Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, September 22, 2008

Why would “Al-Qaeda,” a group that is supposedly the prime target of the U.S. initiated war on terror, commit a terrorist attack against a country that has recently changed its government and all but renounced its role as a U.S. ally in the war on terror?

It seemed the “terrorists” did know that their prime objective was to completely wipe out the most influential players in a government that has seemingly vowed to break away from the years of Pervez Musharraf-mandated lapdog subservience to U.S. imperial whims.

The mass media has already blamed the Marriott Hotel bombing, which killed at least 53 people, on “Al-Qaeda,” a routine reflex action despite the lack of any real investigation and no claim of responsibility.

On Saturday morning, Newly elected Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told his parliament, “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism.”

Hours later and hey presto! “Al-Qaeda” provides the perfect pretext for the U.S. to violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity in the name of….you guessed it….combating terrorism!

Read the rest of this entry »

By Asif Haroon Raja

21/09/08 “Asian Tribune” — The US and its allies succeeded in toppling Taliban regime in November 2001 and replacing it with a puppet regime, but the Taliban were neither militarily defeated nor eliminated from the system. But for effective encirclement of Afghanistan from all directions and massive air support provided by USA, the Northern Alliance could not have made any progress. Once the Taliban realised that they were no more in a position to offer resistance particularly after Pakistan ditched them, they considered it prudent to carry out a tactical withdrawal from Kabul and most took shelter in Pashtun dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan. Some trickled into FATA and Baluchistan where they had their kith and kin and some moved into Iran. They remained inactive till 2002 but utilised this time to regroup and refit themselves to be able to strike back at the invading forces that had devastated their country. Bush and his teams of neo-cons felt complacent that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda had been taken care of and only the remnants had to be flushed out. It was this smugness which impelled them to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003. Read the rest of this entry »

By StopTheWarCoalition 18/09/08 “StopTheWarCoalition” – - George Bush has signed a secret order allowing US troops to operate in Pakistan, without permission from the Pakistani government or agreement by the United Nations, contravening numerous international laws and conventions. Bush says the recent ground assault by US commandos and the big increase in the number of US missiles fired from unmanned aircraft are directed at al-Qaeda leaders, but the Pakistani government and local observers say that most of the dozens killed in these attacks have been civilians, the majority of them women and children. The Guardian newspaper suggests a different interpretation for these attacks: “Bush is thought to be in a desperate push for a trophy strike…before he leaves office.” No doubt part of the calculation is the hope that this will boost the electoral chances of John McCain in his campaign to succeed Bush as president.

Since 1945, American has bombed 25 countries round the world, killing many millions of people (some estimates put the figure as high as 20 million). But George Bush has a message for all the families grieving as a result of his contribution to this horrendous scale of mass slaughter. He recently expressed his sorrow, following the US attack in Afghanistan which killed 90 civilians: “I am a partner in your loss and that of the Afghan people.”

And, of course, all those grieving families will be comforted by an earlier Bush pronouncement: “America is a Nation with a mission — and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace — a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”

By Robert Baer

17/09/08 “Time” - — - As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe. Read the rest of this entry »

PressTV.ir 
US Presidential hopeful Barrack Obama has termed the cross-border raids by the US forces into Pakistan as a small step in the right direction. 

Obama supported the raids but described them as “baby steps” by the Bush’s administration.

“The Bush administration has come to that point of view. That’s the kind of policy we have to pursue and continue …This is a baby step, but it’s a baby step in the right direction and something that John McCain hasn’t been willing to acknowledge,” Susan Rice, the top foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, said.

“President Bush and the administration, indeed, are doing what Senator Obama said we must, well over a year ago. If we have actionable intelligence about a high-value terrorist target inside Pakistan and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to take that target out, such as Osama bin Laden, Senator Obama’s view is we should act,” she added.

“Senator Obama has been saying for well over a year, in fact, has been saying frankly since before the invasion of Iraq that the central front in the war on terror is Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we need to invest there,” she noticed.

Experts say Bush is once again violating international law by invading yet another nation which has not attacked the US.

Read the rest of this entry »