Yes, you must be mentally and emotionally prepared for the
"capture" or killing of Osama bin Laden, either during
the Democratic Convention, or in the general election
campaign, AND for the possibility that the VICE
_resident will recede into the shadows so that the
increasingly unhinged and incredibly shrinking
_resident can be bouyed by either Calm 'Em Powell or
Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), since both have now
shown they are souless, as well as, if all else,
fails, the cashing in of another Trifecta ticket
(i.e., a second 9/11-style event followed by a
cancelled or delayed election) Of course, this last
scenario, floated by Tommy Franks in an interview with
Cigar Afficiando awhile back (look it up in the LNS
searchable database), is somewhat more problematical
than the Bush cabal had hoped. Why? Well, the US
military is not at all happy and not at all confident
in its "commander-in-chief." The LNS wonders, would
the increasingly unhinged and incredibly shrinking
_resident have some *difficulty* with the chain of
command if ever attempted to declare martial law? And,
hey, if you think that we are indulging in conspiracy
theory, you really need to read more history. Read,
for example, how Franco and the Spanish fascists
prepared the political ground for their takeover with
"terrorist bombings." Read, for example, the publicly
released official documents that recount the 1960s
planning by some within the US government to incite
invasion of Cuba with "terrorist attacks" on US
soil...
John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari, The
New Republic: Late last month, President Bush lost his
greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll
conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post
discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even
with the president on the critical question of whom
voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely
as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq,
Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive
21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even
as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his
administration was implementing a plan to insure the
public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.
This spring, the administration significantly
increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture
Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the
Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are
believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of
Pakistan...This public pressure would be appropriate,
even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an
unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis
deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before
Americans go to the polls in November.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040719&s=aaj071904
July 8, 2004
PAKISTAN FOR BUSH. July Surprise?
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari
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Post date 07.07.04 | Issue date 07.19.04 E-mail
this article
Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest
advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted
by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that
challenger John Kerry was running even with the
president on the critical question of whom voters
trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a
result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush
lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive
21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even
as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his
administration was implementing a plan to insure the
public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.
This spring, the administration significantly
increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture
Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the
Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are
believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of
Pakistan. A succession of high-level American
officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to
Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary
of State Christina Rocca to State Department
counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South
Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months
to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do
more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay
Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan,
publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a
"sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing
the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved
and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he
said.
This public pressure would be appropriate, even
laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly
private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these
high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the
polls in November. The Bush administration denies it
has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral
calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same
since September 11 in terms of getting high-value
targets off the street, and that doesn't change
because of an election," says National Security
Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic
has learned that Pakistani security officials have
been told they must produce HVTs by the election.
According to one source in Pakistan's powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani
government is really desperate and wants to flush out
bin Laden and his associates after the latest
pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver
before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing
target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in
U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according
to a recently departed intelligence official, "no
timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the
November election is apparently bringing a new
deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this
one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is
responsible for internal security, explains, "The
Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the
Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail
them out when they are facing hard times in the coming
elections." (These sources insisted on remaining
anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an
official leaking information to the press can be
imprisoned for up to ten years.)
A third source, an official who works under ISI's
director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed
tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level
that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the]
election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this
source claims that Bush administration officials have
told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in
mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten
days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by
visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings
in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such
comment." But according to this ISI official, a White
House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be
best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were
announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight
July"--the first three days of the Democratic National
Convention in Boston.
he Bush administration has matched this public and
private pressure with enticements and implicit
threats. During his March visit to Islamabad, Powell
designated Pakistan a major non-nato ally, a status
that allows its military to purchase a wider array of
U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize
Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q.
Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting
nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and
Libya--declaring Khan's transgressions an "internal"
Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is
pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for
Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns
about the country's proliferation of nuclear
technology and lack of democratic reform.
But Powell conspicuously did not commit the United
States to selling F-16s to Pakistan, which it
desperately wants in order to tilt the regional
balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis
fear that, if they don't produce an HVT, they won't
get the planes. Equally, they fear that, if they don't
deliver, either Bush or a prospective Kerry
administration would turn its attention to the
apparent role of Pakistan's security establishment in
facilitating Khan's illicit proliferation network. One
Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a
journalist, "If we don't find these guys by the
election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear
mess up our asshole."
Pakistani perceptions of U.S. politics reinforce these
worries. "In Pakistan, there has been a folk belief
that, whenever there's a Republican administration in
office, relations with Pakistan have been very good,"
says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. correspondent for the
Lahore-based Daily Times. By contrast, there's also a
"folk belief that the Democrats are always pro-India."
Recent history has validated those beliefs. The
Clinton administration inherited close ties to
Pakistan, forged a decade earlier in collaboration
against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, by
the time Clinton left office, the United States had
tilted toward India, and Pakistan was under U.S.
sanctions for its nuclear activities. All this has
given Musharraf reason not just to respond to pressure
from Bush, but to feel invested in him--and to worry
that Kerry, who called the Khan affair a "disaster,"
and who has proposed tough new curbs on nuclear
proliferation, would adopt an icier line.
Bush's strategy could work. In large part because of
the increased U.S. pressure, Musharraf has, over the
last several months, significantly increased military
activity in the tribal areas--regions that enjoy
considerable autonomy from Islamabad and where, until
Musharraf sided with the United States in the war on
terrorism, Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in
the nation's 50-year history. Thousands of Pakistani
troops fought a pitched battle in late March against
tribesmen and their Al Qaeda affiliates in South
Waziristan in hopes of capturing Zawahiri. The
fighting escalated significantly in June. Attacks on
army camps in the tribal areas brought fierce
retaliation, leaving over 100 tribal and foreign
militants and Pakistani soldiers dead in three days.
Last month, Pakistan killed a powerful Waziristan
warlord and Qaeda ally, Nek Mohammed, in a dramatic
rocket attack that villagers said bore American
fingerprints. (They claim a U.S. spy plane had been
circling overhead.) Through these efforts, the
Pakistanis could bring in bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or
Zawahiri--a significant victory in the war on
terrorism that would bolster Bush's reputation among
voters.
But there is a reason many Pakistanis and some
American officials had previously been reluctant to
carry the war on terrorism into the tribal areas. A
Pakistani offensive in that region, aided by American
high-tech weaponry and perhaps Special Forces, could
unite tribal chieftains against the central government
and precipitate a border war without actually
capturing any of the HVTs. Military action in the
tribal areas "has a domestic fallout, both religious
and ethnic," Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed
Mehmood Kasuri complained to the Los Angeles Times
last year. Some American intelligence officials agree.
"Pakistan just can't risk a civil war in that area of
their country. They can't afford a western border that
is unstable," says a senior intelligence official, who
anonymously authored the recent Imperial Hubris: Why
the West is Losing the War on Terror and who says he
has not heard that the current pressures on Pakistan
are geared to the election. "We may be at the point
where [Musharraf] has done almost as much as he can."
Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal
areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if
that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003.
Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know:
This year, the president's reelection is at stake.
Massoud Ansari reported from Karachi.
John B. Judis is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Spencer Ackerman is an assistant editor at TNR.
Massoud Ansari is a senior reporter for Newsline, a
leading Pakistani news magazine.