President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan (shown above with two of his bodyguards) tells Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes that after 9/11, the U.S. threatened to bomb his country if it didn't help America's war on terrorism.Musharraf says the threat came from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was delivered to Musharraf's intelligence director.Who says Armitage wasn't on Bush's team?
"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,' " recalls Musharraf. It was insulting, he says. "I think it was a very rude remark." But he reacted to it in a responsible way, he tells Kroft. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."
So this is how you treat your military dictator friends? Still a lot of good it has done them since Pakistan is most likely where your boy, Bin Laden, is hiding if he is still alive. (There is still a question of that, though Osama and Tupac are releasing new records at about the same pace.)
Of course, it has made Pakistan a willing customer of US weapons.
"Now YOU can purchase these powerful F-16 fighter jets! These are the very same ones that would have blown up bridges, electrical plants and civilian homes in your country if you hadn't chosen to become our ally in the war on terror! Buy now before we change our minds!!
Bush should change the name of his campaign to "The War OF Terror!"
5 comments:
Armitage and Powell supported fightint the taliban and al-qaida in Afgahnistan. This threat from Armitage derives from that goal.
And I support that threat. How else could the US have fought Al Qaida? And I agree that the arrangement has not led to a true ally in Pakistan's govt.
According to you and Six, the elimination of the Taliban in Afghanistan has not resulted in the eliminiation of Al Qaeda. It resulted in the removal of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda was never the primary target in the Afghan invasion. If it had been, the US would have bombed the Al-Qaeda bases (like Clinton did) and left the rest of the country alone.
The real target of the Afghan invasion was the Taliban - a group that had NOTHING to do with 911. Put that in your hooka and smoke it.
To the extent that Bush's war in Afgahnistan has eliminated the Taliban, it has eleminated formal state support for them. Nobody who advocated eliminating the Taliban claimed that this would eliminate Al Qaida.
Many lefties loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that Al Qaida had won a home from the Taliban because Reagan had "abandoned" Afganistan after these two groups had worked together with US support to oust the USSR. Reagan, infinate lefties claimed after 911, should have stayed in Afgahnistan to "nation-build", to help erect a democracy. The Bushies bought that argument, and this inspired their "nation building" in those countries.
The Taleban was left with no help at all after the Soviets withdrew. This left them bitter against the US, and without US influence. Help is different from nation building, however.
Nation building is neo-colonialism which is what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq now. The people of those nations are not down for neo-colonialism. Afghanistan needed help after the Soviet war. We offered them none.
Nadir: How is "nation-building" = "neo-colonialism"? I am very confused. All the neo-cons claim that they seek independant democracies; how do you know that they secretly want puppet governments?
I can find no evidence that the Afgahni and Iraqi anti-US forces represent anything but anti-democratic tyrants, who oppose the US forces soley because they oppose democracy.
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