Musharraf Spilling the Beans—Why Now?

ironee,

That`s far-fetched, mon. And relax, we do still know the meaning of `best of the rotten lot.`

salim @ 94:
``Actually that was Hamidumdum Sahib`s marriage proposal to the future Mrs. Hamidumdum.``

yes, except for a slight technical error there: It was to all three of them. Note carefully the form of the second-person nouns in the proposal.

#97 PM thought I could stir a few things up in the right quarters calling them lackeys of Mushy!

Re: # 96
you have a death wish mate. Knowing the two mad_rush_a products, you will find yourself at the receiving end of many names and abuse.

Your theory - any merit there?

zeemax #42

`` Taliban had started to become a headache for Pak as well since the world community considered Pak responsible for Taliban`s actions and pressured it to control them. But as it was, Taliban after coming to Power had begun to spurn Pakistan`s `suggestions` re matters such as the Bamyan Buddhas, softening their strict sharia laws, handing over Usama after African embassies etc., and had been gradually distancing themselves from Pak influence. ``

How can Taliban survive without Pakistani supplied $$$, fuel and weapons ?

`` Part of the deal with US was that after fall of Taliban, Kabul will be held by international forces. As it turned out, US got the Northern Alliance waiting on the edges of Kabul till Taliban evacuated, and then allowed them to occupy the capital. That was a betrayal.``

So what ? NATO forces have controlled Kabul since then. Most of the Northern Alliance commanders have been sidelined by Karzai.

you seem to sprout typical Pakistani propaganda and delusions

zeemax #54

`` True. That is why I had asked the question on the other board that ``Could US actually have carried out its threat, and at what cost?``. But noone answered. I think the Turkish example proves that US would have backed off. Turkey is nowhere near Pak but it resisted firmly and US could do nothing. However, the fact remains Pak had no reason to go to war on behalf of Taliban who had turned against Pak(#42). ``

Turkey`s permission to allow US army to open a second front was not critical to the success of Iraqi war. Pakistani permission to allow US use of its airspace is critical to Afghanistan war.

Turkey does not have a rival like India. Greece is a historical enemy but they have patched up partially. Greece is smaller than Turkey. Pakistan has to think twice about pissing off foreign powers. Foreign countries can help India to piss off Pakistan.

Turkey never supported Saddam unlike Pakistan which cultivated the Taliban.

zeemax #76

`` Yes no argument about this. Pak should have told US to eff off and we`ll see what`s in our best interests. ``

The problem is that you will have a hard time defining ``our best interests`` on an open forum like this.

The question was not mainly one of Pakistanis facing US attacks in Pakistan, the question was of Pakistanis facing US attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan was involved at several levels with the Taliban civil war against Northern Alliance, the question was was Pakistan going to stay put in Afghanistan and fight the US also. That was a major part of the threat that US held out if Pakistan did not abandon the Taliban. As it is, though the Army/ISI brass evacuated after the U turn, many freelancer Pakistanis on the Taliban side were killed in the US-led war.

Musharraf`s tour in the US virtually announces his second U-turn wrt the Taliban. The reason he is so strident about Taliban being a legitimate people`s movement instead of being the madrassa-powered drug trading mafia that it is, is because he needs the JUI, the main organisation behind the Taliban, to support his reelection in uniform.

``Adding to the ferment was speculation about the length of the President`s absence from Pakistan on his trip to the US, and resentment in Islamabad that his book In the Line of Fire was launched in New York, rather than at home.

General Musharraf is accompanied on his trip by an entourage of more than 90 officials, including cabinet members, and the cost is said to be astronomical. Critics say the trip is a book promotion tour.``(Australian)........( at Pakistan Tax payers or at American tax payers expense – hope not)

The Australian newspaper says that Musharraf`s book -- full of cruel euphuisms like his Kargil’s Mother of all military Blunders -- as ``the finest hour for Pakistan army`` -- and other patently knee-jerk anti-Indian hostile passages -- has damaged the emerging relationship with India – may act as an unguided ICBM blasting the Pak India CBM`s to pieces....

....it is becoming clearer by the pages of his poppycock book that the man is not only a disoriented dizzy narcissist peacock he is a inveterate imbecile......

Hello, sounds like sour grapes?
Heres a review 4 u:

6 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

Good book - full of facts and unbiased views. , September 27, 2006
Reviewer: Sohaib Salam ``Cheapest In the Wrold`` (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

Pervez Musharaf is an extraordinary man who is a peace activist. He is looking for peace and he will bring about peace in the sub continent if he remains in power for a few more years. Born in India, he migrated to pakistan as a young kid. It clearly showes how much he loves for Pakistan and India to be at peace with each other. As a soldier he has seen what confrontation does to socities and countries.
Definately a must read for peaceful people.

Re: # 94

Salim sahib:

``Anil Bhai,
Actually that was Hamidumdum Sahib`s marriage proposal to the future Mrs. Hamidumdum. ``

You should be a comedian writer. Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart are waiting for a great Muslim Script Writer.

Anil

Well Said HP...

The taliban taking over parts of Pakiland was actually part of Pakiland`s plan all along..

Taliban set up office in Miranshah

By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: Three tribes along with the local Taliban have set up office in Miranshah to fight crime in the city, tribal sources said on Wednesday. “The Darpakhel, Burakhel and Miranshah tribes along with the Taliban have set up an office in Miranshah to bring law and order under control,” sources close to the Taliban told Daily Times. A senior leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman) denied reports that the Taliban alone opened the office in violation of the peace agreement which aimed at preventing the Taliban from running a parallel administrative system.The office was opened on Wednesday and local residents expressed fears that the growing Taliban influence would undermine the tribal code of life. The locals criticised the government for “completely disappearing from the streets”. “There is no police to provide security which is why the crime rate has increased,” a resident of Miranshah told Daily Times. A pamphlet was distributed in the bazaar inviting residents to lodge their complaints with the office. It is not clear what role the office will play in maintaining law and order and whether the office will hand over criminals to the political administration. Residents said the opening of the office meant “Miranshah has been handed over to the Taliban”. Local militants have set up similar offices in the major towns of South Waziristan where they take up civil and criminal cases. Meanwhile, the 10-member monitoring committee for the peace accord will meet Dr Fakhre Alam, political agent of North Waziristan, to discuss the fate of 10 tribesmen arrested in connection with attacks on coalition forces inside Afghanistan.

Reuters adds: A pamphlet distributed in the Miranshah bazaar said clerics would be collecting funds to pay for a force aimed at protecting people from criminals. Reuters rang the telephone number on the leaflet, and was told by Maulvi Nizamuddin Borakhel: “We opened the office to take action against masked men who are criminals.” “We want the pact with the government to be enforced completely, but these people are creating mischief against the country,” he said. The leaflet said people could always shoot dead any masked men who attacked them. “There are some crazy people, especially youngsters, who want to show-off their power,” said Shah Zaman Khan, spokesman for a department dealing with tribal affairs in Peshawar.

Kamran Shafi weigns in

link

We just have space for two of them this week so let us take the most devastating, the most absurd, the first being that he capitulated when told by Mahmud the then ISI chief that then US deputy secretary of state Richard ‘Sumo’ Armitage had threatened to “bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age” if the Pakistani leadership did not help the US in its war against terror, particularly against the Taliban. ‘Sumo’ says that whilst he had a “very strong conversation” with Mahmud he did not threaten bombing Pakistan because he could order no such thing.

I believe ‘Sumo’. Simply because he could not have known how weak the backbone of the Pakistani military brass really is. Even he, at that time a sort of high representative of the mightiest power on earth would have thought that the Pakistanis would show some little spine and should therefore be treated with a little respect. Sure he would have growled at Mahmud; sure he would have glared at him in the way freestyle wrestlers try to stare down their opponents; sure he would have said great harm could come to Pakistan if it did not side with America at that difficult time. But he surely could not have said what Musharraf imputed, to Pakistan’s lasting shame.

Which is all the more reason for Pakistan’s present chief of air staff to make a full apology to the Lebanese people, and to their prime minister, for his unthinkingly foolish remark that no Pakistani leader would cry like the Lebanese PM once we received the (quite useless) F-16s presently on order. Well, Mr CAS, Pakistan not only had F-16s at the time, it also had Mirages and F-6s; it even had the bum, and yet its leadership capitulated so cravenly after just one conversation, while the “weak” Lebanese stood fast despite the massively devastating Israeli onslaught!

The second shameful admission is about Pakistan getting bounty money for the more than 350 Al Qaeda suspects it has handed over to the United States since the start of the so called ‘War on Terror’. Good God! One should have thought that Pakistan was doing what it was doing only because Al Qaeda and their ilk were hardly good for Pakistan! Not for head money! And what about the innocent, some of them mere children, who too were given into American custody, many of them finding themselves in the inhuman prisons run by countries as disparate as Poland and Egypt and the uglier of the Central Asian countries whose leaders are “tight” buddies with Dubya just like our General? What about them when they are finally released? Will we make reparations to them because we were the cause of their tribulations?

Also, how do we now refute statements such as the one made by the prosecutor in the Aimal Kansi case who famously asked why hundreds of thousands of dollars were being paid to bounty hunters for Kansi when ‘Pakis would sell their mothers for a few thousand dollars”. I ask you!

hmmm.......

moving up.........upto no.4 today on amazon..........behind noam chomsky........i have never seen a book being better marketed.........not to mentioned better timed......had it not been timed and marketed like this, i doubt it would be in the top thousand.......now it is no.4!

musharraf should give all proceeds to charity......otherwise it becomes a very unethical act.....someone taking over a country, then writing a book on it, and then marketing it on govts. expense in the usa...........

if he doesn`t, then it`s a new low for pakistani politics.....if he does, then it`s good pr for pakistan (and him).........

Okhla 99 writes in #88 <<< You seem to be living in a crazy world of your own. Everyone but you seems to know that Pakistan today does not enjoy the stature of Turkey or most other Muslim nations. It cannot say ``NO`` to US. >>>

I live in the real world and understand it much better than you do, thank you. If you had read my post carefully, I was not comparing stature, simply defining what ``national interest`` translates into which involves not capitulating your nation to the whims of an external with no questions asked. Is that very difficult for you and your cheerleader PM~ the dimwit~ to comprehend? By the way what stature does it enjoy, close to that of Iran, which is also saying NO to the US, or that of Cuba, which has said NO to the US on several occassions. The fact is that Musharraf like his predecessors is not saying NO to the US not because he cannot say it but because the Pakistan Army is and has been a cheap whore of the US for a long time. Don`t belive me? Read Dennis Kux`s standard book on US Pakistan relationship required reading for all US diplomats in training.

Then you write

<< Whether this is due to lack of moral strength, ideological strength, or simply the fear of coming face to face with the misdeeds of its own army and agencies in the past in letting the ISI support Taliban, Lashkar, Jaish etc. Once complicity with terrorists has been exposed, established, there would be a price to pay. >>>

That complicity with ``terrorists`` of which the biggest one being sought was a previous US ally, were maintained through networks strengthened by the Americans, to the ruination of Pakistan during their proxy cold war, these Americans who themselves have supported reactionary right wingers when it suited them against all progressive regimes, is no excuse, do not try to attribute some kind of moral standard to US international affairs

then he writes << Musharraf has prevented the ship from sinking, nay, being torpedoed. He is a leader who can still exercise some control on the army. A whole lot of Pakistanis respect him. The Indians are scared of him. Musharraf can get away with direct attacks like KArgil (thinly veiled behind the mujahideen) on India. >>>

Done with your hamd o naat of Musharraf, if you are I would ask you to look at the current world data sheet put out by the US census bureau (maybe that helps you come back to the `real` world). Pakistan is among the lowest of the low on all human development indicators. Regardless of the praise Musharraf lavishes on himself and I spent 2 hours today reading that third-rate book full of nonsense and old wives tales at a Barnes & Noble, he has not saved any ships. Considering how he has done US bidding in the north which will alienate an already alienated population, is another part of the high treason that none of his predecessors have managed to accomplish.


<<< He is the best bet Pakistan has at the moment. The TINA factor as the Indian newspapers would say (There Is No Alternative). Folks like you can ridicule him and talk of theoretical nation states. But as far as theories in Pakistan are concerned ``It is merely paper....``. >>>

Illiterates will always claim that knowledge and theories are ``merely paper``. There are several alternatives, the people in Pakistan are very progressive, and that does not mean doing the bidding of the US which leads them into the dark alleys of reactionary religiosity. Regardless of how he and you criticize Bhutto, the man got popular support based on progressive ideals~ what he did or did not do is not the point, the point is that people in Pakistan responded overwhelmingly to those liberal ideals. This person is merely kissing Bush`s a$$, Pakistan is less respected today than at any time in its previous history in your so-called ``comity`` of nations, why is that if its TINA and the ship is being saved?

I suggest you get an education before telling other people to get real. You are trying to support a system that will result in perpetuating the slave-status of Pakistan, and ensure that no democracy takes root, that is in tune with the hypocrisy of America that sings about Democracy but support and strengthens the worst dictators for its many objectives.

Mohsin Hamid, is in his 30s, and in my opinion the second best Pakistani (or of Pakistani origin) English novelist around (the first being Nadeem Aslam). Though he has only written one book. Mohsin writes, regularly, for the international edition of Time Magazine. Now, he has been given a slot in the US edition also................I have always found his articles to be quite balanced. Perhaps because his views have generally been in line with my own, regarding Pakistan, Musharraf, etc.........Following is a nice write up from Time.....
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501060911-1531432,00.html

Divided We Fall
Pakistan`s increasing polarization can be cured by democracy

By MOHSIN HAMID

Monday, Sep. 04, 2006
When I made a reporting trip to Pakistan`s rugged Baluchistan province in 2004, I expected to encounter strong feelings against the central government in Islamabad......So I was surprised to see children in Gwadar playing cricket in replicas of the uniforms of Pakistan`s national team. In fact, the only hostility I encountered was from aggressive undercover security agents who questioned me rudely and threatened to seize my camera.

Afterwards, a shop owner, overhearing me complain ....... We are Pakistanis, but they treat us like foreigners.`` And so, in his opinion, did the central government......he seemed to consider himself very much a Pakistani. But he resented Islamabad`s heavy-handed approach and the troops it deployed to enforce its policies. I left Gwadar with new sympathy for the Baluch and their desire for more say in their affairs. ........

I was originally opposed to the 1999 coup that brought the President, General Pervez Musharraf, to power. But after 9/11 and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, he seemed to offer a steady and in some ways liberal hand during a period of great uncertainty for Pakistan. Under Musharraf, we have witnessed rapid economic growth and a soaring stock market, a liberalization of private media outlets, and the resumption of a peace process with India. But that sense of hope is now fading. One of the legacies of seven years of rule by the army chief is a Pakistan that has become deeply divided.

The fissures are visible at multiple levels. The most obvious example is that of attack helicopters hunting down rebels in Baluchistan and the tribal areas of our northwest frontier?rebels who are our fellow citizens.......

What Pakistan needs is compromise: between provinces, between religion and secularism, between the desire for growth and the imperative to check inflation, between us and our neighbors...........

The first challenge, of course, is to convince Musharraf to stand down at the end of his current term and allow the elections scheduled for 2007 to be free and fair. He would do well to bear in mind that the people of Gwadar want jobs and a hospital, not army checkposts. No matter how many tribal chiefs are killed, in this the people of Gwadar will never be alone...........``

musharraf was needed for the first three years. Pakistan was going to go off a cliff had Nawaz continued. musharraf should have left after that. he would have gone down as a hero amongst the public had he done so.........now he is not going to leave. the worst affect of that is that nawaz and benazir and co. have once again become legitimized. in the next elections, one of them will definitely win (if they are fair), and pakistan will be back to square one...........

had musharraf left after three years, i think new political faces would have come up......however, pakistan is now set for another of its historical cycles:

- military ruler overstays welcome......gets country to the point of polarization (baluchistan, waziristan).......puts army into everything.......gets far too close to usa for his own good and good of pakistan.......people get fed up with this.......he gets kicked out....... same political faces that he originally kicked out replace him.........they engage in their old traditions of massive mismanagement to keep their political cronies happy......... they bring the economy to a standstill......poverty figures drastically increase...........new military ruler (who must currently be a brigadier or maj. gen.) takes over........people welcome him for three years, as they are fed up with stagnant economy.........then he refuses to leave..........and the cycle continues............