WHERE HAVE WE SMELLED THIS BULLSHIT BEFORE?

clipped from: www.wsws.org

Condoleezza Rice to the two countries in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks has only added more fuel to the fire

Rice publicly backed India's demands on Pakistan for tough measures against the alleged perpetrators of the atrocity.

reinforced the message that the Pakistani government had to provide "unequivocal assistance" to India.

rash of leaks in the Indian and US media blaming
Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba

Citing unnamed Indian officials
India had identified Yusuf Muzammil as the man who orchestrated the plan

captured gunmen, Ajmal Amir Kasab, who, it is said, admitted to being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba and training in Pakistan.

in today's Hindu went one step further to claim that India had "proof" that the Pakistani military intelligence—the Inter-Services Intelligence agency—was involved in the Mumbai terrorist attacks

Significantly, the New York Times yesterday cited an unnamed former US Defence Department official as saying that "American intelligence agencies had determined that former officers from Pakistan's Army and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped to train the Mumbai attackers".

No evidence

Several articles have cast doubt on even the basic claims made about the detained gunman
British-based Times noted that Pakistani officials had been unable to trace Kasab to the village of Faridkot in Punjab

contradictory stories in the Indian press variously described Kasab as a small-time pickpocket, an impoverished villager and a well-educated youth fluent in English
President Zardari cast doubt over the identity of the arrested gunman, saying: "We have not been given any tangible proof to say that he is definitely a Pakistani

He blamed "stateless actors" operating throughout the region, and reiterated that Pakistan "itself has been a victim of terrorism and [is] fighting the menace resolutely".

The media leaks, particularly those by US officials, are aimed at undercutting Pakistani disclaimers and reinforcing American demands that Islamabad take action against elements of the military and the ISI who in the past have backed various Islamist militias

In pressuring Pakistan to bow to Indian demands,
The unstable Pakistani government is widely regarded as a puppet of Washington
accusations against the ISI will only compound the tense relationship between the Pakistani government and the military.

concessions by Pakistan
may well be used by opposition politicians to whip up nationalist sentiment.

There is growing outrage that the US and India are exploiting the Mumbai attacks for their own political purposes.

anger over deteriorating living standards as the Pakistani government implements IMF austerity measures as part of an economic bailout package.

the Indian government to take a more belligerent stand against Pakistan.
a growing clamour in the Indian media and from opposition Hindu supremacist parties for tough action

a list of Indian demands, including for Islamabad to arrest and hand over 20 terrorist suspects, most of whom have not even been mentioned in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

President Zardari
New Delhi has provided no evidence against the twenty men
He also insisted that anyone involved in the Mumbai attacks would be dealt with in Pakistani courts

There are growing demands for military action against "terrorist training camps" in Pakistan.

Right-wing Hindu extremist groups are whipping up communal tensions inside India. The fascistic Shiv Sena based in Mumbai has called in its newspaper for the dismantling of "mini-Pakistans" inside India, before teaching "Pakistan a lesson by launching an attack on it". The reference to mini-Pakistanis is a provocative incitement to pogroms against India's large Muslim minority.

the ruling Congress Party, which faces national elections next year, has repeatedly bowed to pressure from the Hindu right in the past.

Completely incapable of addressing the elementary social needs and democratic aspirations of working people, they are again stirring up communal divisions as a means of shoring up their political bases.

The intrusion of the US into this explosive political mixture in pursuit of its own strategic interests—in the first place to consolidate its occupation of Afghanistan—only heightens the danger of war.

MOON OF ALABAMA DRAWS A MAP

At least 75% of all NATO/U.S. supply in Afghanistan comes through the Pakistani port of Karachi (1). Most of it goes up to Peshawar (2) and then through the Khyber pass to Kabul (3). A second route is from Karachi (1) through Quetta (5) to Kandahar (4). A part of the Afghan ring road connects Kabul (3) and Kandahar (4).It is constantly under attack.

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer Riaz Khan, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 7, 1:12 pm ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Militants torched 160 vehicles, including dozens of Humvees destined for U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, in the boldest attack so far on the critical military supply line through Pakistan.


To celebrate the arrival of these two asswipes


Humvees are thought to cost about $100,000 each, though the price varies widely depending on armor and other equipment, meaning Sunday's losses may exceed $10 million. "It's militarily insignificant," U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green said. "You can't imagine the volume of supplies that come through there and elsewhere and other ways."

100,000 Americans lost their homes today and another 100,000 lost their jobs and its insignificant to Lt. Col Rumi Nielsen-Green.

Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green-another fucking asswipe

QUI BONO: MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

clipped from: www.infowars.com

It has now been confirmed that the Indian security services received numerous precise warnings that terrorists were planning to arrive by sea and attack the Taj Mahal hotel, but if anything security was relaxed, allowing the terrorists to prolong the attack for days and not hours.

Many Indians are furious at the botched response that allowed the attacks to drag on for days and are incredulous at eyewitness reports of Indian police refusing to fire back at the terrorists

Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, took many of the now infamous photos of the terrorists, but his main concern at the time was the fact that armed police would not shoot at the terrorists despite them being sitting ducks.

An obvious effort to pin the blame on Lashkar-e-Toiba and by extension Pakistan, despite the terrorist group’s flat denial of responsibility, is now encapsulated by the suspected manufacturing of evidence.

Satellite phones and identity documents linking the attack to Pakistanis was conveniently discovered by the Indians

the Indians killed all but one of the terrorists, a clean cut English speaking Pakistani, Azam Amir Qasab, who is singing from the same hymn sheet as the Indians implicating Pakistan

The corporate media has swallowed the story hook line and sinker, refusing to even raise the prospect that such a confession was obtained through torture.
How can it possibly benefit Pakistan to now have the full might of the U.S. military, with an incoming president who’s made it very clear that he’s fully prepared to expand the bombing raids, trained on Pakistan

This wasn’t an attempt to decapitate government in any way - it was an indiscriminate assault on innocent people

It was a senseless massacre that will ultimately help the geopolitical agenda of nobody other than the Indians and the U.S., who now have the perfect pretext to expand bombing raids in Pakistan and entrench themselves in Afghanistan.

the attack was always going to be blamed on Pakistan as a means of re-igniting a nuclear cold war that reaped massive profits for the military-industrial complex who armed both sides the last time such tensions peaked at the start of the decade.

STEVE COLL'S LASHKAR-E-TAIBA

clipped from: www.newyorker.com

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Islamist organization.
Lashkar has a known “maritime” capability

Late in 2005 earthquake Pakistani government opened the region to journalists
I was particularly interested in looking up Lashkar
I made several visits to facilities run by its charity, called “Jamat-ud-Dawa
In Muzuffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, Jamat had brought in a mobile surgical unit staffed by long-bearded doctors from Karachi and Lahore—very impressive young men, fluent in English, who offered a reminder that unlike, say, the Taliban, Lashkar draws some very talented people from urban professions.

(With its hospitals, universities, and social-service wings, Lashkar is akin to Hezbollah or Hamas; it is a three dimensional political and social movement with an armed wing, not merely a terrorist or paramilitary outfit.)

Lashkar ferried supplies to remote villages isolated on the far side of the churning Neelum River



Lashkar knows what it must do to protect the Pakistan government from being exposed in the violent operations that Lashkar runs in Kashmir and elsewhere. For example, some of its younger volunteers wanted to join the fight with the Taliban in Western Pakistan and Afghanistan, my interlocutor said, and so Jamat had evolved an internal H.R. policy by which these young men would turn in their Jamat identity cards and go West “on their own time,” much as think tanks allow policy scholars to take leaves of absence to advise political campaigns

what the United States should insist the government of Pakistan do about Jamat and Lashkar

it’s a difficult question—comparable to the difficult question of managing Hezbollah’s place in the fragile Lebanese political system.

Pakistan’s policy of banning Lashkar and tolerating Jamat has helpfully reinforced Lashkar’s tendency toward nonviolent social work and proseltyzing.

In the long run, this work is a threat to the secular character of Pakistan, but it is certainly preferable to revolutionary violence and upheaval right now.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that the Army and I.S.I. continue to use Jamat’s legitimate front as a vehicle for prosecution of a long-running “double game” with the United States, in which Pakistan pledges fealty to American counterterrorism goals while at the same time facilitating guerrilla violence against India, particularly over the strategic territory of Kashmir, which Pakistan regards as vital to its national interests.

Lashkar is a big organization with multiple arms leadership is undoubtedly divided over how much risk to take in pursuit of violent operations in India,

If the boys in Mumbai had support from Lashkar, did the group’s leader, Hafez Saeed, who runs Jamat, know of the plan?

that this was a rogue operation of some sort, or a strategy cooked up by elements of Lashkar and groups such as the Pakistani Taliban or even Al Qaeda (perhaps conducted, too, with support from rogue elements of the Paksitan security forces)—that would be an even more complicated equation.

if it turned out that Lashkar conceived the Mumbai attacks as a way to pull Pakistani Army units and attention away from the Afghan border and into defense positions in the east, to protect the country from the possibility of military retaliation by India.

a civilian-led Pakistan government and Army command that may have little control over the very same Islamist groups that it purposefully built up
endorsed by Saeed and aided by elements of the Army,

then the Pakistan government will have no choice but to at least make a show of closing down Jamat and arresting Saeed.\

The U.S. can

• provide transparent information about the investigation and where the facts lead

• it can indict individuals and groups that can be established as culpable for the Mumbai

• it can emphasize in public that the United States seeks the end of all Pakistani support for terrorist groups, no matter whether they are operating in Afghanistan, Kashmir, or Mumbai.