The following may be the most vital piece of information about 9/11, the War of Terror and its relationship to Pakistan, that you would have come across in the last seven years. Links provid
From the Blog: State of Pakistan
The following may be the most vital piece of information about 9/11, the War of Terror and its relationship to Pakistan, that you would have come across in the last seven years. Links provide details of original sources. This has been put together with the help of the material based on the official records of the 9/11 Commission, the reports including but not limited to that appeared in Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CBS News, Dawn, The News International, USA Today, Center for Research on Globalization, Canada, New Yorker, and sources like Gen. Musharraf's book (In the Line of Fire) and Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence.
Why is that so that the three principal characters linked with 9/11 including its alleged master mind have not been tried in an open court while we are told daily by the US officials that Al-Qaeda - allegedly based in Pakistan 's tribal areas - is the biggest threat to the US ? What are immediate strategic objectives of the US in Pakistan?
In a paper titled ' Al Qaeda strikes back" for the May/June 2007 issue of the Foreign Affairs, Bruce Reidel (a former CIA official and now a fellow of a think-tank, Brookings Institution) wrote:
"Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before. It has suffered some setbacks since September 11, 2001: losing its state within a state in Afghanistan, having several of its top operatives killed, failing in its attempts to overthrow the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But thanks largely to Washington's eagerness to go into Iraq rather than concentrate on hunting down al Qaeda's leaders, the organization now has a solid base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and an effective franchise in western Iraq."
If everything Mr. Bruce Reidel wrote is true, then this is Pakistan's war. The trouble is, most Pakistanis, specially those with access to more information, do not believe him or Pakistan's military establishment or those in the media or political parties who tell them that this is their war. This is CIA's dirty war. Let's explain why?
Those who question whether Al Qaeda is a threat at all to the United States question why there has been no attack on the US soil since 9/11.
Alan Greenspan wrote in his book "The Age of Turbulence" (page 227):
"There was no bigger question in Washington than, Why no second attack? If Al Qaeda's intent was to disrupt the US economy, as bin Laden declared, the attacks had to continue. Our society was open, our borders porous, and ability to detect weapons and bombs was weak. I asked this question of a lot of people at the highest levels of government, and no one seemed to have a convincing response."
Some go a step further and doubt if Al Qaeda is even alive! They include former CIA officials.
On Sept. 17, 2008, Time magazine published a story "Risking War with Pakistan" written by an-CIA officer (for the Middle East) Robert Baer. He wrote:
"As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we're on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that's not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan's military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.
You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It's a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.
All of which begs the question, is it worth the ghost hunt we've been on since September 11? There has not been a credible sighting of Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. As for al-Qaeda, there are few signs it's even still alive, other than a dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. Al-Qaeda couldn't even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11, let alone set off a bomb."
Here are some concrete and well documented reasons why the US claims about Al Qaeda are not credible. Read this FBI testimony to the 9/11 Commission/US Congress of July 31, 2003 http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress03/pistole073103.htm carefully, long one though; part most relevant to Pakistan is:
"The FBI conducted a detailed financial investigation/analysis of the 19 hijackers and their support network, following the September 11th attacks. This investigation initially identified the Al Qaida funding sources of the 19 hijackers in the UAE and Germany. The financial investigation also provided the first links between Ramzi Binalshibh and the 9/11 operation. A continuing investigation, in coordination with the PENTTBOMB Team, has traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaida operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the U.S."
This above is consistent with what the Wall Street Journal had published on Oct. 10, 2001. The WSJ never followed up or contradicted this story but other sources such as AFP confirmed it.
Quote:
Our Friends the Pakistanis
Yesterday we noted a report from a Pakistani newspaper that Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad had been fired as head of Islamabad's Inter-Services Security agency after U.S. linked him to a militant allied with terrorists who hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in 1999. Now the Times of India says Ahmad is connected to the Sept. 11 attacks: Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd. Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.
Unquote.
The three characters alleged to have been part of the money transfers from Pakistan for 9/11 operation were :
1. Omar Saeed Sheikh (sentenced to 'death' in 2002 but "appeal" pending). He kidnapped Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal. Musharraf wrote in his book Omar was an MI6 agent. Pakistan's then chief of the Intelligence Bureau; Brig. (retired) Ijaz Shah was the handler of Omar Saeed Sheikh. Sheikh surrendered to him in Lahore although Daniel Pearl was kidnapped from Karachi. Brig. Ijaz Shah was also accused by Benazir Bhutto of plotting to assassinate her.
2.The ISI chief Mahmud Ahmad from Oct. 1999 to Oct. 2001. He disappeared out of the public eye after being 'sacked' on Oct. 10, 2001. He lives happily in Pakistan.
According to a prophetic article published in the NEWS International on September 10, 2001:
"ISI Chief Lt-Gen. Mahmoud's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Marc Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centred around Afghanistan . . . and Osama bin Laden. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmoud's predecessor, was here, during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days."
3. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - was arrested in March 2003 and handed over to the US but never faced open trial. According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." On October 12, 2006, Time magazine reported that "KSM confessed under CIA interrogation that he personally committed the murder" of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl.
Why is that so that these three characters have not been tried in an open court while we are told daily by the US officials that Al-Qaeda - based in Pakistan's tribal areas - is the biggest threat to the US. Does anyone in the US think tanks or Pakistan's establishment or pro-US media have a logical and rational answer for the above?
Finally who are Pakistani Taliban? The former Taliban Pakistan chief Abdullah Mahsud (and a cousin of Baitullah Mahsud) was arrested by Rashid Dostum in Afghanistan in December 2001 and handed over to the US. He was kept in Guantanamo Bay till March 2004 and then released. He headed straight to Waziristan. And then the Taliban insurgency gathered momentum in the northwest Pakistan. By the way, he also killed two Chinese engineers before he was killed by Pakistan's security forces in Baluchistan on July 24, 2007, just days after a peace deal between the Pakistani government and Waziristan militants collapsed. {Why do these militants target the Chinese? Lal Masjid mullahs did that as well !!!!}
Now Baitullah Mahsud leads Taliban-e-Pakistan and was accused by Musharraf of having the secret support of the CIA. Recently there have been rumours that Baitullah Mahsud died but he is believed to be in coma. It is quite probable that the Taliban would nominate a new leader to replace him. Curiously, these developments have followed the publication of reports in Pakistani media that the Pakistani authorities protested to the US in July 2008 that the US agents have been helping Baitullah Mahsud.
What does it all mean? Where this is all leading to? What is the strategic objective of the US in Pakistan? According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Center for Research on Globalization, Canada:
"The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan. This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington's ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area."