It is a familiar if not worn-out refrain: “The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say.”
If we are to believe the New York Times — you know, the propaganda sheet in large part responsible for selling the “war” in Iraq, that is to say the plan to mass murder of more than a million Iraqis — the contrived terrorist scare crow al-Qaeda has “clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto,” never mind there is absolutely no evidence of this and never mind as well al-Qaeda was in fact created by Pakistan’s ISI, with a large infusion of CIA cash and directives.
“Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,” averred Robert Gates, one of the primary founders of al-Qaeda, a fact he willingly admitted in his memoir, From the Shadows. Of course, no mention of this slimy connection in the “liberal” New York Times, the former home of the neocon disinfo operative Judith Miller.
“The expansion of Pakistan’s own militants, with their fortified links to Al Qaeda, presents a deeply troubling development for the Bush administration and its efforts to stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country.”
And yet few seem to be troubled by the fact these militants were mentored and lavishly funded by the CIA. Long ago relegated to the memory hole are uncomfortable facts: Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rahman, Pakistani ISI’s head from 1980 to 1987, regularly met with bin Laden in Peshawar, Pakistan; the CIA essentially micromanaged Afghanistan’s opium production; the ISI trained “militants” (i.e., patsies and useful idiots) to attack the Soviet Union proper; well over 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992 in camps constructed and overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the British SAS training future al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts, etc., on and on, ad nauseam.
Now we are expected to believe al-Qaeda, appearing out of the mist of amnesia, is a portentous threat to the poor people of Pakistan, as related by the premier propaganda sheet, the New York Times.
Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners but Pakistani tribesmen from border regions, as well as Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. “Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,” he wrote.
Excuse me, but al-Qaeda, the database and perennial boogieman, has always been a “Pakistani phenomenon,” that is with the good grace of the CIA and MI6, with a bit of collaboration from the Mossad and German intelligence.
How long before we are told the U.S. has to send an infusion of soldiers, pronto, the fight the evil al-Qaeda in Pakistan?
Soon. Lest we face the specter of that Muslim atom bomb falling into the hands of al-Qaeda.
