By David Rubinson;
Axis Editorial Comment;
Articles by William Arkin
Dec 29, 2007, 05:01
AxisOfLogic
Editorial Update: Tonight, December 29, CNN is broadcasting a new special: PAKISTAN - TERRORIST CENTRAL. The Corporate media is hard at it to justify the insertion of US Troops in Pakistan to fight "The War on Terrorism" launched by the U.S. Government in 2002. Read on ... - Les Blough, Editor, Axis of Logic
Editor's Comment: Following the assassination of Benizar Bhutto and the chaotic aftermath, we now learn that U.S. troops are headed for operations in Pakistan. Two articles by William M. Arkin, writing for the Washington Post, are sent to us from iconoclastic David Rubinson, an Axis of Logic reader: U.S. Troops to Head to Pakistan and Bin Laden Killed Bhutto? How Blind Can We Be?. David offers commentary above Arkin's two WP articles. Based upon our research, we think his perspective on the assassination of Benizir Bhutto is worth considering.
"CIA KILLS BHUTTO : U.S. TROOPS MOVE IN
"Oh come ON people. Cui Bono (to whose benefit) And, remember, when the pimp press all sing one song, yer BS detector bettah start howling. There is no US diplomatic disaster in Pakistan. The Bushists did not make a mistake.
Here again: IDIOCY BY DESIGN. Can Any of you spell P-I-P-E-L-I-N-E ??? As in: Trans-Afghanistan pipeline and the Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline. What do you think we're doing there ?
Ya think its for the Pashtun food? We killed Benazir's old man.
We put Musharraf in power. Bin Laden (Al CIAda), The CIA, The Mujahideen, and ISI go back a looong way. They endure as a deadly menage-a-treachery. We dragged Benazir back to Pakistan. And we have obviously knocked her off. Now comes the chaos, the smashing of windows, burning of mosques, overthrown cars, a bunch of corpses, and tons - I say TONS-of footage on the pimp media showing screaming brown folks acting crazy. Well, says Sheriff Bush, we bettah ride into town and make it safe for our ole pal Dimmokracee one mo' time. And, just like crock-work, in comes Da Army! Please note- the deal was made LAST MONTH."
We also ask the reader to consider that Arkin's second article (below) has a threefold purpose:
1. The first is to debunk the notion that al Queda killed Benazir Bhutto.
2. The second is to reinforce the fear factor - the idea that al Queda continues to thrive and represents a significant threat, justifying the need for the "War on Terror".
3. The third purpose of Arkin's second article is to deflect from any U.S./CIA involvement in the death of Benizar Bhutto.
As David Rubinson notes: Cui Bono? There are several factors that must be considered in answering the question. The pipeline Rubinson mentions is one. Another is the enormous, lucrative heroine trade (literally worth more than its weght in gold) that flows from Afghanistan since the Taliban was defeated -Ciu Bono? Use your imagination; Finally, consider the most fundamental of purposes for the entire "War on Terrorism" - Complete destabilization of the Middle East. - Les Blough, Editor
U.S. Troops To Head To Pakistan
By William M. Arkin
Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.
These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for U.S. Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S. deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.
But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani national forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan's political instability has heightened U.S. concern about Islamic extremists there.
According to Pentagon sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for the new head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric T. Olson. Olson visited Pakistan in August, November and again this month, meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen. Tariq Majid and Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a separate paramilitary force recruited from Pakistan's border tribes.
Now, a new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalized. And the first U.S. personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources.
U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. William Fallon alluded to the agreement and spoke approvingly of Pakistan's recent counterterrorism efforts in an interview with Voice of America last week.
"What we've seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units," along the Afghan border, Fallon said. "And this is where, I think, we can help a lot from the U.S. in providing the kind of training and assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we share a lot with them, and we'll look forward to doing that."
If Pakistan actually follows through, perhaps 2008 will be a better year.
Bin Laden Killed Bhutto? How Blind Can We Be?
By William M. Arkin,
Washington Post
The shorthand being bandied about in the news that al-Qaeda is responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is so sloppy, so lacking in nuance or understanding of the dynamics of Pakistan, and so self-centered in its reference to America's enemy as to be almost laughable.
Several U.S. defense and intelligence experts are quoted today dismissing even the possibility that President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani government forces, or other domestic elements could be involved, a conclusion that flies in the face of the country's history and ignores the obvious beneficiaries.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of U.S. Central Command during the Clinton administration, told The Washington Post that there is "no doubt in my mind" that the murderers are linked to al-Qaeda. In an interview with Time magazine, he elaborated: "[T]hey're the only ones who gain from this.... I really think they're trying to ignite Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need to survive."
Former CIA official and National Security Council staffer Bruce Riedel, now at the Brookings Institution, is spouting the same theory, telling Newsweek that the assassination was "almost certainly the work of Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's Pakistani allies...Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power much as they have in other failing states."
To be sure, al-Qaeda has found sanctuary in Pakistan since its founding in 1988. Key al-Qaeda lieutenants such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Sept. 11 organizer, have operated from there. Before Sept. 11, Pakistan was a source of recruits and financing and technical support for al-Qaeda. And since Sept. 11, "al Qaeda" has been tied to various attempts to kill President Musharraf and to attacks on Pakistani Army and intelligence facilities - attacks that have increased in frequency and consequence since the central government sought to control the lawless border region. The thinking is that al-Qaeda has been trying to preserve its freedom of operations and to build relations with like-minded affiliates and Pakistani jihadis.
That said, al-Qaeda -- at least the movement led by and associated with Osama bin Laden -- is in terms of power and importance at the bottom of a long list of anti-democratic factions in Pakistan, including malcontents in the active and retired military, renegade intelligence and secret service elements, radical Islamic political parties, extremist Sunni movements, indigenous terrorist organizations and Afghan and Pakistani "Taliban" movements.
To say that "al-Qaeda" is responsible for Bhutto's assassination -- suggesting Osama bin Laden and an external force -- is to ignore all those political and religious factions inside the country that had the motives and resources to kill the former prime minister. Some of those factions in the government, the military or the intelligence services were likely privy to Bhutto's movements, and they could have actively schemed, if not played a direct role, in getting the suicide attacker to the right place at the right time.
Musharraf, of course, will say that he "warned" Bhutto of the dangers. Though, given that Bhutto's father, another former prime minister, was hanged by a military dictatorship and her two brothers were killed under suspicious circumstances, she no doubt already understood the landscape of domestic threats.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials are trying to verify the claim, via an Italian website, that al-Qaeda was behind the killing. Mustafa Abu al Yazid, al-Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, allegedly told a reporter: "We have terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedin." The website reported that the call to assassinate Bhutto came from al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri.
This claim of responsibility is highly suspect. And, if al-Qaeda were involved at all, it's less likely to have dictated decisions than to have been used by domestic factions pursuing their own power objectives. Those factions almost universally have an interest in labeling all lawlessness and terrorism "al Qaeda" activity.
Given Pakistan's history, it is unlikely that the true perpetrators will ever be brought to justice.
For the United States though, the al-Qaeda bogey-man has the negative effect of affirming support for Musharraf and his martial law, while ignoring the various extremists who represent the true existential threat to the country. We should not let our al-Qaeda fixation blind us, just as the Soviet threat did in Iran in the 1970s, to the realities that Pakistan could implode of its own accord.
Related Material From FreeThoughtManifesto's Archive:
1. Anglo-American Ambitions Behind Destabilization Of Pakistan
2. Who Killed Benazir? (UpDated)
3. US 'Helped Precipitate' Conditions For Bhutto's Assassination
On a final note, the following video was not part of the above article, but was independentally included by me to expose our CIA's historic involvement in that volatile region.
The video exposes how our government armed and trained the Afghan Mujahideen, (one CIA Operative personally delivered 60,000 tonnes of ordnance to the Afghans); we also financed them (our proxy war) with at least $3 Billion; the CIA also taught the Afghans how to assemble IED's!!!
Could they be the same IED's that are killing our troops in Iraq, and that are being currently used by the Taliban in Afghanistan against our troops and NATO's???
CIA Afghanistan 1979
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