Nafeez Ahmed - Pakistan and the Terror Nexus
Poor old General Musharraf. His PR trip trying to rehabilitate the image of Pakistan around the world appears to have been slightly scuppered by the leak of the now widely-reported UK Defence Academy paper. Notwithstanding the predictable chorus of denial from the corridors of power, namely, from those who for all intents and purposes stand accused (at the current time Musharraf, Blair, Bush, etc.), the leaked report is entirely consistent with a wealth of evidence in the public record.
The leaked report, authored by a British intelligence official with a military background, is based on interviews with Pakistani Army officers and academics. BBC News has flagged-up one of the most important sections of the document, which says:
The Army's dual role in combating terrorism and at the same time promoting the MMA and so indirectly supporting the Taliban (through the ISI) is coming under closer and closer international scrutiny. Pakistan is not currently stable but on the edge of chaos.
[The West has] turned a blind eye towards existing instability and the indirect protection of Al Qaeda and promotion of terrorism.
Indirectly Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism - whether in London on 7/7 or in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The US/UK cannot begin to turn the tide until they identify the real enemies from attacking ideas tactically - and seek to put in place a more just vision. This will require Pakistan to move away from Army rule and for the ISI to be dismantled and more significantly something to be put in its place.
Musharraf knows that time is running out for him...
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Man...
He stole my article! dz... to the moon!
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"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Remnants of my article...
In the last few weeks, some REALLY interesting information has surfaced regarding the Pakistani ISI's relationship to "terrorism", and Western Intelligence's relationship to the ISI.
I wrote a really big article about this, but I lost it all when dz was paid by the CIA to move the site to a new server (that's a joke).
Anyway, I'm just going to put the important quotes out there for people to see...
President Musharraf of Pakistan said the West was responsible for "breeding terrorism in his country by bringing in thousands of mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then leaving Pakistan alone a decade later to face the armed warriors."
Musharraf also restated the supposed threat he received from Richard Armitage. "Help us and breathe in the 21st century along with the international community or be prepared to live in the Stone Age."
I say restated because it was first reported by [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/12/2001; LA Weekly, 11/9/2001].
Richard Armitage denied ever saying that, "but did not deny the message was a strong one."
Bush "denied knowledge of a phone conversation in which the US threatened to attack Pakistan."
A leaked document from Britain's Ministry of Defense, "accuses Pakistan's intelligence agency of indirectly supporting terrorist groups including al-Qaida and calls on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to disband the agency."
It also specifically accused the ISI of being involved in the 7/7 bombings.
"Indirectly, Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism _ whether in London on (July 7, 2005) or in Afghanistan or Iraq."
Mumbai (Bombay) police commissioner AN Roy said today, "We have solved the 11 July bombings case. The whole attack was planned by Pakistan's ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba and their operatives in India."
So the ISI was allegedly involved in both the 7/7 bombings, and the 7/11 bombings as well.
Musharraf said "I totally, 200% reject it. I reject it from anybody - MoD or anyone who tells me to dismantle ISI."
There was a lot of "hoo-ha" last week, "when a defendant accused Pakistan's intelligence service of threatening his relatives in the South Asian nation after he testified that the spy agency played a role in training Islamic militants."
"We are in uncharted territory here," said Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a counter-terrorism think tank here. "It hasn't happened before. The ISI has always been a murky organization. There have always been suspicions of a nexus between them, terror groups in Pakistan and Al Qaeda. But here you have a guy from the UK giving testimony that is very relevant because the ISI is supposed to be the key ally in the hunt for [Osama] bin Laden. And it's concerning that a country that is supposed to be an ally in the war on terror is intimidating witnesses, almost 'Godfather'-style."
Paul Thompson reported, "It is believed in some quarters that while Omar Sheikh was at the LSE he was recruited by the British intelligence agency MI6. It is said that MI6 persuaded him to take an active part in demonstrations against Serbian aggression in Bosnia and even sent him to Kosovo to join the jihad. At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent."
And...
“There are many in (Pakistani President) Musharraf’s government who believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA. The theory is that ... Saeed Sheikh was bought and paid for.”
Nafeez Ahmed wrote a huge article on the "continuity" of Western/Al-Qaeda relations in the Post-Cold War period.
Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, is "accused of authorising British-born Pakistani terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to make a $100,000 transfer to Mohamed Atta, the operational chief of the September 11 conspiracy, a charge that met vehement denials."
Wanna bet the ISI is 3 for 3?
Think it's time we asked why the financier of the 9/11 attacks, the head of the ISI, was meeting with Principals in Washington D.C. the week prior to and on the day of 9/11?
And why George W. Bush still refers to Pakistan, in light of all of this information, as "Allies" in the "War On Terror?"
I do.
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"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this."
Did you see my latest blog entry?
http://www.911blogger.com/node/3307
Wonderful job Jon
highly recommended!
OT
OT, but I just saw the big headline on Huffington Post, "COVER UP: What Did They Know And When Did They Know It..."
Granted, it is about the latest sex scandal, but damn did those words look good.
OT
CNN just announced that a 'new' video tape is to be released soon, by British media, showing 'whereabouts' of Mohamed Atta in 2000.
You must take a look at this
This just makes me sick! I'm sure it will get under your skin as well.
Innocent Tortured Detainee Speaks of Bush's "Professionals"
A Canadian detained, tortured, found innocent and released tells his (sanitized) story to Anderson Cooper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL3__pxKUkI&mode=related&search=
sounds too convenient
So... the ISI is complicit in terrorism, Pakistan is on the brink of anarchy, and Musharraf is attempting to put a good face on it...? Hmmmm
My translation:
There is a rogue faction of the ISI under US control, who work against Musharraf.
The BBC's report is timed to undermine Pakistan/Musharraf, to justify US or UK sorties into Pakistan to conduct the war on terror (as they see fit).
Musharraf's book tour is a plea for International attention. Revealing Armitage's threat publically is an anouncement to his countrymen & muslims world wide that he is not a traitor/sell-out. That he was forced to cooperate at the barrel of a US gun. Furthermore, he wants out of the situation, but does not know how/is fearful for himself & his country.
conspiracists use the victims of 9/11 to further a paranoid ...
conspiracists use the victims of 9/11 to further a paranoid grudge against the government
the objective and truthful reporting tradition in the USA
has done it again!
Heather Chapman, without prejudices, just the facts, journalism at its "American" best.
LEXINGTON HERALD LEADER
Conspiring to find facts of 9/11
By Heather Chapman
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
Well, I guess I'm part of the global conspiracy now.
At least I'm in good company. Hours after Popular Mechanics magazine published an article in 2005 that systematically debunked several popular Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, outraged e-mail began flowing in accusing the magazine of helping to cover up the U.S. government's orchestration of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Happily, that didn't stop it from publishing a more in-depth investigation in August, the book Debunking 9/11 Myths.
Conspiracists don't all agree on how the government made 9/11 happen, but they mostly agree on why: to give the United States an excuse to invade the Middle East.
Evidence for their theories is tenuous at best and relies on outdated, selective, slipshod or non-existent research. The theorists also are deeply suspicious, if not outright derisive, of the "official" story. One reviewer on Amazon.com referred to this book as "uncle Bush" telling us a "nicey story."
Never mind that the accepted version of events on 9/11 relies not just on government information but on eyewitnesses, scientists and journalists.
Conspiracists zero in on what they view as discrepancies (the hole in the Pentagon looked too small for a Boeing 757 to have made, so therefore a plane didn't really crash into it), but they often ignore larger issues that must be addressed if the theory is to have any credibility (there were eyewitnesses, and the flight data recorder was embedded 300 feet inside the building).
But why let overwhelming evidence get in the way? Or if evidence isn't enough, perhaps the benefit of the doubt that our government might not be infested with a shadowy cabal of thugs who'd happily murder thousands of American civilians. Because even if the government was that evil, it defies belief that, five years on and to a man, they'd be that quiet.
But that's just not how conspiracists roll. In the afterword -- the real gem of the book -- Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief James B. Meigs discusses the mind-set of garden-variety 9/11 conspiracists, along with tactics and logical fallacies they often use. A portrait emerges of deep paranoia, coupled with the smug pleasure of knowing the "truth" that the "sheeple" (sheep+people) are too stupid to see.
Meigs says that, often, conspiracists seem to start out with preconceived notions, then cherry-pick factoids that dovetail with their pet theories. In that mind-set, anything that appears to support their claims is concrete proof; contradictory evidence is only proof of a cover-up. Occam and his razor are weeping in the corner.
In contrast, Debunking 9/11 Myths is refreshingly logical in its refutation of the various conspiracy theories; in a few places, they're a bit skimpy (although they cover the basics), but a well-stocked appendix makes it easy to do further research on your own.
I'll take the exhaustively researched, heavily annotated Popular Mechanics version any day over some of the bizarre theories espoused online.
Example: the "Operation Pearl" theory (some of these theories' names are hilariously grandiose) speculates that government officials herded passengers from all four flights onto one plane, which they then shot down with a missile over Shanksville, Pa. Then they substituted remote-control planes for the other three and crashed them into the Pentagon and World Trade Centers.
Of course, such theories are mostly products of the hard-core conspiracists who run Web sites and sit on blue-ribbon 9/11 "truth" panels. Many more are casual believers who might have happened upon some conspiracy sites while surfing the Web and thought, "Hey, maybe there's something to this."
In the first group, you have Brigham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, placed on paid leave recently for his active role in the conspiracy movement. In the second category is Charlie Sheen, who embraced conspiracy theories in a radio interview on the Alex Jones Show.
"It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets ... It raises a lot of questions," he said.
Many conspiracists downplay the weirdness of their theories by saying, "Hey, we're just asking questions here." Which is great: We should always ask questions about what's going on in the world, but we also must be prepared to accept well-researched answers.
Now that the public has books such as Debunking 9/11 Myths, it shouldn't be hard to differentiate between people who are genuinely looking for the truth, and those who started out with their own truth but lack the evidence to back it up.
And in all that question-asking, let's not forget this one: How can we sit quietly as conspiracists use the victims of 9/11 to further a paranoid grudge against the government?
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/entertainment/books/15635827.htm
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