September 24, 2006- Coerced Cooperation

   Later on today, tonight by American time standards to be exact, there will be a program on CBS called "60 Minutes". This is a show that has been on Sunday nights for fucking decades now, it is a "weekly newsmagazine" as they call it, they do stories on the hot topics of the day, interviewing heads of state and the like as well as entertainment industry giants and anyone that they deem newsworthy. This show has been ful of itself for many a year now, they seem to think that they create the news as well as report on it, and to call the staff on it conceited is a very nice way of putting it. However, they do get the exclusive interviews a lot of the time, as these leaders of industry and entertainment and politics seek them out to tell their stories, tales that are told like four or five days in advance and taped for broadcast on Sunday night, and that headstart gives CBS the chance to promote an exclusive interview with whoever for days beforehand, showing soundbites and clips of it on the news and the like, and this week is no exception, especialy because it is the beginning of the new fall TV season here in America and all sorts of shows are having their premieres, and 60 Minutes has never been one to shirk that rold, every season, they try and get some big time person to be the prime story on the season premiere, usually one of those world leaders, and tonight will be no exception, as they have an exclusive interview with the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. He was in the country for that get-together that they had at the United Nations last week, the one where Hugo Chavez said that he smelled sulphur and blessed himself for protection and wherte other  dictators and tyrants got to rant and rave publicly for a while and get standing ovations for their trouble. While he was in the country, 60 Minutes got to sit down with Musharraf and ask him a few questions, most of which revolved around Pakistan's role in the War on Terror as one of America's closest "allies." There has been one big soundbite that has come out of that interview, and that concerns how washington got Pakistan to become allied with them after September 11th, 2001. before that, relations between Washington and Pakistan were not so hot, after all, Pakistan was the only government to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate leaders of Afghanistan, and Pakistan had never really been friends with America for a long time due to Washington's continued support of Pakistan's  bitter enemy, India. However, after the events of September 11th, 2001, Washington decided that Pakistan had to become an Amnerican ally no matter what,because they border on Afghanistan and America would need their help to try and go after bin Laden and his henchmen, so Pakistan had to get on board right away. The most obvious way for that to happen was to forgive Pakistan's debts to the USA, which were substantial, but there were those in Washington that felt that was not quite enough, that other tactics needed to be employed here. Musharraf tells what that was on the 60 Minuts interview, he says that one of the Bush Administration's highest rakning Cabinet members, Richard Armitage, called him up and told him that if he and Pakistan did not help America now, that Washington would not hesitate to take action, including "bombing Pakistan back into the Stone Age", which Musharraf said was a direct quote from Armitage.  Armitage has said that this was not a direct quote, but he does not deny using strong language and intimidation tactics when he spoke to Musharraf that time, saying that it was necessary. That has been the big quote that every news organization has been using and it is supposed to get everyone to watch 60 Minutes later on today.

  As you can imagine, that quote has stirred up quite a lot of controversy around the world. When Musharraf met with President Bush in Washington a few  days ago, it was brought up, and he said something about how people should not be concentrating on semantics  instead of the "cooperation" between Pakistan and America and all that tommyrot. However, that all underlined the very tense realtions that still exist between Pakistan and America, that news conference was about the only time that Musharraf and Bush agreed on anything, in all the other private meetings that the two had, there was not a lot of agreement or cooperation of any kind. The reality of it all is that Musharraf is not at all pleased with Washington for adopting that tactic towards him in order to get his "cooperation", and he was letting them know it last week, and that is why he even brought the subject up on 60 Minutes, even though we are talking  about a five year old episode now. because he knew that it would embarrass the Bush Administration and that it has done. Armitage has had to come out of retirement and deny that he said that shit about the bombing, and he has had to deal with reporters constantly asking him about that , like why he was so threatening and the like. This does not do well for the Administration's reputation as world bullies, pushing everyone around endlessly to pursue their own agendas relentlessly, and Bush himself has had to deal with that part of things. He has not given any definitive answers to any of this as usual, just made excuses and blamed others as always. It does seem as if it was not necessary for Washington to go so far as to make threats of some kind or another against Pakistan to get Musharraf to work with them, he did have a lot of incentive other than debt relief on his side. He would benefit from seeing bin Laden killed or captured because that would mean that the dude would no longer be hiding out in his country bringing all the negativity and such that he does, and that would only help Pakistan's reputation, making it look like they were not a terrorist supporting state, something that has held them back for quite a long time now. He also could have gotten some help in his ongoing disputes with India, like not having the West suppoort India entirely and ignoring him completely all the time, there were all sorts of reasons that he would have wanted to help America out without having  to be threatened with extinction  and the like. That's the point that he  is trying to make in the 60 Minutes interview, that he did not have to be talked to like that to give his cooperation, and that the fact that he was has stuck in his craw and pissed him off for over five years now. When you look at this situation, it sure does seem like Washington was overreacting in the midst of the hysteria that gripped America in late 2001, like they were some kind of gangster thugs threatening people that they either had to do business with them or else suffer consequences. That Armitage dude has come right out and said that he was certain that this was a necessary tactic, although he has not quite said why he thought so. nAmerica and pakistan have never fought a war against one another, nor has America ever fought an actual war on India's side either, so there was no military reason for doing that, nor was there any other obvious reason either, because Pakistan never was a countrytwhere they had daily anti-American rallies or anything like that, they  never outwardly seemed to hate America, so these thug tactics seem unnecessary until you look at it all more closely.

   Pakistan  might not have been fighting America outwardly, but they sure as hell were not friends with them either. To begin with, Pakistan is the place where that fucker Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclar program, just flat-out sold any nuclear shit that anyone wanted to those that had the money fo rit, no questions asked, hardware, software, plans, you name it, Khan sold it to anyone that wanted it. he even has no idea just who he sold what to as he never kept any records, so the upshot of this all is that this irresponsible fuckwad spread nuclea rshit all over the world with no care at all as to who he wa sselling it to, so nobody really quite knows just who possesses what in terms of nuclear technology around the world these days. Any terrorist or kook that had the money now might very well have nuclea rsecrets or hardware or whatever, all thanks to Khan. Add to this that there was no way that Khan could possibly have been able to do that shit without the expressed permission of Musharraf and Pakistan's government, everyone knows that they got cuts of the action here.So Pakisatan might not have been fighting America outwardly, but by letting Khan get away with this shit for so long, they let America's enemies get a headstart on their own nuclear programs, like Iran and North Korea and those types. Musharraf did not give a fuck how dangerous he was  making the world by letting this go on for so long, as long as he got paid, it was all OK with him. Of course, Washington got very pissed off over this and wanted to do something about it, but after September 11th, 2001, they had to forget all about that and grit their teeth and bar it as Khan just got sentenced to house arrest and was allowed to keep all of the money he made. Add to that the fact that Musharraf did zero to ever stop bin Laden in the years prior to 2001, Pakistan was a base where he was allowed to train his followers and build his organization, again because Musharraf got paid off for the trouble. He knew that the dude was a terrorist supreme and had malice in mind for the West, and he never lifted one fucking finger to stop the dude. If he had information that bin Laden and Co. were planning to do something terriblle in America, he never told anyone or did anything about it, even though he had these organizations infiltrated by his Pigs. Bin laden was not the only Muslim terrorist tha used Pakistan as a base, there were plenty of others, and Musharraf did zero about them all. Add to that the fact that he was borrowing money off of America right and left and getting all sorts of goods on credit and making no effort to pay the creditors back, and you do not have an American friend. Musharraf is also no champion of human rights either, he cracks down on his people quite a bit, does not allow much in the way of political opposition, uses his Pigs and military to spy on and arrest the people for every little thing, the prisons in Pakistan are not wanting for inmates, so there is not a lot of freedom there. Musharraf never thought much about America either, he never painted himself as a friend to them until he was threatened by Armitage, and once September 11th, 2001 happened, probably planned to do nothing, he probably thought that it was cool to begin with, so that seems to be why Washington felt that the dude had to be threatned like he was. Maybe they thought that if they had to coerce his sooperationj at first, that he would see that America was not so bad after all and then help on more of a voluntary basis once he realized the magnitude of the situation.

   However, that has not at all been the case. Musharraf has not cooperated with America in any real way these last five tears, and Washington is starting to get fed up with the dude, that has been evident latelly in the talk that Washington would go right into Pakistan to get bin Laden whether they had the approval of Musharraf or not, because they are sick of the dude. He is equally as sick of Washington, because he does not want them telling him anything, no matter how much money he owes them. he always hated America and probably feels that they got what they deserved in 2001, and had to be threatened like he was just to get him off of his ass and trying to help in some way. Now that we are over five years into this, he probably has to be threatened again, because he is acting like a spoiled child towards Washington. He does not like to share intelligence information with Washington, no matter what it might be, and has not been helpful at all in the war. He clearly hates Bush and does not care if anyone knows it either, as his actions and words of late has proven. The only reasonthat he went along with it all to begin with was not the threats that he got, but the fact that America forgave Pakistan's tremendous debts to them because that was the only weay that he could think of to shore up that land's Third World economy and hold Pakistan's  economy together with bubble gum and string and spit. Doing so is the only way that he  can remain  in power there and not get overthrown by someone else. That is all that he cares about, not hwat goes down with America, as far as he is concerned, America could disappear tomorrow and he would not shed a tear, and that attitude has worn real thin in Washington. However, Musharraf will not schange that attitude, if anything, it is worse now, so since he is probably scared that someone from Washington is going to phone him again and threaten more bombings or whatever, so he went running to 60 Minutes and told this five year old story so that all Americans would freak out at Bush and give him so much heat that there would be no way that he could repeat that tactic now.  He knows that there are elections scheduled in America in a couple of months, and that the Administration's political opponents woule use this to give them real trouble and make sure that they would not actually do something like rush into Pakistan to get bin Laden or bomb the country back to prehistory. He is actually about as uncooperative as it gets and since there is no one in pakistan that seems able to unseat him anytime soon, America is stuck with his sorry ass whether they like it or not, and they certainly don't. As far as Musharraf is concerned, this charade can go on forever, but Washington does not have forever, they only have until January 20, 2009 and them they have to leave for the next Administration. So they want Musharraf to cut the shit and get cracking and told him so last week, and he got all pissed off and went running to 60 Minutes telling a sob story, and that right there shows just how committed that he is to helping anyone other than himself. He cares not what goes down, as long as he can cling to power some way and get paid off as well, he has shown that's the way he operates for years now. He has gotten his fucking money and  his continued power, yet, that's not enough for him, he wants more, and Washington does not want to give him any more since he has done zero to earn what he already has gotten and that is why the two are at odds every bit as much as they always have been for decades now and will continue to be that way for a long time, and why any "cooperation" from Pakistan will always have to be coerced via threats and why that "cooperation" will always be negligible.

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