Report to Congress: Pakistan now the most Anti-American country in the world [Archive]

Bman

03-02-2005, 02:07 PM

I find it hard to believe that the CIA would "allow" 9/11 to happen. Perhaps be blind sided by some bullshit, but not out right know about it and just sit back.

Well, I used to feel that way too.. but it does appear that things like that have happened in the past.

"Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR" appears to make the argument that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor, yet , "let it happen"

Here is one review of it

The Conspiracies of Empire
by H. Arthur Scott Trask

"Finally I say let demagogues and world-redeemers babble their emptiness to empty ears; twice duped is too much."

~ Robinson Jeffers

Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
by Robert B. Stinnett
New York, NY: Free Press; 260pp., $26.00

The late Murray Rothbard often argued that far from being evidence of a "paranoid" strain in the American mind, belief in conspiracies as a factor in American history was usually not taken far enough. The truth behind most conspiracies, he alleged, was far more heinous and diabolical than even the most diehard conspiracy theorist suspected. While many have assumed Rothbard was only being half serious, a new book on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by Robert B. Stinnett offers compelling evidence that Murray had it right. The truth that emerges as one makes his way through this exhaustively researched volume is of an American political and military establishment whose brilliance is exceeded only by its utter lack of moral scruple or genuine patriotism. Sixty years after the fateful attack, Stinnett has uncovered, presented, and substantiated the truth behind Pearl Harbor. It is now clear that FDR did know the Japanese attack was coming. He knew more than a year in advance of Japanese plans to bomb the United States’ Pacific fleet at Pearl, and he knew more than a week before that the attack would come early Sunday morning. He knew because American naval intelligence had cracked the Japanese naval codes in the early fall of 1940, 15 months before the fateful attack.

The smoke had barely cleared from Pearl Harbor before rightwing journalists, cranky poets, and some Republican politicians began suspecting that somehow Pearl Harbor was all a set-up. Since then, revisionist historians have contended that FDR both provoked and welcomed the war; and some even charged that he knew of the attack beforehand. Establishment historians and government officials countered these charges by insisting that the attack was indeed a surprise due to a failure of American intelligence and incompetence in the naval high command. Stinnett quotes historian Stephen E. Ambrose who claimed, as recently as a 1999 Wall Street Journal editorial, that "the real problem was that American intelligence was terrible." According to Ambrose (who echoes the official story), the navy had not yet broken the Japanese naval codes, and the Japanese task force maintained strict radio silence on its way to Hawaii. As a result, "in late November, intelligence ‘lost’ the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet." Other historians have contended that the Japanese caught us by surprise due to faulty analysis of pretty good intelligence, bureaucratic squabbling among high-level naval officers in Washington, underestimation of Japanese daring and capabilities, and expectations that the attack would come against Dutch or British possessions in East Asia, not against Hawaii. Stinnett exposes each one of these theories to be false. For instance, he amply demonstrates that the ships of the Japanese carrier fleet engaged in daily radio communication with the high command in Japan, military commands in the Central Pacific, and with each other. Stinnett found out the truth by reading American naval intelligence radio intercepts of the Japanese transmissions. American intelligence did not lose the carriers.

How did Stinnett manage to uncover the truth when congressional investigations (in both 1945-1946 and 1995) failed to do so? The answer lies in Stinnett’s intelligence, integrity, and unflagging research effort (lasting 17 years), qualities that we know from experience are all too lacking in congressional investigations. But it also lies in a crucial Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the author in 1983. In that year, Stinnett learned of the existence of the Pacific War communications intelligence files of the United States Navy (a top secret file containing over one million documents relating to U.S. communication intelligence before and during the war). The author’s request was at first denied, but in 1994 the navy decided to declassify the records, or at least most of them. As the Stinnett soon discovered, key intercepts and documents were kept back, some were missing from the records, and other documents had been altered to conceal vital information. However, enough information was released, perhaps inadvertently, to enable Stinnett to piece together the truth.

American communication intelligence operations in the Pacific theater was primarily a naval operation. The intelligence network was composed of 21 radio intercept stations located along the North American coast from Panama to Alaska and on Pacific islands from Hawaii to the Philippines. As Stinnett demonstrates, well over 90 percent of all Japanese radio transmissions were intercepted by one or more of these stations. Once intercepted, these messages were sent to one of three regional control centers, two of which were also cryptographic centers, and from there they were sent on to Station US in Washington, the headquarters for naval communications intelligence. Of course, all official Japanese communications were in code. Diplomatic messages were sent in the Purple, Tsu, or Oite codes; naval communications in one of 29 codes called the Kaigun Ango, the most important of which were the 5-Num (naval operations), SM (naval movement), S (merchant marine), and Yobidashi Fugo (radio call sign) codes. Stinnett conclusively demonstrates that American cryptologists (codebreakers) had broken all four naval codes by October of 1940. (American intelligence had broken Japanese diplomatic codes even before: Tsu in the 1920s, Oite in 1939, and Purple in September 1940. As a result, cryptologists could intercept, decipher, and translate almost all Japanese diplomatic and military radio traffic within a matter of hours after receiving them. The decryption (decoding) and translating was done at three cryptographic centers: Station CAST on Corregidor in the Philippines; Station HYPO on Oahu; and Station US in Washington.

The resulting intelligence information was then sent to top U.S. military, naval, and cabinet officials, including the president (about 36 individuals in all). However, as Stinnett meticulously and thoroughly demonstrates, crucial intelligence information indicating a Japanese strike at Pearl was deliberately withheld from both Lt. Gen. Walter Short, commander of army forces on Hawaii, and Admiral Husband E. Kimmell, commander of the Pacific fleet. Roosevelt and his advisers had set up these two distinguished officers to be the fall guys for the catastrophe at Pearl. The story of their betrayal by friends and colleagues in the naval high command, all of whom knew of the impending attack and Roosevelt’s strategy of provocation, is heartrending.

In addition to the interception and decryption of Japanese radio transmissions, most of the radio intercept stations were equipped with radio direction finders (RDF) which allowed trained operators to pinpoint the exact location of specific Japanese warships once their distinct radio call sign was identified. By means of RDF, naval intelligence experts were able to track the movement of the Japanese carrier force as it approached Pearl Harbor. Stinnett’s findings confirm the truthfulness of the claim made by the Dutch naval attaché to the United States, Captain Johan Ranneft, that while on visits to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington on December 2 and 6 he saw intelligence maps tracking the movement of Japanese carriers eastward toward Hawaii. Also, his findings support the testimony of Robert Ogg who claims that while on assignment to the 12th Naval District in San Francisco he located (by means of RDF intelligence) the Japanese fleet north of Hawaii three days before the attack.

Perhaps the single most important document discovered by Stinnett is a 7 October 1940 memorandum written by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. McCollum’s memo outlines a strategic policy designed to goad the Japanese into committing "an overt act of war" against the United States. McCollum writes that such a strategy is necessary because "it is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado." McCollum suggests eight specific "actions" that the United States should take to bring about this result. The key one is "Action F" which calls for keeping "the main strength" of the U.S. Pacific Fleet "in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands." McCollum concludes his memo by stating that "if by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." Stinnett has little trouble demonstrating that the strategy outlined in this memo became the official policy of the Roosevelt administration. Not only was the memorandum endorsed by Capt. Dudley Knox, one of Roosevelt’s most trusted military advisers, but White House routing logs demonstrate that Roosevelt received the memorandum; and over the next year, Roosevelt put every one of the eight suggested actions into effect. He implemented the last one (Action H) on 26 July 1941 when he ordered a complete embargo of all U.S. trade with Japan.

Roosevelt’s summer embargo was the culmination of another very clever administration policy, namely helping the Japanese to build up their military oil reserves just enough to encourage them to attack the United States but not enough to enable them to win a long war. In the summer of 1940, Roosevelt took two actions designed to implement this truly Machiavellian plan. First, he signed a bill authorizing a massive American naval build up designed to create a two-ocean navy. Second, he required American companies to obtain a government license before selling any petroleum products or scrap metal to Japan. For the next 12 months, the administration readily granted export permits to American firms selling raw materials to Japan, and Japanese oil tankers and merchant vessels could be seen loading up on scrap iron and petroleum at America’s West Coast ports. Meanwhile, American naval intelligence, using radio direction finding (RDF), tracked the tankers to the Japanese naval oil depot at Tokuyama. Roosevelt’s strategists calculated that helping the Japanese build up a two-year supply of reserves would be about right. That way, if war broke out in the second half of 1941, the Japanese would run out of oil in mid to late 1943, just as American wartime industrial production would be peaking and her massive carrier fleets (100 proposed carriers) would be ready to go on the offensive. In July 1941, Roosevelt took the final step and, together with the British and Dutch, imposed an embargo on the sale of petroleum, iron, and steel to Japan (McCollum’s Action H). The trap had now been laid, and the Japanese were not slow to fall for it.

Stinnett does not ignore the moral dimensions of the Roosevelt strategy. How did those who knew the attack was coming justify the deliberate sacrifice of over three thousand American lives? A bone-chilling comment by Lt. Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, commander of Station HYPO at Pearl Harbor, provides the answer. In a postwar assessment of the attack made to a naval historian, he remarked of Pearl Harbor that "it was a pretty cheap price to pay for unifying the country." There you have it. Massive deception, lying, the sacrifice of military careers, the betrayal of friends and fellow officers, and the deaths of thousands of American servicemen – all is justified for the cause of inciting a peaceful people to go to war. Stinnett himself is far from being unsympathetic to Roosevelt’s strategy. He agrees with the pre-war interventionists that America needed to go to war against the Axis powers. According to Stinnett, Roosevelt and his advisers "faced a terrible dilemma." The public was overwhelmingly opposed to entering the war, and in a democracy the people are supposed to rule. Yet, Roosevelt believed this war would be both necessary and just. What to do? In the end, they decided that "something had to be endured in order to stop a greater evil."

Here we have yet another example of Americans making use of the doctrine that the end justifies the means. Americans are quick to deny the ethical legitimacy of this doctrine when it is presented to them as a naked proposition, yet there is no doctrine that they more readily turn to in order to justify morally questionable practices. Do not those who defend the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki argue as their first line of defense that it was morally justified because it saved American lives? And can we not expect to hear in the near future from those who can no longer deny the truth, "Roosevelt’s duplicity was justified because it was necessary to stop Hitler." The Christian’s response to this question was articulated by Paul two thousand years ago: "And why not say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’? – as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just." (Romans 3:8 NKJV).

We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Stinnett. Not only has he uncovered the truth behind Pearl Harbor, but in so doing he has exposed one of the greatest cover stories, or con jobs, of all time – American prewar naval intelligence and high command as keystone cop. After sixty years, America’s brave band of revisionist historians have been vindicated, while her servile crop of court historians have been pretty much disgraced.

December 9, 2000

Dr. Trask is an historian.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/trask1.html

Bman

03-02-2005, 02:09 PM

I wonder why this has been ignored, or what the full story was. Could it have been that Mohammad Atta's cover here was to help in the sale of drugs, when he was really a double agent planning attacks?

read http://www.madcowprod.com/

that is EXACTLY what the guy that runs that site has uncovered.

Fascinating

Bman

death2aq

03-02-2005, 02:10 PM

read http://www.madcowprod.com/

that is EXACTLY what the guy that runs that site has uncovered.

Fascinating

Bman

Well here is what one source is saying. They say the CIA claims he got his money from Iraq.
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1684.cfm

Bman

03-02-2005, 02:13 PM

read http://www.madcowprod.com/

that is EXACTLY what the guy that runs that site has uncovered.

Fascinating

Bman

Check this out..

http://www.madcowprod.com/index.50.gif

"If it weren't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics." --The Great McGinty

July 19 2004-Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

Based on an “investigation” notable only for failing to interview a single firsthand eyewitness, the National Commission on Terrorism’s report will totally ignore the big dirty secret lying at the heart of the 9/11 coverup: elite deviants trafficking narcotics.

Mohamed Atta’s ability to roam at will across America—despite having his name on the CIA’s terrorist watch list—was not due to official incompetence or bureaucratic snafu, but to Atta’s status as a good earner, in a lucrative drug trafficking operation which linked Osama bin Laden’sthugs and drug lieutenants to their equally-thuggish American counterparts.

Bob Simpson in Venice, Florida was contacted by the FBI three days after the Sept.11 attack. They questioned him closely about an Atta associate in Venice from the Middle East who owned a convenience store.

“I’m the day driver for Yellow Cab in Venice, and he (Atta) was in my cab a bunch of times in August,” explained Simpson. “The night driver had him even more than I did. The FBI was especially interested in a rich Saudi guy —dressed in Armani, shades, manicure, a gold Rolex— that I’d been sent to pick up at the Orlando Executive Airport. They knew he’d ridden in my cab because they’d gotten my cab number from a surveillance camera there.”

Saudis in Armani, Shades,& Gold Rolexes

Simpson drove to Orlando with a Lebanese man named Khal (who later left Venice in a hurry immediately after the 9/11 attack.) After the ‘rich Saudi’ and his wife cleared international customs, Simpson drove his passengers to one of Orlando’s finest restaurants. "All this Saudi businessman wanted to do was eat a nice meal…lobster, filet, food, lots of food.”

When they got back to Khal’s apartment in Venice, Atta and Alshehhi were on hand to greet the new arrivals.

Six weeks later Simpson picked up the wealthy Saudi’s wife at Khal's Venice apartment and drove her back to the Orlando Airport. When he arrived to pick up thefare he was asked to help carry a heavy chest down to the cab, so heavy it took two people to carry it. “It must have weighed at least 150 pounds,” exclaimed Simpson. “A big bald guy (Zacharias Moussaoui) helped me.”

What had made the chest so heavy? Curious, we asked a former intelligence operative.

“Gold,” he replied instantly.

"Don't use my name in Haiti"

Cabbie Simpson described several occasions when he drove Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi from Venice on one-way trips to the Orlando Executive Airport.

This places the two terrorists at the same airport where DEA agents brandishing submachine guns seized a Lear jet belonging to the owner of the flight school where Atta and Al-shehhi were taking lessons (lessons in what is anybody’s guess) at that very moment...
The agents found 43 pounds of heroin aboard the Lear jet of Huffman Aviation’s secretive financier Wallace J. Hilliard. The Orlando Sentinel called the bust “the largest seizure in Central Florida’s history.”

After we’d learned the whole story we discovered the bust had been an accident, carried out by low-level DEA operatives not clued-in to the protected nature of the trade. Nor was this the only time Hilliard’s name came up in connection with narcotics trafficking.“I flew Wally’s Turbo-Commander, a 698, twin turbo prop, till I got stopped one time in Haiti,” a former pilot of Hilliard’s told us.

Mind if we check the trunk?

“U.S. Customs and the DEA wanted to know the nature of my business. I was detained for 5-and-a-halfhours. They told me, ‘We stopped you and detained you because this airplane is known for running drugs in and out of the country.’”

Nor are we alone in our discovery of the officially-protected drug trafficking network.

FBI whistle-blowe rSibel Edmonds, in the months after the attack, bumped into the arms for drugs deals, she said in a recent interview with www.BreakFornews.com. Edmonds alleged that the US State Department blocked investigations showing links between criminal drug trafficking networks and the terror attacks on 9/11.

"Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because i twould have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign organizations," she stated.

In Venice, drug activity was conducted in 2000 and 2001 by “deep bellied Cessna,” Venice local Simpson told us. “One was even found abandoned at Huffman with traces of both cocaine and heroin. No one knew anything about it. I remember it really well because I was out fishing at 5:00 in the morning, when a plane swooped over us flying really low, and landed at the airport. I thought there was something funny about it, then later that day heard the plane had been abandoned at Huffman, and no one knew who or where the owner was.”

There is no record of this plane seizure in the Venice newspaper... But whether true or no, the idea that a drug trafficking network could operate with official sanction and protection on U.S. soil seems beyond the ken of most Americans.

And keeping it that way seems to be a primary objective both of the 9/11 Commission, as well as a disinformation campaign funded, amazingly, by Saudi Arabian billionaire arms peddler Adnan Khashoggi, who was recently discovered to have been behind dubious funding of the Toronto “9/11 inquiry.” His donation was washed through one of his employees, author John Gray (Men are fromVenus; Women are from Mars).

Khashoggi’s involvement in the International 9/11 Inquiry was discovered through the efforts of two of the most-respected researchers in attendance, Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky and German author Mathias Broeckers.

“That a conference of investigators probing to learn the truth about the 9/11 attack could be funded by the very people supposedly being investigated came to me as quite a surprise,” Broeckers told us.

'The boys 'will be 'the boys'

“My suspicions were aroused when the keynote speech was given by ‘relationship guru’ John Gray. In a conference on 9/11, what does “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” have to teach us about the identities of those responsible for murdering 3000 human beings?”

“Someone told me,‘‘I believe he donated money to the Inquiry,” Broeckers said.

Fey author John Gray’s business is actually owned by Adnan Khashoggi. Gray is being sued with Khashoggi in a financial scam they allegedly participated in involving Genesis Intermedia, a company incorporated by Michael Roy Fugler.

Before he became one of Adnan Khashoggi’s henchmen, Fugler was the lawyer for the biggest drug smuggler in American history, Barry Seal.

Seal of course was the chief pilot—until his assassination in 1986, reportedly at Vice President Bush’s behest—in the weapons-and-drug scandal that came to be known as Iran Contra. Khashoggi played a key role brokering illegal weapons trafficf rom the United States to Iran. And Michael Roy Fugler, as already stated, is suing us for emotional distress over alleged inaccuracies in his portrayal in our book, “Barry & the boys.”

Is anybody discerning a pattern here?

Hadn’t anybody involved with the Toronto 9/11 Inquiry known? Well of course they had…

Nobody here knows nothing... except Bush Knew.

“Michel Chossudovsky (www.globalresearch.ca) told me he’d learned of the International 9//11 Inquiry’s shady financing two weeks before the conference,” said Broeckers. “He demanded thatthe organizers dump Gray. They told him not to spread ‘bad vibrations.”

“To say that John Gray is in business with Adnan Khashoggi doesn’t portray the relationship in quite the right light,” stated another observer, asking to remain anonymous. “Khashoggi owns John Gray. He bought his whole Mars-Venus shtick, his company, and now Gray works for him.”

This explains Gray’s interest in the 9/11 inquiry. Adnan Khashoggi must have told him “Terrorists Are From Jupiter.”

But why would a Saudi billionaire want to fund an inquiry into 9/11? Wouldn’t that be the last thing he’d want?

The answer’s in a movie by the great Preston Sturges called “The Great McGinty.”

McGinty is a homeless bum who learns the city’s Boss is paying $2 to everyone who votes in the election. McGinty then distinguishes himself by voting thirty-five times, whereupon the bemused Boss summons McGinty to an audience, where he tells him his ambitious display qualifies him to be a candidate in the next election… on the ticket of the Reform Party.

Puzzled, McGinty asks the Boss how he can guarantee the nomination of the Reform Party, when he, the Boss, is the man behind the incumbent party.

"Son,” replies the Boss, ”I am the Reform Party. Hell, I'm all the parties."

The Great McGinty could never get made in America today.

Perles of Hard-Won Wisdom

According to Seymour Hersh in a March 11, 2003 article in The New Yorker, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi met with Richard Perle in France while Perle served as top policy advisor to the Defense Department and Chairman of the Defense Policy Board in Washington, D.C. Hersh termed Perle “one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.”

With a long history of horse trading in Florida, Khashoggi will likely face increased scrutiny as the stock scam probe continues. Currently wanted for questioning in the collapse of a bank in Thailand, the debonair and free-wheeling CIA asset of yore, who haunted both Tampa and Miami in Florida for decades, is charged with the collapse of brokerages and MJK Clearing, the failure of which became the country’s largest securities service firm collapse.

The scheme netted hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of the investing publicand shareholders unaware of Khashoggi’s involvement in the company, which only became public when the SEC forced disclosure of the true owner of Ultimate Holdings Ltd. of Bermuda: Adnan Khashoggi.

Also on the board of the failed (and apparently fraudulent) Genesis Intermedia was the ubiquitous Michael Roy Fugler.

Fugler is today the director of corporate finance for I-Bankers Securities, an investment banking firm in Dallas that says it “concentrates on raising overseas financing for companies around the world.”

Overseas financing of the hard-to-trace kind

"Raising overseas financing” would seem to be just another way to say “Khashoggi,”a source explained, “and others who are trying to hide their identities behind a veil of anonymous-sounding investment companies.” This is one of the allegations which led regulators to halt trading in the shares of Genesis.

Although he would have to be considered a person of interest, there hasn’t been any speculation about Adnan Khashoggi and 9/11 for the simple reason that nobody in the U.S. Government ever issued an order to round up all the “Usual Suspects.”

In fact, President Bush’s White House let so many Saudi notables slip out of the country after the attack that occupancy rates of Presidential Suites in Orlando must have taken a nosedive.

Today we may be beginning to learn why. It’s a scary lesson about “the way things are” in America today.

When it was discovered that the Florida flight school that the terror pilots flying both of the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center Towers had attended was being run as a Continuing Criminal Enterprise--at the same time they were there-- questions might have been raised, in some countries...

Just not this one.

http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6312004.html

Bman

03-02-2005, 02:16 PM

Well here is what one source is saying. They say the CIA claims he got his money from Iraq.
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1684.cfm

The CIA is convinced that Atta’s terrorist group must have been led by professionals from an intelligence service, perhaps Iraq’s. U.S. experts believe that during the two aforementioned Prague visits, the execution of the terrorist action was to be confirmed. Atta was to visit Prague a third time in April 2001. The Czech secret service received from one of its informers a warning that Al-Ani, the Iraqi consul, was to meet with a “distinguished Arab student” from Hamburg—this is information that up until now was top secret. BIS monitored the meeting: The men met in a Prague restaurant on the evening of April 8. To this day, it remains unclear whether this “Hamburg student” was Atta. Yet again, three days after that meeting, $100,000 arrived in Atta’s Florida account.

Well, why couldn't it have been Paki Intelligence?? That $100,000 seems to jibe with the money that the head of Paki Intelligence had transfered!

I don't see any Iraq connection... Lots of Paki connection though

Bman

Rightwingnut

03-02-2005, 02:27 PM

I don't see any Iraq connection... Lots of Paki connection though

Bman

Isnt that a dead horse yet? Havent we arrived at the obvious conclusion that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not attacked BECUASE of 9/11?

Bman

03-02-2005, 02:34 PM

Isnt that a dead horse yet? Havent we arrived at the obvious conclusion that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not attacked BECUASE of 9/11?

yes... I have arrived at that conclusion

The article he linked to was trying to dredge it back up

Bman

Rightwingnut

03-02-2005, 02:46 PM

This is all interesting, but aside from the simple truth that we should have put a boot on Pakistans neck right after we were done kacking the Taliban, the rest is all no more than a "What if" story.

Professor

03-02-2005, 06:39 PM

We are making the wrong friends. We would be better off being friends with Iran than Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

oxy

03-02-2005, 06:51 PM

ProudAmerican

03-02-2005, 07:45 PM

Don't we always make friends with the wrong folks that in the end comes back to bite us.

It won't be Iran, Iraq, Syria or N.Korea that drops a nuke on us, it will be Pakistan when Musharrif is assasinated and his Gov taken over by the people we are fighting now.

That is my biggest concern with Pakistan. Musharraf can't last too much longer with all the heat thats been on him, he'll probably be assasinated. If he is, thats when the shit will hit the fan with them.

Bman

03-02-2005, 08:40 PM

We are making the wrong friends. We would be better off being friends with Iran than Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

We would have been better off befriending SADDAM, than either of those three

Bman

ike

03-02-2005, 08:53 PM

Check this out..

http://www.madcowprod.com/index.50.gif

July 19 2004-Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

Based on an “investigation” notable only for failing to interview a single firsthand eyewitness, the National Commission on Terrorism’s report will totally ignore the big dirty secret lying at the heart of the 9/11 coverup: elite deviants trafficking narcotics.

What investigation? Who are these 'elite' deviants?

ike

03-02-2005, 09:00 PM

There are also conspiracies that suggest the CIA worked with Pakistan to "allow" 9/11.

Bman

There are also theories that Elvis was last sighted in Bum-fuck Egypt.

You have no credibility.

ike

03-02-2005, 09:10 PM

Well, why couldn't it have been Paki Intelligence?? That $100,000 seems to jibe with the money that the head of Paki Intelligence had transfered!

I don't see any Iraq connection... Lots of Paki connection though

Bman

You seem to have a hard-on for Pakistan. Tell us all at least, o' great one, what you think we should do about it? It's easy to say we should not have done this or that. Let's see just what proactive wisdom you have to bestow on the question of Pakistan.

death2aq

03-02-2005, 09:29 PM

Well, why couldn't it have been Paki Intelligence?? That $100,000 seems to jibe with the money that the head of Paki Intelligence had transfered!

I don't see any Iraq connection... Lots of Paki connection though

Bman

Sorry I had work to do and didn't get back to this till now. We know that a great deal of Pakistan is sympathetic of the AQ. What says that parts of the Paki intelegence isn't AQ? Hasn't someone been trying to kill the head of Pakistan repeatedly? So it could have been AQ operatives inside Pakistan that sent the money.

death2aq

03-02-2005, 09:39 PM

We are making the wrong friends. We would be better off being friends with Iran than Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

No kidding.

Bman

03-03-2005, 12:31 AM

You seem to have a hard-on for Pakistan. Tell us all at least, o' great one, what you think we should do about it? It's easy to say we should not have done this or that. Let's see just what proactive wisdom you have to bestow on the question of Pakistan.

That's easy.

Impose economic and arms sanctions and embargoes (and urge other nations to do the same) until the following steps are taken FOR STARTERS:

1. Turn Bin Laden over to the US
2. Turn AQ Khan over to the west for questioning to determine who he sold nuclear weapons technology to.
3. Allow elections and a legitimate governmet.... Bush is a laughingstock when he runs around preaching "democracy" but in the same breath calls Musharaff (recently included on a list of the 10 Ten worst Dictators in the world) our "major non NATO ally).

4. demand accountability and reparations from Pakistan for its role in 9/11

What's so hard about that?

Oh ,Pakistan has NUKES right?? So what?? So did the USSR but that didn't stop us from playing hardball with them and bringing about their collapse , now did it?

Bman

candypreet

04-06-2005, 09:07 AM

Mr. Drags

04-06-2005, 09:15 AM

This is all interesting, but aside from the simple truth that we should have put a boot on Pakistans neck right after we were done kacking the Taliban.
And that is the simple truth of it. But our dallying with the Pakis is only hurting us

OldGit

04-06-2005, 09:39 AM

Anti-US feeling high in Pakistan’

* CRS report says Musharraf likely to stay firmly in power in 2005 as Opposition divided

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Notwithstanding its cooperation with the United States in the war against terrorism, Pakistan is probably the “most anti-American country” in the world, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which advises the US Congress.

Pakistan is “probably the most anti-American country in the world right now, ranging from the radical Islamists on one side to the liberals and Westernised elites on the other side,” according to a CRS analysis up to February 14, reports the Press Trust of India.

While President Pervez Musharraf has vowed to “finish off extremism”, Pakistan’s Islamists routinely denounce military operations in the tribal areas, resist government attempts to reform madrassas, and criticise cooperation with the US, says the report.

According to K Alan Kronstadt, who is in charge of analysing Asian affairs for the CRS, increasing signs of “Islamisation” and anti-American sentiment add to US concerns about Pakistan’s domestic political developments.

The report says the lack of unity among opposition groups remains a serious constraint on their ability to pressure the Musharraf-led government to step down, the Hindustan Times reports. The CRS report says Musharraf and his supporters in parliament and the military are unlikely to relinquish power in 2005, and the factors behind opposition disunity includes an active campaign of “divide-and-rule” by the military.

“There are more than a few observers who see in Musharraf’s 2004 ‘shuffling’ of prime ministers evidence that the president lacks confidence in the sturdiness of his own system. Many also call the decision to maintain Musharraf’s role as army chief as damaging to his credibility. Thus, many foresee 2005 as a year in which Musharraf will continue to pursue a domestic political strategy of divide-and-rule,” says the report. The generals cannot govern Pakistan, but they will not let anyone else govern it,” one senior Western observer was quoted as saying.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_20-2-2005_pg7_7

My bet is that Bin -Laden is holed up in a Pakistani city right now. He'd find plenty to shelter him right now.

Bman

04-06-2005, 09:44 AM

My bet is that Bin -Laden is holed up in a Pakistani city right now. He'd find plenty to shelter him right now.

Well when they "caught" Khalid Sheik Mohammad (btw, what ever became of him??), he was living in a comfortable upscale neighborhood heavily populated by Pakistani military and intelligence personel.

Bman

OldGit

04-06-2005, 09:51 AM

That's easy.

Impose economic and arms sanctions and embargoes (and urge other nations to do the same) until the following steps are taken FOR STARTERS:

1. Turn Bin Laden over to the US
2. Turn AQ Khan over to the west for questioning to determine who he sold nuclear weapons technology to.
3. Allow elections and a legitimate governmet.... Bush is a laughingstock when he runs around preaching "democracy" but in the same breath calls Musharaff (recently included on a list of the 10 Ten worst Dictators in the world) our "major non NATO ally).

4. demand accountability and reparations from Pakistan for its role in 9/11

What's so hard about that?

Oh ,Pakistan has NUKES right?? So what?? So did the USSR but that didn't stop us from playing hardball with them and bringing about their collapse , now did it?

Bman
I doubt elections would turn up the right kind of victor in Pakistan to suit our interests Bman. The more that fundamentalist Islamists are kept away from power the better. In such an unstable country, you couldn't be sure some Taliban types wouldn't win. Remember where the Taliban came from.... I'm sure you know they were an invention of Pakistan's radical masses. Musharaff can sit on top of them for as long as he likes, as far as I'm concerned. As you know, I'd have been happy to see old Saddam doing the same in Iraq. He had them well nailed up - unlike now. We are infinitely worse off with that particular genie out of the bottle. Democracy is not where it's at - stability is. One man one vote in countries like Iraq and Pakistan could produce the kind of governments we haven't even dreamed of in our nightmares.

I think Bush knows this in relation to Pakistan, at least. How else can you account for the positive stroking he's handing out over in the land that just admitted the world's worst example of nuclear proliferation - ever. I think he knows that old Mushi is struggling with demons there, and that he's the only one who can put them where they belong.

OldGit

04-06-2005, 09:57 AM

Well when they "caught" Khalid Sheik Mohammad (btw, what ever became of him??), he was living in a comfortable upscale neighborhood heavily populated by Pakistani military and intelligence personel.

Bman

I think that some of the demons Musharif is struggling with are in the Pakistani Secret Service. AQ Khan couldn't have done what he did without considerable support from the organs of the state, and the Taliban were the creature of the Pakistani secret service. They are still supported from there. And just a shot across the bows of thiose who think the taliban are over - I saw a news feed yesterday detailing some outrage they'd committed in Afghanistan. I didn't read it - I'm too depressed about a job half done. What a shame Bush suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder and went elsewhere to play...

Bman

04-06-2005, 10:04 AM

I think that some of the demons Musharif is struggling with are in the Pakistani Secret Service. AQ Khan couldn't have done what he did without considerable support from the organs of the state, and the Taliban were the creature of the Pakistani secret service. They are still supported from there. And just a shot across the bows of thiose who think the taliban are over - I saw a news feed yesterday detailing some outrage they'd committed in Afghanistan. I didn't read it - I'm too depressed about a job half done. What a shame Bush suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder and went elsewhere to play...

While I agree that Pakistani intelligence most likely still supports radical islamic militants, I have no reason to believe that Musharraf himself doesn't support them as well..

Everyone seems to admit that Paki ISI is probably supporting the terrorists and that AQ Khan shipped nukes to Iran and North Korea (and met with Al Qaeda), yet Musharraf seems to get a free pass.. it was Musharraf who pardoned Khan before the dust on the revelations had even settled. It is Musharraf that now refuses to allow Khan to talk to foreigners, who have alot of questions regarding who bought what..

I see this as evidence that Musharraf has something to hide

Bman

Screw Hollywood

04-06-2005, 10:16 AM

Anti-US feeling high in Pakistan’

LAHORE: Notwithstanding its cooperation with the United States in the war against terrorism, Pakistan is probably the “most anti-American country” in the world, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which advises the US Congress.

I'm sorry, but that would be Berkley, California.

Spectre

04-06-2005, 10:22 AM

I'm sorry, but that would be Berkley, California.

:rolleyes:

Alli

04-06-2005, 10:23 AM

I'm sorry, but that would be Berkley, California.
:food_01:

OldGit

04-06-2005, 03:37 PM

While I agree that Pakistani intelligence most likely still supports radical islamic militants, I have no reason to believe that Musharraf himself doesn't support them as well..

Everyone seems to admit that Paki ISI is probably supporting the terrorists and that AQ Khan shipped nukes to Iran and North Korea (and met with Al Qaeda), yet Musharraf seems to get a free pass.. it was Musharraf who pardoned Khan before the dust on the revelations had even settled. It is Musharraf that now refuses to allow Khan to talk to foreigners, who have alot of questions regarding who bought what..

I see this as evidence that Musharraf has something to hide

Bman

While I wouldn't attempt to deny the facts re AQ Khan (though I think it was nuclear know how rather than actual 'nukes' he exported, I think we should recognise the battle Musharif has to fight against the fundamentalist mass inside government departments like the secret service. I suspect that he must tread carefully to remain in power. The fact is, he may be the best there is from our point of view, although that may not be what we want. AQ Khan is regardd as a great hero by most of his countrymen - after all, it was he that gave them the bomb to face down the Indians. How do you discipline a national hero? Probably rather lightly, if you want to remain in power.

Bman

04-06-2005, 03:57 PM

While I wouldn't attempt to deny the facts re AQ Khan (though I think it was nuclear know how rather than actual 'nukes' he exported, I think we should recognise the battle Musharif has to fight against the fundamentalist mass inside government departments like the secret service. I suspect that he must tread carefully to remain in power. The fact is, he may be the best there is from our point of view, although that may not be what we want. AQ Khan is regardd as a great hero by most of his countrymen - after all, it was he that gave them the bomb to face down the Indians. How do you discipline a national hero? Probably rather lightly, if you want to remain in power.

I contend that Musharraf has no desire to fight the fundamentalists.. Why should he?? As long as they are around he can keep the country from having elections.

People seem to conveniently forget that Pakistan was a modern democracy with a female Prime Minister until Musharraf overthrew it in a coup..I have to believe he did that because he (and the rest of the radicals in the military) felt that the country was too secular.. Indeed, its a well documented fact that the Paki's were supporters and even instigators of the Taliban... Why would Musharraf support the Taliban, if he was against muslim extremism??

You suggest Musharraf is protecting Khan because he's a "national hero".. I suggest Musharraf is protecting Osama for the very same reaon.

There's no "fine line" for Musharraf.. he's an extremist.. period...

Bman

jimb

04-06-2005, 04:41 PM

I have spoken of this before,80% of the Pakistan people are good people.Some Pakistan people needs the basic needs of food, shelter, and schooling and some trade. Unfortunately OBL terrorist supporters has given some of their youth in Pakistan some food and radical teachings of which we could had helped with to become a better people with them by teaching them to better themselves.

The people in Pakistan will not benifit from having jet planes that could drop nuclear bombs that our nation will sell to them and India also.

jimb

04-07-2005, 02:13 AM

I would like to add this too that the Pakistan people has been a great help when the USA needed their help for many decades. These are mostly good people in Pakistan who could had used some help other than jet planes that could carry Nukes.

OldGit

04-07-2005, 11:04 AM

Bman

04-07-2005, 11:54 AM

There could be some truth in this. In a way, I'm only arguing the case for Masharraf as an excercise - just exploring the possibilities of the situation. It's an interesting possibility about OBL.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

October 22, 2001 Monday
Section B; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 5

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE MOOD;
Support for bin Laden Is Still High in Pakistan

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ

QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct. 21

Glossy posters of Osama bin Laden atop a white stallion or brandishing a Kalashnikov are selling as fast as they are printed in Quetta's chaotic bazaar. Osama T-shirts and chocolates wrapped in his bearded face are popular, too.

Support for Mr. bin Laden and sympathy for ordinary Afghans being subjected to withering American bombing remain high in Pakistan, particularly here in the border region, which is dominated by tribal loyalties and religious firebrands.

Many people who knew little or nothing of the most wanted man in the world before Sept. 11 now regard him as a hero, not because of the attacks on the United States, but because the huge campaign to capture or kill him has elevated his stature.

"My 9-year-old niece asked me the other day, 'Who is Osama that he is so important?' " said Farkanda Mir, a literature professor and human rights advocate in Quetta. "This has given him a greater importance than he could have gained in 50 years."

After two weeks of American bombing of Afghanistan, with raids by Special Operations commandos into the Taliban heartland grabbing headlines nationwide, Pakistan is a country on the edge -- with the forces that could push it over rapidly accumulating.

Outwardly, the country seems relatively calm. Protests in the last week have been smaller and less violent than before. At a forum of business and political leaders here in Quetta on Thursday, there was strong support for the alliance with the United States and the effort to oust the Taliban. The reports of American Special Forces raids in Afghanistan did not inspire any immediate fury, because they were understood as unlikely to add to civilian deaths.

Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, continues to say there is popular support for his pact with the United States. But the police and paramilitary forces remain on high alert, and nerves are frayed.

The discovery of a bomb in a passenger lounge at Islamabad's airport today sent a shudder of fear around the country that the Qaeda network had exported its terrorism next door.

People from all walks of life share a deep anxiety about what the war will mean to them in the coming days and in the more distant future. They are worried that floods of Afghan refugees will overwhelm Pakistan's weak economy. They also are concerned that the rising toll of civilian casualties in Afghanistan will make it hard to contain the anger of Afghan refugees and fundamentalist Muslims on this side of the border.

"Only the criminals should be punished, not the innocent people," Yaqoob Shah, an official with the government tourism agency, said in his office, a bank burned and looted by anti-American protesters on Oct. 8, the day after the start of bombing. "History cannot forgive us for this killing of innocent people, and people here may not accept it much longer."

During the first week of American airstrikes, Quetta was a stick of dynamite with the fuse burning. Thousands of protesters rampaged through the streets, shouting anti-American slogans, smashing windows and torching shops and cinemas. Five people were killed by the police here and in a nearby village, and businesses were closed for days.

But the protest after Friday Prayers this week drew fewer than 1,000 people, and the volume of the shouts was many decibels lower, as it was at protests elsewhere across Pakistan.

The bazaar in Quetta seems to have returned to normal. On Saturday, women ventured into the streets for the first time in days to buy vegetables and bread, and men chatted about weather and sports.

Mr. bin Laden has even been good for business in some shops. Muhammad Akram, who runs a magazine stand, said he was selling 500 posters a day of Mr. bin Laden and could sell more if he could get them.

Behind the sale of such trinkets and the facade of normalcy, there are fears. "It is O.K. now, but I am sure there will be more demonstrations, and most people are still afraid to come out and buy things," said Bismillah Khilji, 18, a clerk in a blanket shop, in a view echoed by several other shopkeepers.

A more significant economic threat is the possible influx of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees. The United Nations said that 3,500 Afghans crossed the border at Chaman, 60 miles from Quetta, on Friday and that more were fleeing heavy attacks on Kandahar.

Pakistan is already home to three million Afghan refugees. More will mean new strains on the economy, so the government has resisted allowing the United Nations to provide food and shelter for new arrivals.

Mr. Shah, the tourism official, said a woman and her three young children came to his door in the village where he lives two days ago. They had come from Afghanistan and had not eaten for three days.

"This is a big problem, and not too long from now, the snow will fall and the roads will be blocked," he said. "These are innocent people who do not know even where America is."

It is hard for Pakistanis to envision a positive outcome to this war. They worry that a new government in Afghanistan might be hostile to Pakistan, leaving the country facing enemies on two borders. And they fear that Mr. bin Laden, dead or alive, will represent a continuing threat to stability in the region and the world.

"If he is killed, he becomes Osama bin Martyr, and if he is put in jail, it will create a thousand new followers to carry out acts on his behalf," Ramazan Khan, a currency trader, said as he counted a stack of $100 bills two inches high. "Either way he wins."

Bman

04-07-2005, 12:01 PM

Also, remember that Osama was wildly popular in Pakistan BEFORE the 9/11 attacks

After 9/11, he became God-like.. With the US powerless to capture or kill him, he's now Mythic

Copyright 1999 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Chicago Sun-Times

July 09, 1999, FRIDAY

NEWS; Pg. 42

Bin Laden inspires baby names

BY KATHY GANNON

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

While suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden is on the 10 Most Wanted List in the United States, Osama has become the name of choice for babies and businesses in Pakistan's fiercely conservative frontier province, a newspaper reported Thursday.

A survey conducted in the remote Dir region that borders Afghanistan found that Osama has become the most popular name for a new boy, the News said.

More than 500 infants in Pakistan's Khost region were named Osama after last year's U.S. missile attack on bin Laden's suspected hide-out in eastern Afghanistan, local officials said.

The reason for the name choice is that "people say they are impressed by the courage shown by Osama bin Laden in challenging and defying the United States and speaking out for the oppressed Muslims," the English-language paper quoted Mohammed Jalil, an Urdu-language journalist who conducted the survey, as saying.

death2aq

04-07-2005, 12:04 PM

set-it-straight

04-07-2005, 12:04 PM

@Prof

Interesting supposition. Iran is full of Shia and traditionally they tend to be less secular and at least as fundamental as the Sunni's. Shia are seen as heretics by the Sunni so they have a bit more to prove than say the mainstream Sunni's. So to climb into bed with the US would be tatamount to being apostate.

Bman

07-14-2005, 08:31 AM

I contend that Musharraf has no desire to fight the fundamentalists.. Why should he?? As long as they are around he can keep the country from having elections.

People seem to conveniently forget that Pakistan was a modern democracy with a female Prime Minister until Musharraf overthrew it in a coup..I have to believe he did that because he (and the rest of the radicals in the military) felt that the country was too secular.. Indeed, its a well documented fact that the Paki's were supporters and even instigators of the Taliban... Why would Musharraf support the Taliban, if he was against muslim extremism??

You suggest Musharraf is protecting Khan because he's a "national hero".. I suggest Musharraf is protecting Osama for the very same reaon.

There's no "fine line" for Musharraf.. he's an extremist.. period...

Bman

Seems I'm not the only one that feels this way:

Copyright 2005 International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune

July 12, 2005 Tuesday

OPINION

Little incentive to nab bin Laden ;
Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid

International Herald Tribune

LAHORE, Pakistan

The terrifying spectacle of a great city once again plunged into chaos and grief underlines one of the more glaring failures of the U.S.-led war on terrorism: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

Washington has mainly itself to blame. By transferring resources, satellite surveillance and manpower to Iraq, the United States not only took the pressure off bin Laden, but also gave the Taliban, Al Qaeda, drug barons and warlords time and space to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are causing the bloodiest summer since 2001.

But there are good reasons why some of America's frustration over this situation has recently been directed at Pakistan, which is feeling increasing U.S. pressure to get serious in catching bin Laden.

Gone are the days when U.S. officials said vaguely that bin Laden was somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is and that he is not in Afghanistan implying he is in Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who is now the U.S envoy in Baghdad, has been more blunt and said that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

President Pervez Musharraf's army has captured 500 Al Qaeda militants and handed them over to the United States, and has lost more than 500 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda in the rugged tribal areas. But the reality is that Musharraf has little incentive to catch bin Laden and it may even be in the military's interest to keep him alive, without necessarily knowing where he is.
Pakistan's military fears that its alliance with the United States is a short-term one, based on cooperating in the war on terrorism, while Washington's long-term ally in the region is India, Pakistan's rival, with which the United States signed a 10-year strategic defense pact on June 29. According to this logic, America cannot dump Pakistan as long as the war on terrorism continues and bin Laden remains to be captured.

The Pakistani Army is also angry at President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan for giving India a strategic foothold in his country and at the Americans for doing nothing to stop it. Pakistan's government claims that India is using Afghan soil to support an insurgency by nationalists in Baluchistan Province.

Pakistan's military is keen to maintain its political influence on the Afghan Pashtun population in eastern Afghanistan, something it has done since 1989 and is loath to give up.

So turning a blind eye to bin Laden's whereabouts and to Taliban recruitment inside Pakistan gives the army leverage over both Washington and Kabul. That leverage was evident during last year's presidential elections in Afghanistan: Only after a private meeting between Musharraf and President George W. Bush did Taliban attacks mysteriously cease for the duration of the elections.

At the same time, Musharraf's own political survival partially depends on not catching bin Laden. Pakistan is witnessing far greater anti-Americanism and sympathy for bin Laden than ever existed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The army's top brass has no interest in provoking the terrorist mayhem and increased extremism that would certainly follow if bin Laden is caught or killed on Pakistani soil.

Meanwhile Musharraf has kept the fundamentalists at home on his side by allying himself with Pakistan's largest Islamic fundamentalist parties, who idealize bin Laden and rule the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. If bin Laden were caught, the fundamentalists might break that alliance and leave Musharraf politically isolated.

So where is bin Laden? Mostly likely he is hiding wherever the Pakistan Army is not deployed in its thousands. In the northern areas, bordering China and Afghanistan, the Karakorum mountains merge into the Pamir range, providing a scarcely populated, high-altitude hiding ground. In Baluchistan, the army's presence is minimal and the Taliban are active. A third possibility is Pakistan's large cities, where all senior Al Qaeda operatives caught so far have been found.

The carnage in London on Thursday may be a long way from the machinations of South Asian politics, but the fact is that until the world's leaders take into account the fears that drive Pakistan's leaders and military including the perceived threat from India terrorism and extremism will continue to find fertile ground there.

*

Ahmed Rashid is the author of "Taliban" and, most recently, "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia."

sidthereal

07-14-2005, 09:14 AM

bump

Bman

07-18-2005, 01:21 PM

Copyright 2005 HT Media Ltd.
All Rights Reserved
Hindustan Times

July 17, 2005 Sunday 1:53 PM EST

Wana tribals chant anti-US slogans while burying jihadis

Hindustan Times

Islamabad

Islamabad, Jul 17 -- The attack by US forces in Pakistan's remote North West Frontier Province on suspected Taliban militia fighters has raised an outcry over US military actions in the regions.

Thousands of tribesmen shouted anti-US slogans while burying three of the 24 killed in a US missile attack inside Pakistan.

Mourners chanted "Long live Islam" at the funeral held in two villages in the North Waziristan tribal region, and said that the 24 killed were martyrs. They also said that entire Waziristan was ready for Jihad.

"These 24 people are martyrs and our entire Waziristan region is ready for Jihad. These people are Mujahideen and they are martyrs. We will not allow any foreigner (militant) in our area, but we will keep on helping Mujahideen," The News quoted Maulana Abdur Rehman, a local prayer leader as saying.

US coalition forces had earlier fired a missile from a plane on fleeing Taliban fighters who had launched a missile attack on a base of US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan's Paktika province. Pakistan's ISPR also said that the fleeing militants were killed on the Pakistani side of the border.

"The coalition forces had launched a major operation in Paktika province and those fleeing the area were chased and killed on the Pakistani side of the border," Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan was earlier quoted as saying.

The mountainous and tribal Wana region bordering Afghanistan is believed to be a hotbed of jihadi activities. Suspected Al Qaeda terrorists and remnants of the Taliban militia are believed to have taken sanctuary in the mountains in the wake of military offensives by the US coalition forces.

Local sentiments also run deep against Musharraf for its military operations against the jihadis, which the locals believe is being done at Washington's behest.

Overwhelmingly Pashtun in nature, the tribals are deeply conservative Muslims, and share common religious and ethnic roots with Taliban militia.

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:14 AM

What nations is the heart and soul of Islamofascism??

It ain't Iraq, dear friend... Any other guesses?

The New York Times

December 11, 2005 Sunday

Blasphemy Laws and Church Attacks Fuel Strife in Pakistani Town, Christians Say

By SALMAN MASOOD

SANGLA HILL, Pakistan

The people gathered inside Holy Spirit Church were quiet and somber. The altar was covered in debris. Pictures of Jesus and Mary lay in a heap nearby. Torn copies of the Bible were scattered about.

''We have never seen anything like this,'' Boota Masih, 48, said.

''We have wailed and we have cried,'' he said, of his fellow Christians in Sangla Hill, a dusty market town 140 miles south of the capital, Islamabad, after the church was ransacked.

A mob of about 1,500 Muslims -- urged on by local clerics who announced over their mosque's public address system that a Christian had desecrated a Koran -- not only attacked the church here, but also gutted a Presbyterian Church and one belonging to the Salvation Army. A convent school, a nun's hostel and half a dozen houses were set on fire.

The Nov. 12 attacks sent shockwaves through the country's Christian minority, leaving them with a sense of insecurity. And once again, blasphemy laws were blamed for worsening sectarian relations in this country, where Christians, Hindus and other minorities make up 3 percent of the population, while an overwhelming 97 percent is Muslim.

Under the penal code, desecration of the Koran is punishable by life imprisonment. Any insult to the Prophet Muhammad is punishable by death.

Many Christians say the laws are simply used to justify attacks on them, out of religious or personal animosity.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, visiting Pakistan in December, asked Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to review the law.

''My response is one of great shock, great dismay that this can still go on,'' Archbishop Williams said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation. ''It is part of the history of the abuse of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, which I think is widely recognized in this country as a major problem, which this country has to tackle.''

''The problem is not so much about the idea of a law against blasphemy,'' he said, ''as about a law whose penalty is so severe and whose practice gives so much scope for allowing people to settle private scores.''

That, some residents of Sangla Hill say, is what happened in November; 88 people have been charged with ransacking and burning churches and property, and 3 police officials were suspended for negligence.

A local Christian man, Yousaf Masih, 45, was identified as the desecrator, but in sometimes conflicting accounts, his relatives said the allegations were invented by a man who owed Mr. Masih a gambling debt. ''My brother is totally innocent,'' said one of Mr. Masih's brothers, Zulfiqar Humayun, 35. Mr. Masih is now under arrest at an undisclosed location.

But local Muslims say that on the day before the violence -- a Friday, Islam's holy day -- Mr. Masih set on fire a room used for storing old copies of the Koran after a shouting match with the man who owed him money. The next day, a local politician spread the account in a speech, and soon, the mob began its work.

The town's main Muslim cleric, Mufti Muhammad Zulfiqar Rizvi, a soft-spoken 63-year-old with a flowing dark-red beard and a curling moustache, said the mob was made up of ''people from outside.''

''Our religion, Islam, teaches us to protect the lives and property of minorities,'' he said.

Whoever they were, the attackers were methodical and precise. It took them just four hours to sweep through the town, leaving behind a trail of destruction.

Mr. Masih's house was gutted; the houses of two of his brothers were also set on fire. ''They used a special chemical,'' said one brother, Tariq, 27, describing a reddish-orange flammable substance that was splattered on the walls of his house.

Similar stains could be seen on the walls of St. Anthony's high school, where fire had blackened ceilings.

''I am broken,'' said the headmistress, Sister Anthony Edward, 68, a frail woman with a quivering voice. ''Ninety percent of the pupils of the school were Muslims. I don't know what is behind this.''

At the Presbyterian church, in a nearby neighborhood, the Rev. Tajammal Pervez was bitter. Several calls to police officials seeking security for his church and residence were unheeded, he said.

''It is the incompetence of police,'' said Reverend Pervez, 54. He was standing in the rubble of what used to be his bedroom. The charred roof had fallen in. Trunks and cupboards, their locks broken, had been set on fire; nothing remained except for the wreckage of burned furniture. ''A friend bought these clothes for me that I am wearing,'' he said.

Christians have been living for generations alongside Muslims in Sangla Hill, according to Reverend Pervez, and relations were cordial. But the violence changed everything, he said.

''The good are a few, the bad ones are more,'' he said.

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:18 AM

One country at a time, BMan.....patience....patience......

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:18 AM

One country at a time, BMan.....patience....patience......

You're right.. First we have to ARM Pakistan.... I wouldn't want Lockheed Martin to go wanting.. especially when Pakistan has $1 billion in US tax dollars burning a hole in their pockets, thanks to Bush

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:20 AM

You're right.. First we have to ARM Pakistan.... I wouldn't want Lockheed Martin to go wanting.. especially when Pakistan has $1 billion in US tax dollars burning a hole in their pockets, thanks to Bush

Pakistan ain't gonna be attacking the U.S. anytime soon....

patience....

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:20 AM

Pakistan ain't gonna be attacking the U.S. anytime soon....

patience....

They already did.. On 9/11

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:22 AM

They already did.. On 9/11

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~villains/graphics/cancerman.jpg

:add09:

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:24 AM

[IMG]

:add09:

Haha.. I notice you won't challenge me on that claim...

Wise move

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:25 AM

:add09:

The Independent

December 7, 2005

TEXTBOOK WITHDRAWN FOR PRAISING BUSH

Justin Huggler

The Pakistan government has ordered school textbooks to be withdrawn after it emerged they included a crudely written poem in praise of US President George Bush.

At first sight, 'The Leader' extols the virtues of an unnamed political leader, but on closer examination it turns out that the poem is 'acrostic': the first letters of each line spell out 'President George W Bush'.

Several Pakistani newspapers printed the poem, and President Pervez Musharraf's critics seized on it as evidence that his regime is in the pocket of the US. They accused the government of deliberately including the poem in an attempt to puff Mr Bush.

But the education ministry said the truth behind the poem's inclusion is more prosaic " though still embarrassing. It says the textbook's authors stole it off the internet without realising the poem had anything to do with President Bush.

The poem was included in an English language text book for 16-year-olds. If it was knowingly used by the authorities, it would certainly amount to glorifying Mr Bush. It describes him as 'Bracing for war, yet praying for peace/Using his power so evil will cease'.

But what is not clear is how the verse was supposed to improve students' English. Written in rhyming couplets, it includes language as clumsy as: 'Going forward and knowing he's right/Even when doubted for why he would fight'; and as vapid as 'Easy in manner, solid as steel/Strong in his faith, refreshingly real'.

The education ministry said the poem's inclusion in the textbook was unacceptable, and accused the book's authors of 'oversight' and 'negligence'. The books will now be replaced.

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:26 AM

Haha.. I notice you won't challenge me on that claim...

Wise move

That was a challenge.....obviously you missed it.

The Pakistani government had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. Take it to the Conspiracy Forum.

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:28 AM

That was a challenge.....obviously you missed it.

The Pakistani government had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. Take it to the Conspiracy Forum.

Try educating yourself, fool

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:29 AM

Try educating yourself, fool

Haha.. I notice you won't back up that claim...

Wise move

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:31 AM

Haha.. I notice you won't back up that claim...

Wise move

I'm simply astonished that there are still Americans who are so ignorant, that they have no idea that Pakistan's intelligence agency was funding Mohamed Atta.

You're kidding right? I mean, you knew that, right?

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:35 AM

One more time, for the ignorant

The Guardian (London) - Final Edition

July 22, 2004

The Pakistan connection: There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up?

Michael Meacher

Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.

Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $ 100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?

Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?

Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1 2003. A joint Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in July 2003 stated: "KSM appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden." According to the report, the clear implication was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities.

The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency apparently recognised the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there. Yet the New York Times has since noted that "American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl . . . but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.

A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying: "My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included (terrorist) money laundering, detailed and date-specific information . . . if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country (the US) . . . and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up".

Furthermore, the trial in the US of Zacharias Moussaoui (allegedly the 20th hijacker) is in danger of collapse apparently because of "the CIA's reluctance to allow key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to testify at the trial". Two of the alleged conspirators have already been set free in Germany for the same reason.

The FBI, illegally, continues to refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And the US government still refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a recent report on 9/11.

It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this . . . To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because . . . it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of." Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

With CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA.

Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence, has said: "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing . . . by a sovereign foreign government." In that context, Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services, observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."

That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists later on the day itself: "I was stunned . . . that there were al-Qaida operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida." It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. He was environment minister 1997-2003

massonm@parliament.uk

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 11:45 AM

I'm simply astonished that there are still Americans who are so ignorant, that they have no idea that Pakistan's intelligence agency was funding Mohamed Atta.

You're kidding right? I mean, you knew that, right?

*yawn*

Not that old story....puhleeze......

First, the reports of General Mahmoud Ahmad's involvement comes from an Indian news source..the Guardian got their story from this source. An Indian news source about a Pakistani intelligence agency. India and Pakistan are not the best of friends.

Second, General Mahmoud Ahmad reportedly had a meeting with Democratic Senator Bob Graham on the day of 9-11....the conspiracy is DEEPER than we thought....

Bman

12-13-2005, 11:53 AM

*yawn*

Not that old story....puhleeze......

First, the reports of General Mahmoud Ahmad's involvement comes from an Indian news source..the Guardian got their story from this source. An Indian news source about a Pakistani intelligence agency. India and Pakistan are not the best of friends.

Wall Street Journal CONFIRMED that story with US sources

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001298

Yesterday we noted a report from a Pakistani newspaper that Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad had been fired as head of Islamabad's Inter-Services Security agency after U.S. linked him to a militant allied with terrorists who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in 1999. Now the Times of India says Ahmad is connected to the Sept. 11 attacks:

Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd.

Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.

JustAVoice

12-13-2005, 12:00 PM

Wall Street Journal CONFIRMED that story with US sources

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001298

You should read your story better....

that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced
...
sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link

btw, in fairness, I don't necessarily discount that there may well be rougue Pakistani agents (Abdul Qadeer Khan comes to mind)....Pakistan was not an ally of the U.S. before 9-11. But I doubt that they are really working in conjuction and with the full support of the Pakistani government right now.

The U.S. sometimes has to make friends with one enemy in order to fight another....that's the nature of the geopolitical world we live in.

Bman

12-13-2005, 12:04 PM

You should read your story better....

btw, in fairness, I don't necessarily discount that there may well be rougue Pakistani agents (Abdul Qadeer Khan comes to mind)....Pakistan was not an ally of the U.S. before 9-11. But I doubt that they are really working in conjuction and with the full support of the Pakistani government right now.

The U.S. sometimes has to make friends with one enemy in order to fight another....that's the nature of the geopolitical world we live in.

You don't do well with reading comprehension, do you? Here is the quote:

Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief

Senior government sources CONFIRMED.... What did they confirm?

They confirmed that a LINK has been established between the money transfer and the role of the ISI chief, and they confirmed that Indian intelligence "contributed significantly" to establishing that link

Bman

01-02-2006, 09:46 PM

Pakistan's radical clerics stare down Musharraf
By Massoud Ansari, Karachi
January 3, 2006

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/01/02/w_pak_0301.jpg
Religious students gather on the roof of a seminary in Islamabad.

RADICAL clerics have ignored an edict to expel foreign students from Pakistan's madrassas, religious schools, heightening fears that they will continue to serve as recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists.

After the July 7 London bombings, in which three out of four suicide bombers were of Pakistani origin, President Pervez Musharraf promised the West foreigners would be excluded from the schools. Two bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, are believed to have visited madrassas.

General Musharraf then ordered that all non-Pakistanis be expelled by the end of 2005. But he backed down in the subsequent battle of wills with Islamists and the deadline passed on Saturday.

Western intelligence agencies suspect that madrassas served as rendezvous points between al-Qaeda operatives and Tanweer, Khan and other British recruits.

The general relented last Thursday after clerics said they would rather be jailed than comply with orders to expel foreigners or give their names to the authorities. Hanif Jalandhri, the head of the Federation of Madrassas, said that about 1000 foreign students had left since July. Of the 700 who remained, those facing forced repatriation saw themselves as victims of the President's efforts to curry favour with America and Britain.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a cleric who heads Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, known for its close ties to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, said: "We'll do our best to keep the students with us and prefer arrest to giving the foreigners to police."

The Interior Ministry abruptly dropped threats to arrest violators and then denied that there had been any ultimatum.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader accused General Musharraf of violating both the constitution and the UN Convention on Human Rights by forcing out students in the absence of evidence they committed crimes.

Qari Hanif Jalhandri, the general secretary of the Union of Seminaries, vowed that the measure would be contested in the courts if students were deported. "It is a black law and we are confident that the court's decision would go in our favour."

December 31 was also supposed to be the deadline for every madrassa to register with the Government. On Saturday, however, only about 6000 of the 20,000 or so had done so.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/pakistans-radical-clerics-stare-down-musharraf/2006/01/02/1136050393236.html#

JustAVoice

01-02-2006, 10:38 PM

Let me guess....you're on the Pakistani Islamic Radicals side....

Bman

01-02-2006, 10:44 PM

Let me guess....you're on the Pakistani Islamic Radicals side....

No sir. I favor a hard line on Pakistan, including freezing of all aid, the outlawing of commerce and trade with Pakistan and increased measures of isolation up to and including a full military blockade, until the country agrees to hand over Bin Laden, close the terrorist camps and freeze the assets of al Qaeda.

The President, however, has named Pakistan a "Major Non NATO" ally, increased aid to Pakistan, authorized the sales of advanced fighters and forgiven 10s of billions in debt.

What ever happened to the Bush Doctrine?

kosotone

01-03-2006, 02:43 AM

Well there are conspiracy theorists out there that suggest the CIA works closely with Paki intelligence to control the lucrative sale of narcotics in Asia....

There are also conspiracies that suggest the CIA worked with Pakistan to "allow" 9/11. We do know that the head of Paki intelligence (who had wired $100,000 to Mohammad Atta a few months before 9/11) WAS MEETING WITH US Intelligence officials on 9/11. That director was forced out by Musharaff in late fall , 2001 when news of the $100,000 wire transfer broke. After that, the story just "went away"

Any, I don't know about all that... The only thing I know is that NO COUNTRY BENEFITTED MORE than Pakistan from 9/11.

Bman

Don't forget the head of Paki Intel was killed in an airplane crash shortly after 9/11. KSM gave his name up..

jimb

01-03-2006, 02:55 AM

Stupid Bushers: The way to be a brother to Muslims is to promote peace in the world and to promote respect for their ways and to treat them as good as a Jew.

Pakistan people wanted to trade with the USA and to be able to have food and shelter. Pakistan people are thirsty for schooling for some health and pride. This is what most Muslims would like.

Bman

01-03-2006, 08:39 AM

Don't forget the head of Paki Intel was killed in an airplane crash shortly after 9/11. KSM gave his name up..

I don't think it was the head of Paki intelligence, General Ahmad. He's still alive

You're referring to the death of Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistani Air Force Chief. His death was one of four mysterious deaths following 9/11 that have been linked together by author Gerald Posner

Three prominent members of the Saudi royal family die in mysterious circumstances. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a nephew of the Saudi king, prominent businessman, and owner of the winning 2002 Kentucky Derby horse, is said to die of a heart attack at the age of 43. The next day, Prince Sultan bin Faisal, another nephew of the king, dies driving to Prince Ahmed's funeral. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki supposedly “dies of thirst” in the Arabian desert. Seven months later, on February 20, 2003, Pakistan's air force chief, Mushaf Ali Mir, dies in a plane crash in clear weather, along with his wife and closest confidants.

Controversial author Gerald Posner implies that all of these events are linked together and the deaths are not accidental, but have occurred because of the testimony of captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida in March 2002 (see March 31, 2002). The deaths all occurred not long after the respective governments were told of Zubaida's confessions. Only one other key figure named by Zubaida remains alive: Saudi Intelligence Minister Prince Turki al-Faisal. Posner says, “He's the J. Edgar Hoover of Saudi Arabia,” too powerful and aware of too many secrets to be killed off. Prince Turki lost his intelligence minister job ten days before 9/11, and is later made Saudi ambassador to Britain, giving him diplomatic immunity from any criminal prosecution. [Posner, 2003, pp 190-94; Time, 8/31/03]

http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=pakistan+crash&events=on&entities=on&articles=on&topics=on&timelines=on&projects=on&titles=on&descriptions=on&dosearch=on

Bman

04-04-2006, 09:31 AM

Good thing W. is selling them fighters!!!

:add09:

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

World

Pakistanis view US as military threat: Survey

Press Trust of India/ Associated Press

Washington, June 4: A large number of Pakistanis view the US as a potential future military threat, the 2003 Global Attitudes Survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press noted.

Nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of respondents in Pakistan say they have "a lot of confidence" in Osama bin Laden to "do the right thing regarding world affairs," and another 21 per cent say they have "some" confidence. Just 27 per cent say they have little or no confidence in the al-Qaeda leader.

America's image continues to suffer in Pakistan. Just 13 per cent have a favourable opinion of the US, while 81 per cent feel unfavourably. Most of those with a negative view say it is mostly because of US President George W Bush, not a more general problem with the United States.

Nearly half (47 per cent) say they are "very worried" that the US could become a military threat to Pakistan some day.

Sixty per cent of respondents think Iraqis will be in worse shape with Saddam Hussein out of power; just 17 per cent say things will be better for the Iraqi people now.

Only 16 per cent support the US-led war on terrorism.

Fifty-seven percent believe that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists. Just 23 per cent are more optimistic that the two can coexist successfully.

Three-quarters say Islam should play a very large role in the political life of Pakistan, the highest rate of 14 Muslim states studied. Just 35 per cent think Islam currently plays a very large role in their nation's political life.

URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=21901

candypreet

04-04-2006, 09:39 AM

very good posts here

SCHICK

04-04-2006, 10:23 AM

Good thing W. is selling them fighters!!!

America's image continues to suffer in Pakistan. Just 13 per cent have a favourable opinion of the US, while 81 per cent feel unfavourably. Most of those with a negative view say it is mostly because of US President George W Bush, not a more general problem with the United States.

I would imagine.... the rest of the world feels the same way.

rabzon

04-04-2006, 10:37 AM

Bman

04-27-2007, 03:16 PM

Associated Press Worldstream

April 25, 2007 Wednesday 12:51 AM GMT

Jihadi media thrives in Pakistan despite promised crackdown, fears of Talibanization

By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD Pakistan

A newspaper warns that Jews and Christians are engaged in "genocide" against Muslims. A Web site says children should love guns instead of cricket. A video shows a child beheading a militant accused of betraying his comrades.

Despite government promises to crack down, hate-filled jihadist propaganda is thriving in Pakistan, especially in print and on the Internet. Critics say it is contributing to the demonization of the West and the "Talibanization" of Pakistan.

Some of the most vitriolic material is produced by affiliates of groups supposedly banned after al-Qaida launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and President Gen. Pervez Musharraf severed ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

"I feel it has increased and the tone has become more hostile," said Mohammad Shahzad, who runs a media monitoring service in Pakistan for clients including think tanks and embassies. "The level of extremism and fanaticism has gone up."

Shahzad said there are no statistics on the output of extremist groups. However, examples are plentiful.

Tayyabat, a magazine for women published by Jamaat-ud-Dawa which was proscribed as a terrorist organization by Washington last year says Pakistan's support of the U.S. war on terror amounts to surrendering to an America bent on eliminating Muslims.

"A white flag will not put out the fire from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They are thirsty for the Muslim's blood," an article in February said.

The group conducts extensive charitable works in Pakistan, but has well-established ties to the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which fights Indian troops in divided Kashmir.

A Pakistani government ban against the al-Rashid trust, an Islamic charity proscribed in February for alleged links with terrorist groups, has failed to stop the associated Daily Islam newspaper from publishing in Karachi. Its content is not overtly militant, but often inflammatory.

"Jews, Christians and their allies are engaged in genocide of Muslims but Islam is spreading and its enemies are losing their nerve," a recent article said.

Hardline religious propaganda is still far from the mainstream in Pakistan, where the thriving private media have, in particular, revolutionized TV with more liberal programming. But as in other Muslim countries, the call for jihad, or holy war, against the West has also gained resonance here amid widespread anger over the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Abdullah Muntazir, spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, defended the group as a peaceful organization exercising its right to freedom of expression. He complained that anyone publishing anti-American material in Pakistan is immediately accused of "promoting jihad."

But many observers worry that Pakistan's military-dominated government is doing too little to prevent extremists from publishing incendiary material that potentially drums up recruits and donations for militant attacks in Pakistan and beyond.

"There are laws against hate speech. They haven't even applied those," said Samina Ahmed, an analyst for the International Crisis Group.

"The fact that there are no curbs on them (extremists) or that the government backs down the moment there is the slightest resistance on the part of Islamic organizations has encouraged them to circulate their message."

Pro-Taliban forces appear entrenched in Pakistan's border regions, which are used by militants as a haven and recruiting ground for attacks on NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Islamist activists there issue draconian social edicts such as threats to barbers for trimming beards, and shops selling music CDs and movies often face attack.

But the boldest challenge to the government's authority is currently in the affluent and cosmopolitan capital, Islamabad, where firebrand clerics have launched a vigilante anti-vice campaign.

Last month, the clerics and students at the Red Mosque kidnapped an alleged brothel owner and forced her into a public confession. They then set up a court to impose their version of Shariah, or Islamic law, and threatened suicide attacks if the government tries to intervene by force.

In broadcasts on an illegal FM radio station, Red Mosque prayer leader Maulana Abdul Aziz warned his students would soon visit Islamabad residents to persuade them to burn "satanic things" such as TV sets. He also reportedly threatened action against diplomats' wives, claiming they were walking in revealing dresses around the Pakistani capital.

"We warn them to cover themselves like Muslim women before coming out from their houses, otherwise, they will learn soon how to cover their body," Aziz said.

Tariq Azeem, minister of state for information, defended the government's record against extremist media. He said any media promoting violence, including suicide bombings and sectarian attacks, were "totally illegal and will not be tolerated."

Some action has been taken.

Markets in key cities such as Peshawar and Karachi that openly stocked jihadist videos a year ago no longer do so although some merchants still whisper they can get them on request.

That is despite an increased output of videos promoting the stepped-up Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. In a shocking example last week, a video obtained by the Associated Press showed a boy beheading a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban leader.

Azeem said the advent of the Internet and the ease with which pirate radio operators can change frequencies made it impossible to clamp down completely.

The Web site affiliated with the al-Qaida-linked group Jaish-e Mohammed which was banned in 2002 still lavishes praises on those who fight jihad.

One recent post by a writer identified as Abu Khabib Mardanvi urged youngsters to shun the "dirty and useless game" of cricket and opt instead for militancy. "I pray that God may staunch the love of the bat from the hearts of today's youth and bless them with love for the gun," he wrote.

Bman

04-27-2007, 03:18 PM

The Web site affiliated with the al-Qaida-linked group Jaish-e Mohammed which was banned in 2002 still lavishes praises on those who fight jihad.

One recent post by a writer identified as Abu Khabib Mardanvi urged youngsters to shun the "dirty and useless game" of cricket and opt instead for militancy. "I pray that God may staunch the love of the bat from the hearts of today's youth and bless them with love for the gun," he wrote.

Sounds like a very sane individual wrote that

truthbtold

04-27-2007, 03:28 PM

freaks!!

Bman

05-03-2007, 01:43 PM

Sounds like the Paki equivalent of Rush Limbaugh:

CNN.com

April 29, 2007 Sunday 2:11 AM EST

For some Pakistani mullahs, the airwaves are a pulpit

By Suzanna Koster For CNN

SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan

Along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, the popularity of Maulana Fazlullah has soared since he began broadcasting his ultra-conservative beliefs.

The maulana isn't alone. He and other conservative religious leaders are finding a new pulpit to preach their ideas: the radio. The illegal use of FM radio by conservative religious leaders in the rugged tribal areas of Pakistan, where at least 138 stations operate, is becoming entrenched, analysts say.

"They preach Wahhabi Islamic faith, anti-American and at times anti-(Pakistan) government propaganda," says Altaf Khan, assistant journalism professor at Peshawar University, who has extensively researched the issue.

Wahhabism is a form of Islam preached in Saudi Arabia stressing the literal interpretation of the Quran. Wahhabis oppose listening to music and the depiction of people.

Women appear to be among the devoted listeners of Maulana Fazlullah.

A social worker in Mingora, speaking on the condition of anonymity, estimated that half of the population of the city and more than 90 percent in rural areas listen to the sermons by Fazlullah, who preaches in the city of Mingora near the Afghan border.

Another woman, a 26-year-old living in an area near the city and also speaking on condition of anonymity, says she listens to Fazlullah almost every morning.

"It is as if he is trying to awake us. He makes you think," she says, smiling from behind a black shawl that covers her hair and body.

The woman started wearing a burqa and does not even allow her brother-in-law to see her without it, which contradicts family tradition. She finds pictures un-Islamic, rarely leaves her home and vigorously studies the Koran. Formerly a nurse-trainee in 2001, she says she has forsaken all other education.

"He [Fazlullah] says only men need worldly education, to get jobs. Otherwise education doesn't give you much. It doesn't tell you about life after death."

Many girls have dropped out of school after hearing Fazlullah's sermons, says the social worker. "In the past six months I heard of two to three girls dropping out per week."

Such stories underscore sobering statistics. The national average literacy rates in Pakistan are low: 65 percent for men and 40 percent for women, according to the government.

The woman's uncle, a teacher, sadly shakes his head. "I am really sad that these mullahs are against female education," he said, having four English-speaking daughters.

Fear of extermination

Dozens of "Black Turbans," as the maulana's male followers are locally referred to, have used a little yellow cable cart to cross the idyllic Swat River to attend Friday prayers. They are joined by people traveling on foot and in cars and rowboats to be at the ceremony. Fazlullah himself arrived on a brown horse; the only attendant dozing off in the bright afternoon sun.

Fazlullah repeatedly calls for unity among Muslims and asks his disciples to refuse polio-drops, because, he claims, they are part of a Western conspiracy to wipe out the Muslims.

"How can people kill people in Afghanistan and be our well-wishers at the same time," Fazlullah's voice asks through a live broadcast hampered by cracks and squeaks.

It is as close as we can get; despite repeated requests for an interview, the maulana refused to meet a Western female journalist.

Fear of extermination by the United States is deep in Swat Valley.

"They are right next to us. Before you know it, it is our turn," says the well-off Qasim Shah, whose wife donated money for the maulana to build a new $50,000 religious school.

Underscoring the regional bond many people feel, Khan points to the ethnic homogeneity of the region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistanis in the NWFP and many Afghans near the Pakistan border are Pakhtoons.

"People from the same ethnic group are killed. Most of them have relatives on both sides of the border."

To preserve the society the way he sees fit, the maulana orders CD shops to be closed and television sets to be burned; such devices promote Western ideas, the maulana believes, says 38-year old Karim in Mingora.

The burning of TV sets led to the arrests of 25 people in the region in 2005, says Jamal Nazir Khan, administrative head of Swat. It was the only incident so far, Nazir said.

But Karim is concerned that the current peaceful sermons may some day lead to violence. "We know that this is just the beginning," he says looking out on the devotees from across the river.

Fazlullah's father-in-law, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, is the founder of the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM). Mohammad has been in prison since 2001 for fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. Some locals believe that Fazlullah is TNSM's new leader.

Women empowerment

For women, however, the maulana means empowerment.

"Before, I had only heard about men's rights," says a 28-year old college student and mother of three children. "But the maulana talks of equal rights for men and women. If men go outside they should ask their wives just as wives have to ask their husbands."

In socially conservative Pakistan, persuading her brother of this right is difficult, she says. "I tried to let him listen to this part of women's rights. He listened to the part of men's rights but when women's rights began, he stood up and left," she said, shrugging her shoulders while sitting on a bed on the large balcony of her house.

The maulana also emphasizes doing chores as a path to Allah's heaven. "He says that we should not do our house chores to make others happy, but for God," says the mother.

One woman, sitting inside her house's boundary walls, says she stopped gossiping after listening to the maulana. "Women didn't do anything, just sitting idle and backbiting. Now they listen," says the illiterate, gray-haired 55-year-old with enthusiastic verve.

Uneducated women are attracted to conservative ideas because of a lack of competing ideologies, says Robina Khilji, chairperson of the gender study department at Peshawar University. Educated women, Khilji says, use the conservative ideas to explain the social controls imposed on them.

Since women are generally not allowed in mosques in Pakistan, the radio broadcasts offer the opportunity to hear a religious leader. For women such as the 26-year-old, it is an exhilarating experience.

"He talks to us as if he is sitting in front of us," she says triumphantly.

candypreet

05-04-2007, 12:22 AM

good post

Bman

01-24-2008, 09:19 AM

World News
Pakistanis see U.S. as worse threat than al-Qaida, Taliban
By Jim Lobe
Updated Jan 23, 2008, 06:43 pm

WASHINGTON, (IPS/GIN) - Most Pakistanis consider the U.S. military presence in Asia and Afghanistan to be a more critical threat to their country than al-Qaida or Pakistan’s own Taliban movement, according to a survey released Jan 1.

The results of the poll suggest that the vast majority of Pakistanis would oppose the aggressive covert actions that the administration of President George W. Bush is reportedly thinking of taking against armed Islamist forces in western Pakistan.

The survey was funded by the quasi-governmental U.S. Institute of Peace and designed by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Only 5 percent of respondents said the Pakistani government should permit U.S. or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan to pursue or capture al-Qaida fighters, compared to a whopping 80 percent who said such actions should not be permitted, according to the poll, which was based on in-depth interviews of more than 900 Pakistanis in 19 cities in mid-September.

As a result, the survey did not take account of the tumultuous events that have taken place in Pakistan since then, including the six-week state of emergency declared by President Pervez Musharraf, the sacking of the Supreme Court, the return from exile of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, and Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination, which has led to the delay of scheduled parliamentary elections from Jan. 8 until next month.

To what extent those events may have influenced public opinion in Pakistan on the range of issues covered by the survey—particularly toward the Pakistani Taliban, one of whose leaders, Baitullah Mehsud, has been accused by the government of carrying out Bhutto’s killing—cannot be known.

But the underlying attitudes revealed in the poll, especially toward the U.S., can offer very little comfort to the administration, which has become increasingly alarmed about recent events in Pakistan—particularly Bhutto’s death, the Pakistani army’s reluctance to take on the Taliban, and intelligence reports that al-Qaida and its local allies, including the Taliban, have intensified their efforts to destabilize the government.

On Jan. 6, the New York Times ran a front-page article regarding a White House meeting on Jan. 4 in which top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reportedly debated pressing Musharraf and his new military leadership to permit the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Special Operations Forces to carry out more aggressive covert operations against selected targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the quasi-autonomous tribal areas that have come become increasingly dominated by the Pakistani Taliban who have more recently extended their influence into the Northwest Frontier Province. The U.S. currently has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan acting primarily in an advisory and intelligence capacity.

While some administration officials reportedly believe that recent events have persuaded Musharraf and the army that they need such assistance to curb the growing threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida, regional specialists both in and outside the administration have argued that such an intervention risked further destabilizing the country by triggering what the Times has called “a tremendous backlash” against the U.S. and any government that is seen as its accomplice.

Despite the nearly four-month hiatus since the survey was conducted by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Program on International Policy Attitudes, the findings would certainly appear to support the latter prediction.

While the survey found that a large majority of Pakistanis hold negative views of radical Islamists, including the Taliban and al-Qaida, and strongly reject their use of violence against civilians, their views of the United States and its intentions toward Pakistan appear to be considerably more hostile and distrustful.

A whopping 84 percent said the U.S. military presence in the region was either a “critical” (72 percent) or an “important” (12 percent) threat to Pakistan’s “vital interests.”

By comparison, 53 percent of respondents said they believed tensions with India—with which Pakistan has fought several wars —constituted a “critical threat.” Roughly 41 percent named al-Qaida as a “critical threat,” and 34 percent put “activities of Islamist militants and local Taliban” in the same category.

Asked to choose from a list of alleged U.S. goals in the region, 78 percent said Washington is seeking “to maintain control over the oil resources of the Middle East” (59 percent said it was “definitely” a goal, whereas 19 percent said “probably”). About 75 percent said the U.S. is seeking “to spread Christianity,” and 86 percent said the U.S. is seeking “to weaken and divide the Islamic world.” Only 63 percent chose the option “to prevent more attacks such as those on the World Trade Center in September 2001.”

Moreover, a majority of respondents said they believed that the U.S. controls either “most” or “nearly all” of the recent major events that have taken place in Pakistan, compared to 22 percent who attributed “some” control to the U.S. and 4 percent who said “very little.” Eighteen percent declined to respond.

As to Pakistan-U.S. security cooperation, less than one in five respondents said it had either benefited Pakistan primarily or both equally. Forty-four percent said it had mostly benefited the U.S.; and 11 percent said neither party had benefited.

Distrust of the U.S., however, did not translate into support for radical Islamists, the Taliban, or al-Qaida, according to the survey. While they were considered much less of a threat than the U.S., six out of 10 respondents said they considered the Taliban and al-Qaida either a ‘critical’ or an ‘important’ threat to Pakistan.

Even as huge majorities opposed any U.S. or foreign military intervention against the two groups in Pakistan, pluralities approaching 50 percent said they would support the Pakistani army entering the FATA to capture al-Qaida fighters or to capture Taliban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan.

Comparable pluralities said they favored phasing out FATA’s special legal status and integrating its areas into the country’s overall legal structure, while advocating a gradualist approach that includes negotiating with the local Taliban over using military force to impose the central government’s control.

The survey also found overwhelming support for government based both on “Islamic principles” and on democratic ideals, including an independent judiciary and being governed by elected representatives. While six in 10 respondents said they supported a larger role for Islamic law, or Shariah, in Pakistan’s legal system, only 15 percent said they wanted to see more “Talibanization of daily life,” a common phrase used in Pakistani media to refer to extreme religious conservatism.

Indeed, more than eight in 10 said it was important for Pakistan to protect its religious minorities; more than three out of four said attacks on those minorities are “never justified”; and nearly two out of three said they support government plans to regulate religious schools, or madrassas, and to require them to teach secular subjects such as math and science. Only 17 percent said they oppose those reforms.

In general, those respondents who supported the expansion of Shariah and government based on “Islamic principles” also tended to favor both democratic ideals and educational reforms at higher rates than others.

FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/printer_4306.shtml

Guest4

01-24-2008, 09:23 AM

Are they really that dumb?..Damn!

Bman

05-25-2008, 10:40 AM

OldGit

05-25-2008, 11:02 AM

Militants kill 'US spy' in Pakistan tribal area: official
1 day ago

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) — Pro-Taliban militants in a lawless Pakistani tribal district killed an Afghan after accusing him of spying for the US forces in neighbouring Afghanistan, an official said Saturday.

The body of Akhtar Nawaz, 40, was dumped in the main bazaar of a border town in North Waziristan district, a known hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, the official said.

A note left on the body said the man was spying for US forces, he added. "This is the fate of a slave of America," it read.

Militants have killed several tribesmen in recent months in the tribal region, accusing them of spying for the US-led coalition forces across the border.

Militants beheaded a soldier on May 14 in North Waziristan, accusing him of spying for US forces across the border in Afghanistan.

The United States and Afghan officials have repeatedly claimed the rugged tribal region is used by militants to launch cross-border attacks on international coalition troops deployed in Afghanistan.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gcgYpWiJZ_itMnODFhaCaLbDMxXA

This could only regarded as newsworthy by people who haven't understood the savage nature of some parts of the planet, especially these so called 'tribal regions' which would be better called 'savage regions'. The people are savages; they act like savages, they oppress one another, they oppress women, and they oppress foolish strangers who blunder into their mountain fastness. It has always been thus. Sir Winston Churchill was stationed their in 1898 and wrote a short book called , 'The Story of the Malakand Field Force'. He and his fellow soldiers were sent there to punish some crazed savages who had murdered some government official and rebelled against British authority. He wrote a most interesting account of the savagery and backwardness of the people, pointing out that it had ever been thus. The fascinating thing is that 110 years later, the situation is exactly the same. They remain savage and untamed, and I expect that they will be just the same in another 110 years time.

There is I think a permanent difficulty among some members of this forum that gets in the way of their understanding these kinds of people; they seem somehow to believe that all people are essentially like them, ignoring the fact that generations of socialisation into a savage culture renders these people as different to you and me as if they were of a different species. Once a man has come of age in the world of the 'tribal territories', he is as different to you and me as if he had been brought up on a different planet.

Once we stop expecting them to play fair like us and share our ambitions for the area we will be less surprised at what they do. Everything we stand for in our desire for law and order, the establishment of fair authority, civil rights, equality for women and people of different beliefs, is total anathema to them.

We should simply confine ourselves to punishing them if they act against us. What they do among themselves or to the Pakistani authorities is no concern of ours. Had we not saddled ourselves with the ambition of turning the area and its neighbour Afghanistan into a nice polite little holiday destination, we need have no concern other than to fly over the area with drones, watching out for training camps and nests of brigands who want to hurt our interests and then dropping large amounts of explosives onto the infestations of vermin that we discover. Vermin in this context means, groups who are actively trying to harm us at home. This is the only policy that will work, and it is the only one they will respect.

Bman

01-13-2009, 09:59 AM

Pakistanis cheer Osama at anti-Israel rally

Agence France-Presse Friday, January 09, 2009 (Chaman ) http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/images/FullImage/Ver1/o/osamabinladen1.jpg Thousands of people rallied on Friday in southwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border, against Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip, cheering support for Al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, police said.

The rally in the town of Chaman was organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam political party and was the biggest yet in Pakistan against the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians.

"Our estimate is that there were more than 3,000 people at the rally," local police station chief Abul Latif said.

"Long Live Osama bin Laden," protesters chanted as they marched through town carrying placards that read "Jihad is the only treatment for Israel," "Stop killing innocent people in Palestine" and "Stop atrocities against Muslims".

They also chanted "Death to Israel, death to America and death to Britain".

"Muslim countries should shut down the embassies of the US and Israel, and declare jihad against Israel," local party leader Maulvi Mohammad Hanif told the crowd.

"The silence of the United Nations over the atrocities being committed against Muslims shows that it is a surrogate of America, Israel and Britain," he said.

Israel launched its offensive against Hamas on December 27 aiming to end rocket attacks in southern Israel and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from Egypt. Palestinian medics say almost 800 people have been killed since then.

http://arabia.ndtv.com/Story.aspx?pageheader=news&sub_category=&ID=NEWEN20090079476

Bman

09-08-2009, 02:43 PM

Posted on Monday, September 7, 2009

Anti-Americanism rises in Pakistan over U.S. motives

More on this Story

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.

Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an "imperial" American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country's biggest donor, as a hostile power.

U.S. officials have either denied the allegations or moved to blunt the criticism, but suspicions remain and relations between the two countries are getting more strained.

The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.

Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country.

The American mission in Islamabad was forced to put on three briefings for Pakistani journalists in August trying to dampen the highly charged stories, which could undermine US-Pakistani relations just as Washington is preparing to finalize a tripling of civilian aid to Islamabad, to $1.5 billion a year. Over this last weekend, an embassy spokesman had to deny suddenly renewed stories that the U.S. was behind the mysterious death of former military dictator General Zia ul Haq back in 1988.

Pakistan is a key priority for the United States because of its nuclear weapons and its potential usefulness in taking on al Qaida within its borders and ending the safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.

"I think this recent brouhaha over the embassy expansion has been difficult to beat back," said Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, in an interview Thursday. "I can't really understand what's behind this because what we're doing is actually quite straightforward. We've tried to explain it carefully to the press, but it just seems to be taken over by conspiracy theories."

Briefing Pakistani journalists last month, Patterson told them that there were only nine Marines stationed to guard the embassy in Islamabad and that, even after the expansion, their number would be no more than 15 to 20. Press reports had put the figure at 350 to 1,000 Marines. She also stated categorically "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan". But the stories refused to go away.

Patterson said she wrote last week to the owner of Pakistan's biggest media group, Jang, to protest about the content of two talk shows on its Geo TV channel, hosted by star anchors Hamid Mir and Kamran Khan, and a newspaper column of influential analyst Shireen Mazari in The News, a daily, complaining that they were "wildly incorrect" and had compromised the security of Americans.

There are 250 American citizens posted at the Islamabad mission on longer-term contracts, plus another 200 on shorter assignments, the embassy said. The present embassy compound can accommodate only a fraction of them. According to independent estimates, there are some 200 private houses for U.S. officials, on regular streets located throughout upscale districts of Islamabad.

Pakistani press and bloggers also targeted Craig Davis, an American aid worker, insisting that he's an undercover secret agent. Davis, a contractor to the USAID development arm of the government, is based in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, and now appears to be at risk. Last year, another American USAID contractor in Peshawar, Stephen Vance, was gunned down just outside his home.

"In one or two cases these commentators have identified very specific embassy employees as CIA or Blackwater, and that very much puts the employee at danger. In at least one case we're going to have to evacuate the employee," said Patterson, without identifying the individual involved. "What particularly scared us about him is that Stephen Vance, who was the other AID Chief of Party in Peshawar, was of course assassinated a few months ago. So there is a track record here that's sort of alarming."

In recent days, shows on two popular private television channels, Geo and Dunya, which broadcast in the local Urdu language, put up pictures of homes in Islamabad which they claimed were occupied by CIA, FBI, or employees of the controversial Blackwater company of private security contractors, now called Xe Services. Some of the houses were identified with their full address. It is believed that several of the homes weren't occupied by Americans but others were. According to the U.S embassy, bloggers are now calling on people to "kill" the occupants of these houses.
A survey last month for international broadcaster al Jazeera by Gallup Pakistan found that 59 percent of Pakistanis felt the greatest threat to the country was the United States. A separate survey in August by the Pew Research Center, an independent pollster based in Washington, recorded that 64 percent of the Pakistani public regards the U.S. "as an enemy" and only 9 percent believe it to be a partner.

"The Ugly American of the sixties is back in Pakistan and this time with a vengeance," said Mazari, the defense analyst whose newspaper column was the subject of the American complaint. "It's an alliance (U.S.-Pakistan) that's been forced on the country by its corrupt leadership. It's delivering chaos. We should distance ourselves. You can't just hand over the country."

While the anti-US sentiment appears genuine, it is uncertain whether the current storm, and the particular stories that it thrived on, was orchestrated by a pressure group or even an arm of the state. In the past, Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, part of the military, has very effectively used the press to push its agenda.

The U.S. provided over $11billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001. Yet in recent days, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has complained that too much of the promised new enhanced U.S. aid package would be eaten up in American administrative costs, while President Asif Zardari demanded that multi-billion dollar civilian and military aid money, currently stuck in Congress, be speeded up.

The Pakistani government has repeatedly stated that joining the U.S. "war on terror" has cost the nation an estimated $34 billion and ministers frequently lambast the U.S. for trespassing on Pakistani territory with use of spy planes to target suspected militants — an emotive tacit for the Pakistani population.

Ambassador Patterson said that "the (Pakistani) government could be more helpful" in combating the anti-American controversies, which took on a new fever pitch since the beginning of August.

The weak Islamabad government appears unable to come to the defense of its ally and even tried to score some popularity points by joining the U.S.-baiting.

A widely believed conspiracy contends that America is deliberately destabilizing Pakistan, to bring down a "strong Muslim country", and ultimately seize its nuclear weapons. Pakistanis, especially its military establishment, also are distrustful of U.S. motives in Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy for regional domination. Further Pakistanis are appalled that the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul is close to archenemy India.

"Part of the reason why we can't fight terrorism is because the terrorists have adopted what I'd call anti-U.S. imperialist discourse, which makes them more popular," said Ayesha Siddiqa, an analyst and author of Military Inc.

Many also blame the U.S. for "imposing" a president on the country, Zardari, who is deeply disliked and who last year succeeded an unpopular U.S.-backed military dictator. So democrats resent American interference in Pakistani politics, while conservatives distrust American aims in Afghanistan.

"You used to find this anti-Americanism among supporters of religious groups and Right-wing groups," said Ahmed Quraishi, a newspaper columnist and the leading anti-American blogger. "But over the past two to three years, young, educated Pakistanis, people you'd normally expect to be pro-American modernists, and middle class people, are increasingly inclined to anti-Americanism. That's the new phenomenon."

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/74966.html

wentzville

09-08-2009, 02:48 PM

Time to cut and run, get the hell out of there....NOW!

Bman

09-21-2009, 05:04 PM

Can polling predict terrorism?

http://futurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/terrorist.jpg
“This is the first study to relate public opinion across countries to concrete actions such as terrorism,” says study coauthor Alan Krueger.
PRINCETON—An analysis of public opinion polls and terrorist activity in 143 pairs of countries has shown for the first time that when people in one country hold negative views toward the leadership and policies of another, terrorist acts are more likely to be carried out.

Princeton University (http://www.princeton.edu/) economist Alan Krueger has found that there is a strong relationship between attitudes expressed toward a foreign country—indicated in surveys on foreign leaders’ performance—and the occurrence of terrorism against that country. The research is detailed in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;325/5947/1534?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&full text=Krueger+&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=dat e&resourcetype=HWCIT).

“Public opinion appears to be a useful predictor of terrorist activity,” says Krueger, the Bendheim Professor in Economics and Public Policy who is currently on leave from Princeton, working as the assistant secretary for economic policy and chief economist at the U.S. Department of Treasury.

“This is the first study to relate public opinion across countries to concrete actions such as terrorism,” he adds.

Until now, the notion that public attitudes can contribute to terrorism has been inadequately explored, Krueger notes. The study’s findings are significant, he says, because public opinion provides a valuable early warning signal of terrorism and helps researchers better understand the causes of terrorism.

The researchers carried out their study by mining public opinion polls of residents in 19 countries in the Middle East and northern Africa conducted by Gallup. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the job performance of the leaders of nine large countries. Those countries, selected because they are world powers in terms of size, population or military strength, are the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The opinions, both positive and negative, were then linked to the number of terrorist attacks conducted against the nine world powers by people from the 19 countries between 2004 and 2008. The terror attacks were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center.

In findings that are consistent with his earlier work, Krueger says there is not a direct connection between poverty and terrorism, contrary to a popular view. Economic status has more to do with target countries than it does with the states where the attacks originate, according to Krueger. Countries with advanced economies as well as a high degree of civil liberties, he says, are most likely to be the targets of terrorism.

The study does not explain whether terrorists act in response to public opinion or whether they are simply reacting just like the larger public to external events, he notes. In either case, however, he says that public opinion surveys can provide a powerful indication of the likelihood of terrorist activity.

Krueger hypothesizes that greater disapproval of another country’s leaders or policies may result in more terrorist acts because it increases the number of people who provide material support and encouragement for terrorism, and increases the number of people interested in joining cells and carrying out terrorist acts themselves.

Extending the analysis, the researchers proposed that new leadership and policies in a country—such as the election of President Barack Obama in the United States—might change opinions in other countries and alter terrorist activity.

Krueger has published many papers about the origins of terrorism, and he has urged terrorism experts to apply the rigorous techniques of social science to questions concerning terrorism and its effects.

The research was conducted while Krueger was at Princeton and submitted before he assumed his position with the government. The contents of the paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government. Work on the project was partly supported by a grant from the European Commission to the European Security Economics project.
Princeton University news: www.princeton.edu/main/news (http://www.princeton.edu/main/news)

http://futurity.org/society-culture/can-polling-predict-terrorism/

Mars S

09-21-2009, 05:21 PM

This is an interesting thesis. One wonders why, with so many bad leaders throughout history, terrorism is such a recent phenomenon. The lands we call Pakistan and Afghanistan have for centuries been home to bandits and warlords.
Then too, the major operating philosophy of terror is Islamism which springs from the Muslim brotherhood and the various figures who spawned Osama and other extremists. It was energized by the Saudi "wahabist" movment and the establishment of schools to indoctrinate boys all over the world.
Terrorism is assymetrical warfare that targets the population supposedly expressing the discontent. That increases the "discontent" of the population. One could argue that terrorism- murder wrapped in the mantle of politics is the primary source of discontent. It's true that terrorism is worse in some of the biggest hellholes- like Kashmir and Pakistan, the perpetrators are generally, middle class.
It's hardly news that people are unhappy with the gov't or their conditions, in many places. I've wondered why all these Islamists are so unhappy and why don't they fix their damned incompetent gov'ts instead of murdering a bunch of innocents.
Are polls even taken from people in the Taliban-controlled areas or from anyone who lives in a remote village? I'm skeptical. I'm confident there are tens of millions living in the major cities who are never sampled.

Bman

09-21-2009, 06:48 PM

Terrorism is assymetrical warfare that targets the population supposedly expressing the discontent. That increases the "discontent" of the population. One could argue that terrorism- murder wrapped in the mantle of politics is the primary source of discontent. It's true that terrorism is worse in some of the biggest hellholes- like Kashmir and Pakistan, the perpetrators are generally, middle class.

It's hardly news that people are unhappy with the gov't or their conditions, in many places. I've wondered why all these Islamists are so unhappy and why don't they fix their damned incompetent gov'ts instead of murdering a bunch of innocents.

Actually, I think you're misreading the results of the study. The study suggests that when the population of one country becomes dissatisfied with the policies and government OF ANOTHER COUNTRY (not their own!), then that dissatisfied population is more likely to produce terrorists against the country that they don't like.

In other words, a leader in the US, who is very unpopular in the rest of the world, would actually serve as a recruiting tool for terrorist.

This is basically intuitive and alot of people have proposed this hypothesis for years. This just helps to confirm it.

Note, though that the study suggests a popular leader, or a change in leadership, can have the opposite effect. That's good news

Mars S

09-21-2009, 08:00 PM

Actually, I think you're misreading the results of the study. The study suggests that when the population of one country becomes dissatisfied with the policies and government OF ANOTHER COUNTRY (not their own!), then that dissatisfied population is more likely to produce terrorists against the country that they don't like.Does he make that conclusion?? That wouldn't seem to be consistent with his hypothesis.

The population does not generally "produce" terrorists. They tend to come from outside. The population is terrorized. This is a common phenomenon beyond the limits of civilization. Bandits don't usually live among their victims.

In other words, a leader in the US, who is very unpopular in the rest of the world, would actually serve as a recruiting tool for terrorist.That seems unlikely. While the US is a popular target for TV conscious protesters, recent terrorist attacks haven't evidenced a particular antithesis for the US. Remember that most terrorist attacks are in Pakistan, Kashmir, India and many we probably don't hear about. For example, the Mumbai terrorists weren't protesting the US. They stopped off to torture and kill the only Jews in Mumbai while they were at it.
It's frightfully popular to imagine the US is the font of all that goes wrong, but it isn't nearly as important as what the terrorists think and the author hasn't really considered that.

This is basically intuitive and alot of people have proposed this hypothesis for years. This just helps to confirm it.You should reread the article.
Krueger says there is not a direct connection between poverty and terrorism, contrary to a popular view. Economic status has more to do with target countries than it does with the states where the attacks originate, according to Krueger. Countries with advanced economies as well as a high degree of civil liberties, he says, are most likely to be the targets of terrorism.

The study does not explain whether terrorists act in response to public opinion or whether they are simply reacting just like the larger public to external events, he notes. In either case, however, he says that public opinion surveys can provide a powerful indication of the likelihood of terrorist activity.

Note, though that the study suggests a popular leader, or a change in leadership, can have the opposite effect. That's good newsWell that seems kind of intuitive too. I'll bet if everyone had everything they could possibly want and a place to put it in, there'd still be Islamic terrorists or others protesting and attacking Jews, Americans, Israel, women, homosexuals...
Some people are just bad people and they cause a lot of pain and hardship. Terrorists aren't freedom fighters, because they can't offer anyone freedom.

pixikill

09-21-2009, 08:08 PM

i think AUSTRALIA is the most anti paki country in the world. (http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=melbourne%20australia%20racist%20att acks%20pakistani%20indian&um=1&ned=au&hl=en&sa=N&tab=nv#q=melbourne+australia+racist+attacks+&hl=en&emb=0)

join us, america?

indian ppl and pakistanis seem to be getting the shit beaten out of them here, atm. especially in melbourne. and the piggies are covering it all up.

the latest news on the violence.
Indians attacked: Victoria Police deny cover-up

Melbourne: Victoria Police has denied they had a plan to limit publicity about the bashing of three Indian men outside a Melbourne pub on Saturday night. Four men were arrested in relation to assault and affray, but they were released pending further investigations. Police believe a fifth man may also hav ....Read more (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indians-attacked-victoria-police-deny-coverup/517721/)

Bman

09-21-2009, 08:29 PM

Does he make that conclusion?? That wouldn't seem to be consistent with his hypothesis.

The researchers carried out their study by mining public opinion polls of residents in 19 countries in the Middle East and northern Africa conducted by Gallup. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the job performance of the leaders of nine large countries. Those countries, selected because they are world powers in terms of size, population or military strength, are the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

Ok.. so he took the public opinion in 19 countries in the Middle East and Africa.

The people surveyed were asked whether they approved of the leaders of nine countries: the US, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the UK

So what did he conclude?

He concluded that the lower the approval of the population in a country, the more likely it is to produce terrorists, against the 9 leaders

An analysis of public opinion polls and terrorist activity in 143 pairs of countries has shown for the first time that when people in one country hold negative views toward the leadership and policies of another, terrorist acts are more likely to be carried out.

Bman

09-21-2009, 08:35 PM

An analysis of public opinion polls and terrorist activity in 143 pairs of countries has shown for the first time that when people in one country hold negative views toward the leadership and policies of another, terrorist acts are more likely to be carried out.

Princeton University economist Alan Krueger (http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/) and co-author Jitka Malečková of Charles University in the Czech Republic have found that there is a strong relationship between attitudes expressed toward a foreign country -- indicated in surveys on foreign leaders' performance -- and the occurrence of terrorism against that country. The research is detailed in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Science.

In other words, the more they hate our President, the more likely we are to be attacked by terrorists.

Mars S

09-21-2009, 09:52 PM

In other words, the more they hate our President, the more likely we are to be attacked by terrorists.

Oddly, we weren't attacked by Pakistan. We were attacked by Al Qaeda which had a base in Afghanistan.
I wouldn't recommend you draw that conclusion. At some point during Clinton's second administration Osama was in Pakistan and targeted by the CIA or someone, but that's not an implication of anyone except Osama.
And if you wanted to poll the locals, how do you know which population to sample in order to form a predictor.
All this guy did was look at the poll numbers after the fact and suggest a connection between public opinion poll results and acts of terrorism.
It can hardly be called "prediction" if it happens after the fact.

Mars S

09-21-2009, 09:58 PM

Ok.. so he took the public opinion in 19 countries in the Middle East and Africa.he didn't, he sampled polls.

The people surveyed were asked whether they approved of the leaders of nine countries: the US, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the UK
So what did he conclude?

He concluded that the lower the approval of the population in a country, the more likely it is to produce terrorists, against the 9 leaders

That seems a rather tenuous conclusion to draw. Disparate public opinion polls of disparate populations on their "approval" of foreign leaders? He didn't interview the terrorists so his "predictor" was "public approval of foreign leaders".
Sounds like hogwash.

I'm sure your view of the leaders of Myanmar are a predictor of your likelihood to enter into business dealings too.

TrustButVerify

09-22-2009, 02:40 AM

Oddly, we weren't attacked by Pakistan. We were attacked by Al Qaeda which had a base in Afghanistan.
I wouldn't recommend you draw that conclusion.

Oh man I can't wait for Bman to wake up and see this...

The Countdown to total ownage has begun.

Mars S

09-22-2009, 05:56 AM

Oh man I can't wait for Bman to wake up and see this...

The Countdown to total ownage has begun.
'ownage"?? What are you? Like 5 years old?
Apart from the rather amusing spectacle of bman supporting this rather tenuous article on attitudes and approvals, I'm left with the image of a you as damsel in distress a-waiting for her knight errant. How hilarious will it be when bman tries to connect Pakistani attitudes about the US to attacks on India or Kashmir or Afghanistan
That is an amusing notion, that AQ attacks were to be blamed on the US because our leader "provoked" terrorist attacks by not being more well liked. Or the extension, that we should seek each nation's "public approval" for our leaders so that there's less chance of a terrorist attack.
Indeed, this all smacks of blaming the victim.

candypreet

12-09-2009, 07:32 AM

Bman

12-21-2009, 03:08 PM

Hitchens nails it

fighting words
Why Does Pakistan Hate the United States?

Because it is dependent on us.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Dec. 21, 2009, at 11:43 AM ET
Give credit to the vice president: He really does enjoy politics and "can't see a room without working it," as a colleague of mine half-admiringly remarked last Wednesday morning. We were waiting to enter the studio and comment after Biden had finished his interview (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#34428418) with the Scarborough/Brzezinski team (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/), in which the main topic was Afghanistan.

Exiting, he chose to stop and talk to each of us. Not wanting to waste a chance to be a bore on the subject, I asked him why he had mentioned India (http://www.slate.com/id/2236951/) only once in the course of his remarks. Right away Biden managed the trick—several good politicians have mastered this—of reacting as if the question had been his own idea. Of course, he said, it was vexing that Pakistan preferred to keep its best troops on the border with India (our friend) rather than redeploying them to FATA—the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas—where they could be fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida (our enemy). My flesh was pressed, and it was on to the next.

The newspapers that morning revealed that Pakistani authorities showed no interest in apprehending a Taliban leader in Afghanistan (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/world/asia/15haqqani.html) whom they considered an important asset. The newspapers the following morning reported (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/world/asia/17visa.html) that Pakistan was refusing to extend the visas to U.S. Embassy and other American personnel, resulting in a gradual paralysis of everything from intelligence-gathering to the maintenance of helicopters.
Several questions arise from this. The first: Who is in charge of policy in the area? When some hard words had to be spoken to President Hamid Karzai about the dire and ramshackle nature of his regime, it was the vice president who drew the job of delivering them. For the rest of the time, the Af-Pak dimension is supposedly overseen by Richard Holbrooke (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8225745.stm), who seems lately to show some outward signs of discontent. Yet on one day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may appear on the tarmac at Kabul or Islamabad. On another it will be Secretary of Defense Robert Gates or the CIA or any number of a series of generals. If this is really a "team of rivals," it doesn't seem to have had the effect of clarifying policy differences by debate. It looks more like one damn thing after another.

The next question is a version of an older one. Why do the Pakistanis hate us? We need not ask this in a plaintive tone of "after all we've done for them," but it is an apparent conundrum nonetheless. The United States made Pakistan a top-priority Cold War ally. It overlooked the regular interventions of its military into politics. It paid a lot of bills and didn't ask too many questions. It generally favored Pakistan over India, which was regarded as dangerously "neutralist" in those days, and during the Bangladesh war it closed its eyes to a genocide against the Muslim population of East Bengal (http://www.preventgenocide.org/edu/pastgenocides/eastbengal/resources/). During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Washington fed the Pakistani military and intelligence services from an overflowing teat and allowed them to acquire nuclear weapons on the side.

This, then, is why the Pakistani elite hates the United States. It hates it because it is dependent on it and is still being bought by it. It is a dislike that is also a form of self-hatred of the sort that often develops between client states and their paymasters. (You can often sense the same resentment in the Egyptian establishment, and sometimes among Israeli right-wingers, as well.) By way of overcompensation for their abject status as recipients of the American dole, such groups often make a big deal of flourishing their few remaining rags of pride. The safest outlet for this in the Pakistani case is an official culture that makes pious noises about Islamic solidarity while keeping the other hand extended for the next subsidy. Pakistani military officers now strike attitudes in public as if they were defending their national independence rather than trying to prolong their rule as a caste and to extend it across the border of their luckless Afghan neighbor.

This is, and always was, a sick relationship, and it is now becoming dangerously diseased. It's not possible to found a working, trusting, fighting alliance on such a basis. Under communism, the factory workers of Eastern Europe had a joke: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us." In this instance, the Pakistanis don't even pretend that their main military thrust is directed against the common foe, but we do continue to pay them. If we only knew it, the true humiliation and indignity is ours, not theirs.

This will continue to get nastier and more corrupt and degrading until we recognize that our long-term ally in Asia is not Pakistan but India. And India is not a country sizzling with self-pity and self-loathing, because it was never one of our colonies or clients. We don't have to send New Delhi 15 different envoys a month, partly to placate and partly to hector, because the relationship with India isn't based on hysteria and envy. Alas, though, we send hardly any envoys at all to the world's largest secular and multicultural democracy, and the country itself gets mentioned only as an afterthought. Nothing will change until this changes.

One reason the Pakistani army coddles the Taliban in Afghanistan is because it has recently been told that the United States will not be deploying there in strength for very much longer. Who can blame them for basing their future plans on this supposition and continuing to dig in for a war with India that we are helping them to prepare for? Meanwhile, though, it is the Afghans who get the lectures about how they need to shape up. "Lots of luck in your senior year (http://www.rbguy.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/15/814575/-BIDEN:-Al-Quedas-not-in-Afghanistan...Karzhais-right-Taliban-isnt-enemy...Afghans,-good-luck!-)" was the breezy way in which the vice president phrased his message to Kabul as I watched. (I wonder how that translates into Pushtun.) Speed the day when the Pakistanis are publicly addressed in the same tones and told that the support they so much despise is finally being withdrawn.

Become a fan of Slate on Facebook (https://webmail.wpni.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.facebook.com/slate). Follow us on Twitter (https://webmail.wpni.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.twitter.com/slate).
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2239339/ (http://www.slate.com/id/2239339/)

candypreet

05-28-2010, 03:12 PM

howz it going Bman

American_Jihad

04-03-2012, 04:20 PM

Anti-Americanism in Pakistan snarls US war efforts

4/3/12

ISLAMABAD — U.S. diplomatic efforts to persuade Pakistan to reopen NATO supply lines to the Afghan war are proving no match for rampant anti-Americanism here, with Pakistani lawmakers increasingly unwilling to support a decision that risks them branded as friends of Washington.

Opposition legislators are demanding that the U.S. end its drone strikes against militants as a precondition, complicating U.S. strategies for winding down the 10-year war just weeks before a major NATO conference in President Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago.

Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been marked by mistrust since the two countries were thrust together following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but shared interests — near-bankrupt Pakistan needs American aid, America needs Pakistan's support against al-Qaida — had kept the alliance more or less intact.

That changed in November when U.S. airstrikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghan border, triggering nationwide outrage and retaliation from Pakistan, which suspended diplomatic contacts and blocked vital land routes for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Since then, hardline Islamist and banned militant groups have staged large rallies around the country against any move to reopen the supply lines. One of the leaders of the movement has been Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people.

Late Monday, the U.S. announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Saeed, who lives openly in Pakistan. According to many analysts, Saeed has the sympathy or support of the country's powerful military establishment, which shares his hostility to India. The announcement could therefore be seen as a provocation in Pakistan and further strain ties with Washington.

Pakistan has placed Saeed under house arrest before, but prosecutors have been unable or unwilling to make charges stick against him. Given the popular hostility to the U.S. among the Pakistani public, it is unlikely that the government will act now against Saeed.

Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 under U.S. pressure, but it operates with relative freedom under the name of its social welfare wing Jamaat-ud-Dawwa. The U.S. has designated both groups as foreign terrorist organizations.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Saeed's increasingly "brazen" appearances on television were a factor in the announcement. "I think the sense has been over the past few months that this kind of reward might hasten the justice system," she said.

It's unclear whether the bounty will have any impact other than embarrassing Pakistani authorities and pleasing India, which has long called for his arrest.

Saeed, who has denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks, said the U.S. announced the reward because of his demonstrations against any reopening of the supply lines.

"We are organizing massive public meetings to inform the nation about all the threats which Pakistan will face after the restoration of the supplies," he told The Associated Press at a mosque in the capital, Islamabad.

"With the grace of God we are doing our work in Pakistan openly. It is regrettable that America has no information about me. Such rewards are usually for those who live in caves and mountains."

Few inside the Pakistani government or the army believe a permanent supply line blockade is worth the resulting international isolation. Pakistan relies on the U.S. and other NATO countries for its economic survival and for diplomatic and military support.

But re-engaging carries a political cost in a country where association with the United States is toxic.

That cost is felt more keenly now by mainstream parties because general elections are scheduled within a year.

Seeking political cover, the weak coalition government ordered a parliamentary committee to come up with proposals for a new relationship with the U.S. On March 20, the committee presented its recommendations to parliament, which included the reopening of supply lines but with higher tariffs, and also an end to drone strikes.

U.S. officials had hoped the parliamentary session would lead to a quick resumption of ties, but that hasn't happened.

Sessions to debate the recommendations have been boycotted or taken over with discussions on other national issues. Opposition parties, sensing the government wants them to share any political fallout for what will be an unpopular decision to reopen the routes, are refusing to cooperate.

"This is a hugely complicating factor. The government may now be realizing that by trying to be clever it has created problems for itself," said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. "In parliamentary democracies it is the responsibility of the executive to formulate a policy and act on it. The Americans tell me they are being very patient, but I know they are getting very impatient."

In recent weeks, the U.S. has renewed high-level contacts with Pakistan, including meetings in Islamabad last week between Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the top U.S. commander in the region, Gen. James Mattis. Obama met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in South Korea.

But a U.S. official said talks on the supply line issue could not start before the parliament had finished debating the recommendations. He said it was unclear when that would be. He didn't give his name because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Before November, about 30 percent of the nonfatal supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan were unloaded at the port of Karachi and then trucked across Pakistan to the border. For most of the war, 90 percent of the supplies came through Pakistan, but NATO has increased its reliance on an alternate, so called "northern" route, through Central Asia in recent years.

Increased use of the northern route has removed some of the leverage Islamabad had over the West, but at a cost to the coalition. Pentagon officials now say it costs about $17,000 per container to go through the north, compared with about $7,000 per container to go over Pakistan.

The importance of the supply routes in general will rise, however, toward the end of 2014, when they will be needed to remove equipment from Afghanistan as foreign forces withdraw.

The parliamentary committee is currently reviewing its recommendations so they can be unanimously accepted by the parliament. One demand of opposition lawmakers is that the restoration of the supply lines be explicitly tied to a halt in drone attacks.

Pakistani lawmakers and government leaders have long campaigned against the strikes, which have been carried out with some level of secret collaboration with the Pakistani army. Opposition to attacks has become a rallying cry for anti-American politicians, who say they violate sovereignty and kill too many civilians.

U.S. officials say they have offered Pakistan notice about impending strikes and new limits on which militants are being targeted. Washington views the attacks as a vital tool in suppressing al-Qaida, and is seen as highly unlikely to agree to end them.

"By linking the resumption with drone attacks, things become unworkable," said Ayaz Amir, an opposition lawmaker who is something of a maverick. "The possibilities of a workable deal are being shortened. They are not going to stop drone attacks, the supply lines are not going to open. We are going to have to suffer the consequences."

Western officials are already looking ahead to the NATO conference in Chicago on May 20-21 where more than 50 heads of state will discuss progress on ending the war. The U.S. wants Pakistan to attend, but the meeting could be overshadowed if Pakistan is still blocking supplies to NATO members.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/anti-americanism-in-pakistan-1405864.html