was nothing they could do short of declaring martial law again-- and we'll have to wait and see what transpires later in the week on that front. Musharraf once joked with John King on the Daily Show that Bush wouldn't be elected mayor of Karachi-- even if his opponent was Osama bin-Laden. The joke was on Musharraf, who was so closely identified with the detested Bush, that Pakistanis symbolically did what everyone in the world wants to do-- give Bush a big thumbs down-- by voting against Musharraf, often referred to in Pakistan as Busharraf.

Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him.

Early results showed equal gains for the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose leader, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated on Dec. 27, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the faction led by Nawaz Sharif, like Ms. Bhutto a former prime minister. Each party may be in a position to form the next government.

Unofficial results show the Pakistan Peoples Party with 110 seats, Sharif's party with around 100 seats and Musharrif's Muslim League-Q holding on to between 20 and 30 in the 272 National Assembly. The religionist nut parties in some of the backward areas of the country also suffered at the polls. Demands for Musharraf to step down have already begun and are expected to accelerate in coming days.

WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHO KILLED BHUTTO-- DESPITE WHAT BUSHARRAF CLAIMS

In the 5th grade my friend Larry Goldstein had a real dullard of a canary named Perry. Perry wasn't much but he certainly could have been as effective a CNN Pentagon correspondent as Barbara Starr, who's an excruciating embarrassment even to CNN-style pretend-journalism. Within minutes of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Starr was on CNN worldwide-- and in Myanmar where I was at the time, real news channels are banned and only CNN is allowed, so I had no choice-- spewing out the official Bush Regime line about how the bogeyman al-Qaeda killed her, with subtle implications that they'll kill you too if you don't elect an Insider Establishment hack as the next president of the U.S. Was it al-Qaeda? Maybe. Was it Musharraf? Just as likely-- if not more so. He certainly had the most to lose by what was shaping up as a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) landslide in the elections. Aside from his job and his status, Musharraf stands to lose the source of the immense wealth he has managed to amass as head of state, as well as his freedom and even his life. (Recall that several former Pakistani heads of state came to violent ends, not least of whom was Benazir's father, who was hung by the military.)

Do I know Musharraf had her killed? Of course not-- no more than Perry, CNN, Barbara Starr and the Bush Regime know Osama bin-Laden had her killed. [Factoid: a recent poll in Pakistan showed that 48% of the people there support bin-Laden; not sure what the margin of error is on that number.] Musharraf's regime sure is acting like they killed her! Within hours of the murder they had the site hosed down, destroying potential forensic evidence. There was no autopsy and the government is now claiming she died by hitting her head on the sunroof-- and discounting the eye-witness reports of bullets entering the neck and bullets exiting from the back of the skull... and all the blood. Must have been one nasty bump! Doctors at the hospital where she was taken are being told to keep their mouths shut.

Pakistan isn't exactly a country built on laws. It was created as a Muslim state and has been a hellhole ever since. Recently the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was arrested for being independent and all the Supreme Court judges were replaced by the military dictatorship. You want to believe anything these people say-- even if their pals in the Bush Regime and the corporate media demand we do?

At the urging of the Bush Regime-- apparently not distracted from it's simultaneous efforts to destabilize the recently elected actual democratic government of Bolivia, possibly even plunging that country into civil war (a hallmark of Bush Regime foreign policy)-- Musharraf says he's going to have the "elections" staged on schedule. Bush's spokesman says anything else will be a victory for terrorism and bin-Laden. Problem is, the next 10 days is unlikely to offer up a viable opponent to... Musharraf.

Now look, I have barely a jot of admiration for Benazir Bhutto. She was as corrupt as Musharraf-- if less brutal-- as much an American puppet, another collaborator with Islamic fundamentalist maniacs and completely ineffective as a leader-- speaking a populist game while playing a hierarchical/aristocratic/oligarchical one. Still, I'm not rejoicing at her death-- which serves the interests of all the bad guys. And the ideas of her 19 year old son taking over as head of the PPP would be nearly as absurd as Jenna Bush taking over as head of the GOP.

I just got back to Bangkok from Yangon. Myanmar's junta appears-- at least to westerners-- as clownish and heavy-handed in their propaganda, which seeks to connect those who espouse democracy and basic human rights to evil foreign powers existentially threatening all that the Burmese hold sacred and dear. They are a danger to the nation! Some buy the line-- although, according to the last discarded election, not that many. The U.S. government propaganda is far smoother, far more subtle and far more sophisticated... and far more successful. Pakistani propaganda lies somewhere in between. Authoritarian governments by their nature are never to be believed about anything. They shouldn't be tolerated-- not for a moment. When Bush stole the 2000 election and American citizens let it pass with barely a whimper from any quarter, we earned all that was to come. I hope we learned something-- but I doubt it, which is why Pelosi is a criminal for taking impeachment off the table.


UPDATE: MOTIVE?

Musharraf says there is "no need" for an international investigation into the assassination of Bhutto. According to one of her aides, she was planning to expose Muharraf's plans to use the Pakistani version of the KGB to rig the elections. That might have been a motive, no? Notice how many "democracies" have taken to vote rigging since Bush stole the 2000 presidential? Does Pelosi?

In the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, maybe only one thing is clear: The mess in Pakistan has gotten messier

Buses burn in Hyderabad, in former Prime Minister Benazir

Bhutto's home province of Sindh, following her assassination

It's still unclear exactly how two-time Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was murdered today following a campaign rally stop in Rawalpindi. It appears that she was shot and her car was the target of a suicide bomber--after the car had pulled away

It's even less clear who is behind the assassination. If we set aside the possibility that President Pervez Musharraf--who is at once the U.S.'s best friend in Pakistan and no friend at all--was involved, and it's not at all clear that this possibility can be set aside, it seems likelier that the movers were supporters rather than opponents of the president. (U.S. policymakers have been trying to ram a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance down the throats of the Pakistanis.)

I've seen it suggested that Bhutto as a martyr may serve the democratic cause in Pakistan more than she ever did in her manipulative and corrupt political life. It's hard to see in the short term, though, where a meaningful pro-democracy movement might come from in Pakistan.

A few things seem relatively clear:

(1) The country was already both a human disaster zone and a powder keg--a nuclear powder keg at that.

(2) The mess is even worse today. The country was already in a state of emergency, and President Musharraf now has the perfect excuse clamp down even further. The scheduled election seems an all-but-certain casualty.

(3) It would be hard to imagine anyone less competent to have a positive influence on the situation than the babbling criminal psychopaths in charge of our foreign policy, who have done more to promote the cause of anti-American terrorism than Osama bin-Laden could ever have dreamed of. (Howie was just writing about the mess that the Bush regime has made of our policy toward Pakistan--dumping $5 billion in without achieving any result, unless you count deepening and hardening anti-Americanism.

THE PAKISTANIS SAW THE BUBBLEHEAD FROM TEXAS COMING A MILE AWAY-- WILL BUSH BE FORCED TO PAY BACK THE $5 BILLION HE WASTED?

If you watched The Daily Show when John Stewart had the smooth and chatty military dictator Pervez Musharraf on as his guest, you probably got an inkling of the disdain, if not outright contempt-- in which he (Musharraf) holds Bush. He cracked up the audience by asserting that a Bush vs bin-Laden mayoral race in Karachi wouldn't leave the residents with any acceptable choices. But while Musharraf was cracking jokes at Bush's expense he was stealing billions of American taxpayer dollars from the clueless Texas clod. The Pakistanis ripped the Bush Regime every way from here to Sunday-- and then some.

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

One diplomat told the NY Times he wondered if the Americans hadn't been taken for a ride. You think? Is this another charge-- albeit a relatively minor one-- that can be added once Pelosi puts you-know-what back on the table? Sooner or later, it all catches up with you and I can't wait to watch it catch up with Bush and the disgraceful lot of rogues who peopled his illegitimate regime.

BUSH-MUSH-- THE LOOMING CATASTROPHE IN PAKISTAN

In the past I've written somewhat disparagingly about Pakistan with reference to my two trips to that country which I found so thoroughly unpleasant. Today I'll save my disparagement for George Bush and his bumbling, criminally incompetent regime. The highpoint of Bush's Pakistan policy was when he was asked in 2000 to name that country's president and he looked like a deer in the headlights; completely clueless. His regime has become no less clueless even though they now know very well the name of the Pakistani dictator. They have been dealing with the Pakistanis not just paternalistically, but as though they were just some bumpkins from western Nebraska. Bush, who has regretted most of his assessments of the foreign leaders who have effortlessly pulled the wool over his empty eyes, once called Pakistan's military dictator "a man of courage and vision." (Apparently Bush was impressed by Musharraf's charm, that he speaks English with more fluency than Bush himself, and that he made vague promises about democracy and other nonsense his advisors told him Bush was eager to hear.)

“He didn’t ask the hard questions, and frankly, neither did the people working for him,” said Husain Haqqani, an expert on Pakistan at Boston University, who has advised two previous Pakistani prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. “They bought the PR image of Musharraf as the reasonable general. Bush bought the line-- hook, line and sinker.”

Bush chit-chatted with Musharraf and came away believing he was a democratic reformer instead of a savvy and brutal dictator. Their relationship began right after 9/11 when an aide showed Bush a map of Asia and pointed out the proximity of Pakistan and Afghanistan, collectively, al-Qaedastan. Bush demanded Musharraf's pledge of assistance and Musharraf told Bush, who he views as a kind of pathetic clown, how many billions of dollars it would cost. Bush happily paid, Musharraf happily pledged... and that was the end of that. I guess that's unfair. There were a couple of times when it was expedient for Musharraf to do something that seemed to also help the childish Bushies. But just a couple.

The management of the crisis around A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program and a hero to those Bush blithely refers to as "the terrorists," was Bush's first disastrous blunder with Pakistan. Yesterday's Washington Post glosses over the abysmal handling of Khan by the Bush Regime. "Though Musharraf had a mixed record in delivering on promises to Bush, such as extracting information about the nuclear network operated by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, the president appeared to cut him a break on the theory that he was doing the best he could in an extremely dangerous and complicated political environment, the officials said." Musharraf's contempt for Bush grew by leaps and bounds as he correctly assessed that Bush is a weak and cowardly man, who was always eager to be given a face-saving, albeit meaningless, way out of any confrontation.

I was watching the Daily Show when Stewart asked Musharraf who would win an election for mayor of Karachi, Pakistan's most "westernized" city-- bin-Laden or Bush. He said they would both lose, "miserably."
Meanwhile, American taxpayers have been rooked for another $100 million, shoveled by the Bush Regime into keeping Pakistan's nuclear arsenal safe.

But Pakistan still refuses to allow US experts into its nuclear sites, the newspaper said, revealing information it first obtained three years ago but, due to a White House request, had not reported until now.

Headlines today around the world, though not in America, point out that when Bush sent a thuggish, supposedly scary deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte, to demand Musharraf "restore Democracy" (as though it ever existed in Pakistan to begin with; I mean Musharraf's military coup in 1999 was far more openly contemptuous of democracy than Bush's judicial coup the following year), Musharraf was defiant and stared him down.

Instead, Monday found Americans reading about how the Bush Regime, not having learned from past mistakes about arming our sworn enemies to fight other sworn enemies-- meet Osama bin-Laden-- is now planning to bribe and arm Pakistani tribesmen to "fight" al-Qaeda.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used billions of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, to carry out more aggressive military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the sporadic military campaigns Pakistan has conducted there have had little success, resulting instead in heavy losses among Pakistani Army units and anger among local residents who have for decades been mostly independent from Islamabad’s control.

American officials acknowledge those failures, but say that the renewed emphasis on recruiting allies among the tribal militias and investing more heavily in the Frontier Corps reflect the depth of American concern about the need to address Islamic extremism in Pakistan. The new counterinsurgency campaign is also a vivid example of the American military’s asserting a bigger role in a part of Pakistan that the Central Intelligence Agency has overseen almost exclusively since Sept. 11.

...The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some. NATO
and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. “It’s going to take years to turn them into a professional force,” said one Western military official. “Is it worth it now?”

At the same time, military officials fear the assistance to develop a counterinsurgency force is too little, too late. “The advantage is already in the enemy hands,” one Western military official said. Local Taliban and foreign fighters in Waziristan have managed to regroup since negotiating peace deals with the government in 2005 and 2006, and last year they were able to fight all through the winter, he said. Militants have now emerged in force in the Swat area, a scenic tourist region that is a considerable distance inland from the tribal areas on the border.

When is enough enough? When will the constitutional mechanisms the Founding Fathers put into place specifically to solve the problems caused by someone like George Bush getting into the White House, be allowed to go into effect? How much blame will be due Nancy Pelosi for the rest of the disasters Bush visits on this country because of her unwillingness to do her duty and allow impeachment to for forward?


UPDATE: WHO DOES BUSH THINK HE'S FOOLING?

America's weak and imbecilic excuse for a president, George Bush, was stamping his feet in support of Pervez Musharraf today. But who exactly cares what Bush says about this disastrous situation the two of them created? Pakistanis know that the brutal military dictator who rules their country with an iron fist isn't, as Bush called him, truly "somebody who believes in democracy." Like Bush, Musharraf hates and fears democracy. Bush has been clear that he wishes he could "suspend" it the way Musharraf has. But with his approval ratings down in the mid-to-low 20's his time for that has passed. Americans-- though not the creatures of the Beltway apparently-- finally know what's up.

BUSH, PAKISTAN, DISASTER, PELOSI, IMPEACHMENT...

On Tuesday I talked a little about a new book, coming out this week, DECEPTION: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons. One premise: not only did the U.S. know what Pakistan was up to, but that five U.S. presidents aided and abetted and willfully deceived the American public about the catastrophe being created in that unstable hellhole. Count backwards... then come forwards and keep in mind the stupidest, most ignorant, most willful, childish, irresponsible imbecile ever to get his hands on the levers of power has 15 more months-- 15 more months for what the NY Times reports one "senior administration official" said could be the "nightmare scenario" for the end of Bush's already disastrous term in office. (That's from tomorrow's Times,)

This morning's Times points out more American connivance in Pakistan, typically inept connivance that helped lead to the deaths of scores of Pakistanis yesterday as part of an assassination attempt against former (and possibly future) prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a convicted (by a Swiss court) money launderer with a long and an egregious history of incompetence and corruption, qualities the Bush Regime is overly comfortable with-- at home and abroad.

[T]he violence that greeted Ms. Bhutto on her return after eight years in exile and the finger-pointing between her camp and General Musharraf’s after the attack on her motorcade on Thursday has raised questions about whether the tenuous deal that the United States helped midwife can survive.

...Unresolved questions about the attack have added a new layer of distrust to relations between Ms. Bhutto and the government, as well as new uncertainties for the Bush administration policy.

On Friday, American officials acknowledged that there was no clear basis for confidence that the two leaders could work cooperatively. Now that Ms. Bhutto has returned to the country, they acknowledged that their control over events was limited, as Thursday’s bombing showed.

...“This backroom deal I think is going to explode in our face,” said Bruce Riedel, who advised three presidents on South Asian issues and is now at the Brookings Institution. “Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf detest each other, and the concept that they can somehow work collaboratively is a real stretch.”

Bhutto is widely viewed as the Bush Regime's pick to run the Pakistani show post-Musharraf. Want to take a guess how that's going down? No?... Then watch this graphic Pakistani report in Urdu or this shorter, cleaned up NBC News report:

Even some senior administration officials said privately and in a series of recent intelligence assessments that American influence over events in Pakistan was feared to be ebbing fast.

Some officials worry aloud that a year of unrest, violence and political intrigue in Pakistan may undercut Mr. Bush’s last chance to root out Osama bin Laden from the lawless territory where Al Qaeda has regrouped. Likewise, they fear, the unrest could cripple a renewed administration effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal, something that Bush administration officials worry about far more than they let on publicly.

And the same way that Bush deceived the American public about Pakistan's nuclear situation, he also deceived the public-- and possibly even himself-- about the strength of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their Pakistani (Pashtun) sympathizers/allies. "Bush and General Musharraf were publicly declaring that Al Qaeda’s ranks had been greatly weakened, and that the Taliban was a spent force" at the same time they were taking over effective control of the northwest part of the country. "Part of the problem of fashioning a forceful policy, critics like Mr. Markey say, was that the American approach to Pakistan was never sewn together as a whole. 'You had different parts of the U.S. government dealing with different problems,' said Mr. Markey, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations." Yes, welcome to the Bush Regime-- the same Regime which has never done anything right since taking power. They couldn't protect the country from bin-Laden on 9/11, after being warned; they have been incapable of-- or unwilling to-- restoring New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; they started an unjustified war which they have failed to win and have practically wrecked the economic backbone and social fabric of the country in the process-- not to mention driving America's status in the international community from top of the line to bottom of the barrel. And it could get worse because Nancy Pelosi has decided to take impeachment off the table. The Founding Fathers put it there for a reason, and George Bush is probably far worse than what they had in mind.