[NYTr] Our Man in Pakistan: Just Another Crummy Dictator (Scheer)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl

Truthdig -Nov 6, 2007
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071106_scheer_our_man_in_pakistan/

Our Man in Pakistan

By Robert Scheer

So, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, treated ever so respectfully by George Bush
throughout his administration, in which he became the first Pakistani
leader to visit Camp David, has turned out to be just another crummy
dictator.  But he was our dictator, kind of a modern, even westernized
one who could stand up to all those bearded Islamic terrorists.

Well, not exactly.  Not that anyone bothered to remember, but Musharraf
seized power in Pakistan, ending democratic rule, two years before the
9/11 attacks and did nothing to end his nation's support of the Taliban
rulers next door, who were harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida.
Before that he was part of a military elite that had, as the 9/11
Commission report would later conclude, been one of the main sponsors
of the Taliban.  Nor did Musharraf as dictator-president do anything to
undermine the nut cases that he continued to diplomatically recognize
as the legitimate rulers of the neighboring country.  "On terrorism,
Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban," the 9/11 Commission reported,
adding: "Many in the government have sympathized with or provided
support to the extremists.  Musharraf agreed that Bin Laden was bad.
But before 9/11, preserving good relations with the Taliban took
precedence."

True, after 9/11 Musharraf did provide minimal support for the U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan in return for considerable aid and the lifting
of the sanctions that had been imposed on his nation for developing
nuclear weapons.  Odd that a nation that had nuclear weapons and that
had actively supported the terrorist haven in Afghanistan was welcomed
back into America's good graces only three weeks after 9/11-at the very
same time that the Bush administration was drawing up plans to
overthrow Saddam Hussein, who was bin Laden's sworn enemy.

Oh, yes, sorry, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.  I forgot,
there was that guy "Curveball," the guy in Germany who told us that
Saddam had those mobile biological weapons labs that Colin Powell
relied on so heavily in his U.N. address.  But, as CBS' "60 Minutes"
reported Sunday, the German government had told the Bush administration
very clearly that its great weapons expert was a just another immigrant
trying to hustle a green card.

As for nukes (the real WMD), although Iraq didn't have them, Pakistan
did-at least 70 ready to explode-as well as the airplanes and missiles
that could deliver them.  Worse, the "father of the Islamic bomb,"
Abdul Qadeer Khan, whom the 9/11 Commission called Pakistan's most
revered nuclear weapons expert, "was leading the most dangerous nuclear
smuggling ring ever disclosed." It was Khan who provided the key
technology, uranium enrichment materials crucial to the nuke programs
of Libya, Iran and North Korea.  And it was Musharraf who pardoned him,
made him to this day unavailable to U.S. intelligence agents and, after
a very loose form of house arrest, recently announced that he was now,
as in the slogan of Southwest Airlines, free to move about the country.

No problem-why hold a little nuclear proliferation against our favored
dictator when he's doing such a good job denying al-Qaida and other
religious fanatics a base of operations in Pakistan?  Except that he did
nothing of the sort.  The all-important Pakistan border territory
adjoining Afghanistan is more hospitable now to terrorists than ever
before.  As for bin Laden and the others Bush was going to get "dead or
alive," U.S. experts routinely concede that those terrorists have found
a haven on Musharraf's side of the border.

So where did the $10 billion go, and that's not counting covert funds,
that Bush gave Musharraf to beef up his military to better combat the
terrorists? Well, clearly the Pakistani army is very strong-just look
at the martial law it has been able to impose on judges and other folks
who actually believe in the rule of law.  But wait, Musharraf will back
down; a deal was all but brokered, and Benazir Bhutto, whose adherence
to democracy is as compelling as her family's rich history of
corruption, is waiting in the wings.

Condi Rice is on the phone, so hopefully Musharraf can be bought off
and the free world once again served by the nation Bush designated "a
major non-NATO ally." But there is a bright side, for one adviser
traveling with Rice was quoted in The Washington Post as saying, "Thank
heavens for small favors," meaning that compared with Pakistan, "Iraq
looks pretty good." Talk about lowered expectations.