By Wayne Madsen
October 14, 2011
"And it's one,
two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Pakistan"
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Pakistan"
It does appear that for some Pentagon
brass, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; the CIA under former U.S.
Central Command and Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus; and top
Republican and Democratic politicians that, indeed, Pakistanis next on the
target list of nations that will soon be feeling the military muscle of the
United States.
Unlike other Muslim nations that have
been subjected to U.S. military intervention, including Afghanistan, Iraq,
Somalia, Yemen, and Libya, Pakistan’s ultimate prize for the West is its
nuclear weapons arsenal.
A number of observers, including
former senior figures with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency, have made no secret of western contingency plans, which appear to be
going active, to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in order to eliminate the
nation as a nuclear weapons power.
ED: Israel has pushed for this for some
time now. They want to be the ONLY nuclear country in the Middle East. That,
plus the fact that Pakistan is a purely Muslim country and you have Israel’s
full attention and meddling within Pakistan/Afghanistan and India.
The plans have been coordinated
between the CIA, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence service,
and Israel’s Mossad.
President Obama appears to have
decided to ratchet up tensions with Pakistan after Pakistan’s President Asif
Ali Zardari was apparently urged by Obama to attend the White House’s
much-hyped Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April 2010.
Obama sent a personal letter to
Zardari that was delivered to the Pakistani president’s office in Islamabad on
February 16, 2010, along with a cover letter from U.S. ambassador to Pakistan
Anne Patterson.
The letter to Zardari was the subject
of a leaked U.S. State Department “sensitive” cable dated February 17, 2010
from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad to the State Department. The cable
references a previous February 10, 2010 cable from the White House to the
embassy in Islamabad.
The cable from Islamabad was copied
to the CIA; the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon; the U.S. Central Command
(CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida; U.S. consulates in Lahore, Peshawar, and Karachi ~
the sites of CIA stations in Pakistan ~ and the U.S. embassies in London and
Kabul.
The cable from Islamabad to
Washington stated:
(SBU) Post delivered the POTUS letter on the Nuclear Security Summit to the Office of President Asif Ali ZARDARI on February 16, with cover letter from Ambassador Anne Patterson. The Pakistanis have not yet confirmed to us whether ZARDARI will attend.
PATTERSON
Zardari passed on attending the
nuclear summit, opting to send Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani is his place.
Soon after, Washington began expressing alarm about links between Pakistan and
Taliban elements in the nation’s North West Frontier Province, as well as in
Afghanistan.
It is noteworthy that Israel, which
officially denies it possesses nuclear weapons, although it is estimated to
have some 400 warheads, sent Dan Meridor, the deputy prime minister with
oversight over Mossad, and India sent its Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
Saudi Arabia, which has been used by
Washington as an interlocutor with the Taliban in Afghanistan, sent the head of
its General Intelligence Service, Prince Muqran bin Abdul Aziz.
A week after Zaradari received his
invitation to the Washington summit, a Secret NOFORN (not releasable to foreign
nationals) cable, dated February 23, was sent from Islamabad to the State
Department with copies to the CIA; the Joint Chiefs; CENTCOM; the U.S.
embassies in London and New Delhi; the U.S. Consulates in Lahore, Peshawar, and
Karachi; the Energy Department (an indicator that nuclear security issues were
at stake), and the sanctions-wielding Departments of Treasury and Commerce.
The cable discusses a February 17
meeting between the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the late
Richard Holbrooke, and Zardari, the day after Zardari received Obama’s
invitation to the nuclear summit.
In his meeting, Holbrooke thanked
Zardari for Pakistan’s help in fighting Taliban militants, particularly help in
capturing Afghan Taliban military leader Mullah Beradar. But Holbrooke was not
satisfied.
The U.S. envoy threw cold water on
reconciliation efforts between Afghan President Karzai and the UN Secretary
General’s Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide's on one side and
senior Taliban leaders on the other.
According to the Secret cable, Holbrooke
told Zardari “the United States and Pakistan had weakened the Taliban
leadership but noted that this was only the first stage, as success depended on
turning local populations against the Taliban.”
Holbrooke stressed, “the popular
perception of the U.S. reintegration and reconciliation efforts with the
Taliban mistakenly overemphasized the possibility for reconciliation,
explaining that reconciliation with Taliban leaders was less likely than
reintegrating low-level Taliban who had given up the fight.”
Zardari confided to Holbrooke that
the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin, had discussed possible talks
between Karzai and senior Taliban officials in Saudi Arabia but with no
“guarantees” such a summit would take place. The remaining sections of the
cable, sections two and three, are strangely missing from what was allegedly
leaked to WikiLeaks.
In April, Muqrin, Meridor, Singh and
his intelligence advisers, Obama, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
essentially, those who would be counted on the support the seizure of
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to prevent them from falling into “radical Islamist”
hands, were all gathered in Washington to discuss nuclear proliferation and
security.
Having been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for his nuclear counter-proliferation efforts, Obama was the perfect
front man for a secret coalition of the willing to carry out the
de-nuclearization of Pakistan. The only obstacle remaining was to create an
environment acceptable to world public opinion that would justify a
multinational intervention in Pakistan.
The Pakistani media and officials
like retired Pakistani Army chief of staff General Mirza Aslam Beg and former
ISI chief General Hamid Gul, began reporting on U.S. private military
contractors conducting unofficial activities throughout Pakistan, especially in
Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad, including U.S. involvement with
“false flag” terrorist attacks that were later blamed on local Islamist
worthies.
In February 2011, the reported acting
head of the CIA in Pakistan, Raymond Davis, was arrested by Pakistani police
after he shot to death two Pakistani men he claimed were trying to rob him.
However, it soon turned out that
Davis was not telling the whole truth. Davis was found with espionage equipment
and weapons and his telephone records indicated he had been in contact with
Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in South Waziristan and other regions. Davis was
released by Pakistan after heavy diplomatic pressure was exerted by Washington.
With tensions already frayed between
the United States and Pakistan, on May 2, 2011, a U.S. Navy special operations
team conducted a raid on the heavily-garrisoned Pakistani town of Abbotabad, in
which Osama Bin Laden was allegedly killed.
Operation Neptune Spear was clouded
in mystery. Bin Laden’s body was quickly buried at sea without any independent
authentication that Bin Laden had actually been killed while living under the
very noses of a number of active fury and retired Pakistani military and ISI
officers who lived in Abbotabad, near the Pakistani Military Academy.
Indian and American military and
intelligence officials suggested there were links between the Pakistani
military and Bin Laden. Fifteen members of the Gold Squadron of the U.S. Navy’s
Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), formerly known as SEAL Team 6, all
of whom participated in the alleged killing of Bin Laden in Abbotabad, were
killed when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled
grenade in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon denied any of the dead
SEAL team members were involved in the Bin Laden raid, but other SEAL Team
members disputed the Pentagon denials on deep background.
Holbrooke, who died after a sudden
heart attack on December 13, 2010, was, as is his successor, Marc Grossman,
noted for their involvement in U.S. covert diplomatic adventures, as well as
their pro-Israeli stances.
After Petraeus took over as CIA
chief, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Michael Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta, Petraeus’s predecessor at the CIA, both charged Pakistan with aiding
Afghan Islamist guerrilla groups.
Mullen charged that Pakistan’s ISI
provided support to the Afghan Haqqani network in carrying out attacks on the
U.S. embassy in Kabul and U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban was earlier
blamed for a terrorist attack on a CIA operating base in Khost, Afghanistan.
The ground was being set for a more
aggressive U.S. policy toward Pakistan, although some Pentagon officials
claimed that Mullen overstated the case against Pakistan.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, floated the idea of U.S. military
intervention in Pakistan.
The covert U.S. activity in Pakistan,
including operations by the notorious mercenaries of the ex-Blackwater, now Xe
Services, was emerging into more overt operations. The prize now, as it has
been for the last few years, is Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
Next stop is Pakistan.
Funny that CIA would CC you on its secret cable to Zardari .. ;)
ReplyDeletemakes an interesting reading though .. sounds fictional ..