Another fine ally
May 15, 2008 | 12:05 PM
There's just no understanding it from any sane point of view. Lay down with dogs and you're bound to get fleas, as some obscure saying goes. Another of our allies has turned out to be a bad bad nation. This time, the focus has fallen on Pakistan, that delightful little country ruled by a military “president” who took power in a coup.
Hmm, sounds vaguely familiar.
Anyway, this Pakistan's version of a dictator seized power and has been tolerating a parliament style government since his take over. Annoying to have to listen to the little people, but what is a dictator to do? This is, of course, is President Gen. Pervez Musharraf who overthrew Nawaz Sharif , the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1999.
Well good old Musharraf couldn't get rid of the last pieces of the Pakistan government, and election time had rolled around in his country. Usually when a dictator takes over, that sort of thing gets tossed out the window. However, there has been pressure to hold elections for a change in the government. Fortunately for Musharraf, there was a simple solution to all the bother of people rocking the vote.
He suspended elections in the country of Pakistan, claiming a state of emergency in the country just two days before they were to occur. There goes that feeling again, as though it's familiar in some way.
Musharraf not only suspended elections, but also blacked out all but the state run television, which is under his control. Add to that he decided that for her own protection, he put Benazir Bhutto, one of Pakistan's most popular and front runner opposition to Musharraf's government, under house arrest. While she has been put in a comfortable prison of her home, she is still a prisoner. The benevolent Musharraf has also cracked down on such silly things as protests, rallies, and political based speeches. The actual leader of Bhutto's political party was arrested and imprisoned as well as he led members of his party to a rally in support of Bhutto.
The list goes on. A second political party in Pakistan put forth a leader. None other than the deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was in talks with Bhutto to align against Musharraf in the upcoming, but suspended elections. He has been arrested as well and held without charge. He has rebuked calls for moderation from the U.S. Repeatedly, and he's done all of this since November 3rd. The emergency, Musharraf claims is from extremists at the Afghanistan border who are waiting for a “weaker” leader to take over. Of course the declaration of emergency also coincides with the time when Pakistan's courts were going to decide on the legality of Musharraf's reign in the face of holding new elections.
Now why did this sound familiar? Oh, yeah. The year 2004 when our very own El Presidente tried to find a legal way to suspend the November election claiming that there was a threat of attack if the elections went forth. Based once more on a combination of old and false intelligence (seems to be a theme), this ploy did not go past a couple of legal inquiries and press conferences. Dangerous thing to even contemplate.
So once again, the U.S. In its desperate and ineffectual War on Terror has chosen to side with a leader who proves to be as villainous as the people we are fighting against. We make deals with the devil in order to fight his axis of evil.
The price is...wrong
May 14, 2008 | 7:14 PM
If you think I am overstating the cost of the war in Iraq, Afganistan and "terror" around the world then you need to read this document. This is the read deal and shows you just how much spending is going on to support this clusterfu...mistake.
Testimony before the Congressional Budget Office.
Throwing the U.S. a 'curveball'
November 11, 2007 | 2:25 PM
Let your mind wander back to the year 2003. The heat was building from the White House for an invasion of a little oil-rich nation called Iraq. El Presidente was on his war path, looking high and low for ways to push the country into enough of a frenzy to send the troops. He told the people about terrorists from Iraq, and how they and Al-Qaeda were the best of buddies, alluding how Iraq might even have had connections to the attacks of 9/11.
But he needed something else, a last piece to kick everyone in the pants and get the war started. Then it happened. Our German allies handed the U.S.A. exactly what El presidente needed! The spies that keep our country safe (well, until their husbands become liabilities) and their contacts overseas had information from a defector. Some deep insider who had made it out from under the thumb of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a man who knew first hand the secrets of Iraqi projects and could tell us the dangers of their hordes of weapons of mass destruction.
This lurker in the shadows was given a code name: Curveball. He was able to describe mobile labs constantly churning out biological agents that could decimate populations and be used against lovers of freedom and democracy around the world. This was it! This was the intelligence needed to tip the balance in favor of going to war, taking over the country of Iraq if only for its own good, and to save the world! The U.S. struck...it was shock and awe as we dropped bombs on what we hoped were real life targets. Then we sent in our troops and they were greated as liberators by the Iraqi people...some of them anyway...
Unfortunately the Curveball was a fake.
Yes, indeed. It turns out that the man known as 'Curveball' to the FBI, CIA, and NSA and their overseas counterparts was a complete fraud. Real name, Rafid Ahmed Alwan, claimed that he was the head of one of Iraq's biological research/production laboratories. As it turns out, the truth is the man is a liar who told these things to the German government in order to get asylum. Even after the information was handed off to U.S. intelligence agencies, who were told shortly there after that the information was now considered false, we ran with that ball anyway.
Not only did we run and bomb and get soldiers killed, El Presidente and his bunch continued to hem and haw about these weapons and U.N. inspectors had determined before the war began that a vast majority of his story was false.
12,000 U.S. troops wounded or killed
30,000 Iraqi civilians wounded or killed
Faulty intelligence. Priceless.
Well, turns out it does carry a heavy price, after all.
.