Received the following in an e-mail. Thought it might be suitable here.
Quote:
Greetings,
No doubt, Pakistani nuclear scientist is just a fall guy. No doubt, the cheatin' lyin' tinpot and his courtier knew all and were in all of this all along. No doubt, Uncle too perhaps knew or, at least, had a wind of all of this for quite some time. No doubt, the mighty tinpot knows well if does not act (create this charade of being seen as whipping his scientists) then Uncle is gonna come charging in to bust his nukes.
... absolutely no doubt, Atal Bihari, ride his horse to Dilli's throne again he very well may, is gonna watch his dhoti and his dreams of Noble prize get blown in the winds about to sweep Pakistan.
Why?
Simply because, no doubt, this is the wrong Pakistani and the wrong time to be dreamin' of smokin' a peace Hukkah.
Still hallucinating?
Read CHICAGO TRIBUNE's expose on what Uncle's scripting for Pakistani version of epic 'Gone with the Wind' ..
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U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive - Sources say military is mapping operation to strike inside Pakistan
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0401280334jan28,1,1724348.story
You need logins for both Pak Friday Times and Chicago Tribune, so I am reprinting below.
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Nuclear shenanigans
Najam Sethi's
E d i t o r i a l
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General Musharraf has omitted to note the most critical factor in such reckoning, the unaccountable status of the Pakistan army as the guardian of our nuclear programme and its overbearing control of civil society. In the final analysis, the buck stops at GHQ
akistan’s nuclear programme and scientists are in the gun-sights of the sole superpower. Allegations of wrongdoing (proliferation) are slowly hardening into undeniable facts. Iran and Libya have got off the hook but screwed us in the bargain. Our footprints have even been discerned on the tarmac of Pyongyang’s airport in North Korea. In the event, Islamabad is desperate to limit damage and “close” this potentially explosive case. To this end, General Pervez Musharraf’s strategy seems twofold: admit a degree of guilt but absolve the state by attributing it to a few greedy and wayward scientists. This is savage and naked realpolitik: among the targeted fall-guys is, Dr A Q Khan, the state-acclaimed “father of the Islamic bomb”.
Pakistan’s nuclear programme had survived international pressure until now for several reasons. First, it was supposed to be India-specific. Therefore as long as the world was prepared to accept India’s nuclear programme, it could hardly trample on Pakistan’s nukes. Second, it was supposed to be a defensive deterrent and not a weapon of threat in an aggressive adventure. In other words, it was supposed to keep the peace, not precipitate war, in the region. Third, it was shrouded in secrecy. Indeed, a degree of ambiguity was deliberately cultivated by the state to maximise its deterrent value for India while minimising its threat value for the rest of the world. Fourth, Pakistan’s frontline status in the cold war compelled the “free” world to turn a blind eye to it.
But problems began in the late 1980s, and one by one these benign conditions started to fall by the board. In 1987, following India’s aggressive intents in Operation Brasstacks, Dr A Q Khan seemingly lost his cool and exploded with the scoop of the decade (“We’ve got the bomb”!) before the bewildered Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar. That was the end of the theory of plausible ambiguity. Then the cold war came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spotlight was turned on Pakistan. In April 1990, Washington dispatched Robert Gates of the CIA to the sub-continent when it suspected a nuclear conflict in the offing following Pakistan’s fuelling of low-intensity conflict in Kashmir. This implied that the development of nuclear weapons had emboldened rather than restrained Pakistan from adventuring in the region. Therefore in September 1990, the US ambassador to Islamabad, Robert Oakley, accused Pakistan of having “crossed the nuclear red light” and the Bush Sr administration slapped economic and military sanctions on Pakistan. For the next four years, Washington tried to pressurise Pakistan to “freeze, cap and roll back” its nuclear programme in exchange for a restoration of mutually profitable ties. But Pakistan refused to accept a rollback. Instead, it claimed it had frozen its programme. More critically, it insisted its programme was under tight controls and proliferation was out of the question. But telltale signs to the contrary were aplenty.
In 1991, COAS General Aslam Beg advised Nawaz Sharif to sell nuclear know-how to Iran. The idea was spurned, according to Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and Ishaq Dar of the PMLN. But the nuclear rogues were not to be thwarted. In the mid 1990s, following a series of carefully planted “nationalistic” articles in the press advocating sale of nuclear technology to offset American economic and military sanctions, a full-page advertisement appeared in a national daily hawking nuclear wares to the world at large. When the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad erupted in protest, the nuclear rogues seemed to beat a hasty retreat. But now it transpires that in fact they did quite the opposite: they simply went underground with their business.
Dr A Q Khan has been at the heart of our nuclear programme. His secret “successes” made Kahuta Research Laboratories an unaccountable state institution within the larger, unaccountable praetorian state of Pakistan. Dr Khan has accumulated extraordinary wealth in pursuit of his nuclear dream. He has funded self-serving seminars and books. With the help of pliant journalists, he has bankrolled his image as “the father of the Islamic bomb” so that no one can dare accuse him of any wrongdoing. When colleagues like Dr Munir Ahmad Khan and others in the atomic energy establishment protested his dubious “dealings”, he connived to have them shunted aside as “American agents”. Those in the media who wondered about his newfound wealth and questionable ways were accused of being “unpatriotic”. Every army chief and every general who headed the strategic nuclear establishment knew much was amiss but preferred to turn a blind eye “in the national interest” to Dr Khan’s comings and goings. But when the national interest changed, efforts were speeded up to quietly wean KRL away from critical elements of the programme and hand these over to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Indeed, General Pervez Musharraf was the first army chief who actually confronted Dr Khan and was stunned by the revelations of impropriety.
General Musharraf is absolutely right to insist upon a detailed investigation into the matter, partly to assuage international proliferation concerns and partly to devise better mechanisms of command and control in the future. Both individuals (scientists and generals and civil servants and politicians) and state institutions (intelligence agencies, media, defense organs) are guilty to a greater or lesser extent. He is also right in suggesting that such things happened because of the intrinsic secret nature of the programme and Dr Khan’s pivotal role in it from the outset. But he has omitted to note the most critical factor in such reckoning: the unaccountable status of the Pakistan army as the guardian of our nuclear programme and its overbearing control of civil society. In the final analysis, the buck stops at GHQ rather than at any particular army chief.
At the moment, however, too much is at stake for the state and nation to accommodate some of the more self-righteous protests of so-called “nationalist” elements in our media against the investigations (“debriefings”) underway. To punish some or all of the rogue scientists and army officers or not to punish anyone at all is also not the real issue because the problem is symptomatic of a deep political confusion about the nature of the Pakistani state and society, the role of the armed forces and the “ideology” of Pakistan. But while we mull over how to address such weighty issues, we must urge the government of the day to close this dangerous file as quickly as possible. In this context, General Pervez Musharraf needs all the support he can get from us in cleaning up this act effectively and laying the international community’s suspicions and fears to rest.
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive
Sources say military is mapping operation to strike inside Pakistan
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf (AP)
U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive (Getty/AFP photo by Farooq Naeem)
January 28, 2004
Graphic
Pakistan
By Christine Spolar
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published January 28, 2004
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, deeply concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan, is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, military sources said.
U.S. Central Command is assembling a team of military intelligence officers that would be posted in Pakistan ahead of the operation, according to sources familiar with details of the plan and internal military communications. The sources spoke on the condition they not be identified.
As now envisioned, the offensive would involve Special Operations forces, Army Rangers and Army ground troops, sources said. A Navy aircraft carrier would be deployed in the Arabian Sea.
Referred to in internal Pentagon messages as the "spring offensive," the operation would be driven by certain undisclosed events in Pakistan and across the region, sources said. A source familiar with details of the plan said this is "not like a contingency plan for North Korea, something that sits on a shelf. This planning is like planning for Iraq. They want this plan to be executable, now."
The Defense Department declined to comment on the planned offensive or its details.
Such an operation almost certainly would demand the cooperation of Musharraf, who previously has allowed only a small number of U.S. Special Operations forces to work alongside Pakistani troops in the semi-autonomous tribal areas. A military source in Washington said last week, "We are told we're going into Pakistan with Musharraf's help."
Yet a large-scale offensive by U.S. forces within the nuclear-armed Islamic republic could be political dynamite for Musharraf.
The army general, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, has come under growing political pressure from Islamic parties, and his cooperation with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts is widely unpopular among average Pakistanis. Nor can Musharraf count on the loyalty of all of Pakistan's armed forces or its intelligence agency, members of which helped set up and maintain the Taliban in Afghanistan and are suspected of ties to militant Islamic groups.
Speaking on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Musharraf again rejected the need for U.S. forces to enter Pakistan to search for bin Laden.
"That is not a possibility at all," Musharraf said. "It's a very sensitive issue."
The U.S. military is operating under the belief that, despite his recent statements, Musharraf's thinking has changed, sources said. Musharraf said last week that bin Laden and his followers likely were hiding in the mountains along the Afghan border. He also said "we are reasonably sure that it is Al Qaeda" who was behind the two attempts on his life.
An offensive into Pakistan to pursue Al Qaeda would be in keeping with President Bush's vow to strike wherever and whenever the United States feels threatened and to pursue terrorist elements to the end.
"The best way to defend America . . . is to stay on the offensive and find these killers, one by one," Bush said last week. "We're going to stay on the hunt, which requires good intelligence, good cooperation, good participation with friends and allies around the world."
Musharraf's vulnerability is of deep concern to U.S. officials. If he were killed, Bush administration officials say, it is unlikely that any successor would be as willing to work toward U.S. goals to eliminate Islamic extremists.
The U.S. military plan is characterized within the Pentagon as "a big effort" in the next year. Military analysts had previously judged that a bold move against Islamic extremists and bin Laden, in particular, was more likely to happen in spring 2005.
A series of planning orders--referred to in military jargon as warning orders--for the offensive were issued in recent weeks. The deadline for key planning factors to be detailed by the U.S. military was Jan. 21.
Sources said the plan against Al Qaeda would be driven by events in the region rather than set deadlines and that delays could occur. But military sources said the push for this spring appeared to be triggered by the assassination attempts on Musharraf, both of which came in December, and, to some extent, the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Hussein was captured after eight months of an intense military and intelligence effort on the ground in Iraq. Pentagon and administration officials, buoyed by that success, believe a similar determined effort could work in Pakistan and lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden, said sources familiar with the planning.
Thousands of U.S. forces would be involved, as well as Pakistani troops, planners said. Some of the 10,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan would be shifted to the border region as part of regular troop movements; some would be deployed within Pakistan.
"Before we were constrained by the border. Musharraf did not want that. Now we are told we're going into Pakistan with Musharraf's help," a well-placed military source said.
Internal Pentagon communications indicate the U.S. offensive would rely on several areas of operation, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries in the region.
The U.S. also is weighing how and if Iran can be persuaded, through direct or indirect channels, to lend help, according to internal Pentagon communications. The U.S. is eager to avoid a repeat of the Afghan war in 2001, when some Al Qaeda fighters were believed to have escaped into Iran.
Military planners said the offensive would not require a significant increase in U.S. troops in South Asia. But Special Operations forces that shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 will return.
"We don't have enough forces but we can rely on proxy forces in that area," said a military source, referring to Pakistani troops. "This is designed to go after the Taliban and everybody connected with it."
