Why someone is blackmailing Kayani.....

America’s Dumb-Assed Duplicity In Af/Pak.....

[Whenever America's two-faced foreign policy stands exposed to the world, the military's first response is always to send forth a highly decorated spokesman, to feign hurt feelings that people would ever doubt American military integrity. The backtracking usually comes later, when war crimes and duplicity stand fully exposed, revealing American CIA or military covert actions which are indistinguishable from other terrorism....

The direct action missions and irregular warfare actions simulate terrorism, which means that innocent people must die in the process. To pretend otherwise is asking that we ignore reality itself. The attack upon the Pakistani border post was clearly one of those "tickling" incidents mentioned by former CIA director Michael Hayden, intended to reveal what Pakistani reactions would be to small air attacks, as a prelude to bigger incursions inside Pakistan. Our relationship with Pakistan has degenerated into an ongoing psywar against each other.....

How can the US really try to undermine Pakistan's "clout" in Afghanistan if their help is needed to bring order to Afghanistan? Generals tend to be braggarts, who often express their disgust with the rest of the male population for perceived weaknesses. Listening to them is like watching the scene from Patton where he slaps the shell-shocked soldier for cowardice. US military spokesmen will have a much more difficult job convincing the world that our intentions are above-board and sincere in the future. The deceptions upon which this war has operated are being revealed one by one. Each revelation undercuts American claims of integrity and denials of evil intentions. Until the Beast stands fully exposed to the world he will continue to hide behind the Hollywood "good guy" image that the Pentagon has carefully crafted over the years.]

US needs to tackle Pakistan’s clout in Afghanistan, says ZIOCONNED Dempsey....

Why someone is blackmailing Kayani.....

Eli Lake’s column featured by Daily Beast is intriguing for more reasons than the obvious one that he is one of America’s ace reporters on the national security beat. Surely, someone in the know of things on the US’s intelligence operations in Pakistan gave him a peep into the secret world of the US’s intelligence network in Pakistan and that ’someone’ must be really ’someone’ very special of the stature of David Petraeus, for instance, for Lake to take him so seriously.

I wonder why that someone gave away so much that has a most acute angle to it (which is hard to see except if you look closely), namely, that someone is softly, gently rocking Pakistani army chief Ashfaq Kayani, suggesting it’s time to wake up from the reverie. The reason could be that the Pakistani decision to expel the US from Shamsi airbase and to root out the remaining tentacles of the US’s parallel intelligence network is hurting.

After all, Iran just showed how to shoot down America’s latest stealth drone aircraft. And Kayani just told his men in the border with Afghanistan that they could shoot at what they want. With Shamsi gone out of US hands, America’s celebrated drone warfare may be ending in our part of the world till a more sophisticated model if perfected through the trial runs in the Somalian wilds.

Lake gives a fascinating insight into how the Americans prised open Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] and played havoc with it ultimately. And Lake reminds us gently that all these deadly US inroads into the ISI’s bowels began when Kayani was heading the ISI under Pervez Musharraf who, of course, according to Lake, gave “valuable assistance” to the Americans from the presidential palace in Islamabad. (My advice to Musharraf is to defer his proposed arrival in Pakistan in January 2012 by at least one year .)

With great aplomb, Lake slips in the intriguing thought as well that Musharraf “handpicked Kayani as his replacement as Army chief shortly before stepping down from the presidency in August 2008.”

So, the ISI’s pro-American “T-Wing” was formed during Kayani’s stewardship only, which later led to the proliferation of US intelligence activity in Pakistan. In short, it is rubbish to blame Hussain Haqqani as responsible for letting in all those hundreds of CIA operatives into Pakistan by generously granting them diplomatic visas from his ambassadorial chamber in Washington. Haqqani, it seems, was efficiently following up an entire enterprise that began under Kayani....

Lake informs us that Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of US joint chiefs of staff, was known back in Washington among the folks as the “Kayani whisperer”. Lake writes admiringly of Mullen as “a man with a special knack for quietly and discreetly influencing Kayani at crucial points.”

Just ponder for a few minutes: Why is someone in a key position in the US security establishment in Washington deliberately slandering Kayani at this point? I think, with Haqqani gone out of the loop, with President Asif Zardari probably stepping down soon in whatever strange circumstances, there is great uneasiness bordering on panic in Washington....

It seems increasingly that Washington has no Plan B. The setback has come as an avalanche. The Pakistani military has turned the table squarely on the US and the latter needs to yet figure out how to play back into the game. By the way, Shuja Nawaz, who is known to be rather knowledgeable, also makes much the same point.

Meanwhile, someone has hinted at a warning to Kayani that he is going too far in rooting out even the last traces of the US intelligence penetration that devastated the Pakistani state structure.

The overpowering sense from Lake’s dispatch is of course how the US doesn’t hesitate to degrade the state structures of even its allies if American interests are involved. If this was the ruthless fate that visited ISI - an organisation that is considered second only to Mossad - I shudder to think what would be the case with lesser mortals like, say, we Indians who live on vegetables and fruits. At the end of the historic “defining partnership” between US and India, will anything be left of our Bharat mata?

Eli Lake is here.

Posted in Military, Politics....

Finally, US Ambassador Tells the Truth About American Intentions In Afghanistan....

[Ambassador Crocker's admission is the first time that a US official has admitted publicly the fact that has always been denied, whenever US spokesmen mentioned Obama's deception, the imaginary "withdrawal" date of 2014. The United States would never have been investing so many hundreds of millions of dollars building super bases if there had been a real intention to leave the war-ravaged country. The withdrawal is a big fat lie by our Commander-In-Chief, used to brush away resistance to the unspoken reality. Ours is to be an Empire of lies and blood. Sounds like a new Dark Ages.]

U.S. troops in Afghanistan may stay, diplomat says....

The Afghan government’s decision to recall its ambassador to Qatar for “consultations” on account of Doha and Washington working out the setting up of a Taliban office in the Qatari capital underscores the fault lines in the endgame. One, US is bent upon talking to the Taliban directly, without involving Pakistan or Hamid Karzai. The two partners will be kept informed by the US on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.

Two, emanating from the above, US strategy is to work for a settlement that suits its interests first and foremost. Three, the old German-Qatari backchannel to Taliban still works. Four, US strategy of “fight-talk” keeps changing; it now seems more like “talk-fight”, although yesterday US defence secretary Leon Panetta exuded confidence while visiting Kabul that US is going to defeat the Taliban militarily.

The most interesting part is Qatar’s role. Obviously, US is highly impressed by Doha’s role in the Libyan war, especially its handling of the extremist Islamist elements. Qatar has mastered the use of money power in tempering political Islam. So, US is banking on it to finesse the Taliban.

But what happened to Saudi Arabia and UAE who were traditionally the Taliban’s mentors? Presumably, Riyadh doesn’t want to come up-front. The UAE also likely doesn’t want to get involved with the Taliban. Indeed, Qatar is becoming very ambitious, punching far above its weight.

Will Islamabad and Kabul take this ‘undercutting’ by the US and the Qatari oneupmanship in their stride? Not likely. Karzai has nicely ticked off the Qatari emir. Kabul and Islamabad wouldn’t want the Afghan settlement to be negotiated behind their back, either. The net result could be that one of these days the Doha process would get busted. Already, ex-Taliban envoy Abdul Salam Zaeef who was reportedly the Man Friday to head the Doha office has developed cold feet. Smart guy - this Zaeef. You only live once, isn’t it?