The ruling Bush triumvirate, Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld, are bankrupting the country with deficit spending on this fiasco of a war on "terror". When will the U.S. voter wake up and remove Republicans from control of the purse strings?
Do reports like this make you feel safer? Do you feel confident that your borders and ports have been made more secure? I think our money is being poured down a rat hole, and the rats are multiplying exponentially.
The voter has the power to send incumbent Republicans home in November. Will they put two and two together, and figure out that the U.S. taxpayer is being duped and robbed?
Daily Kos reports on the story here, and TruthOut.org has the ABC and AP account here.
If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen." – ABC News, Sept. 5, 2006.
Pakistan Denies Bin Laden Gets a Pass
ABC News, September 06, 2006 6:20 AM
Brian Ross Reports:
The government of Pakistan today denied it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country's North Waziristan area.
"If he is in Pakistan, today or any time later, he will be taken into custody and brought to justice," the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in a statement.
The ambassador said a Pakistani military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, had been "grossly misquoted" when he told ABC News Tuesday that bin Laden would not be taken into custody "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen." The comments were recorded in a telephone interview with ABC News.
Q. ABC News: If bin Laden or Zawahiri were there, they could stay?
A. Gen. Sultan: No one of that kind can stay. If someone is there he will have to surrender, he will have to live like a good citizen, his whereabouts, exit travel would be known to the authorities.
Q. ABC News: So, he wouldn't be taken into custody? He would stay there?
A. Gen. Sultan: No, as long as one is staying like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody. One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity.
General Sultan said today it was "hair splitting" to speculate whether troops would be sent in if bin Laden was found in North Waziristan.
"
"If someone is found there, we will see what is to be done," General Sultan said today. "Pakistan is committed to the war on terror, and of course we will go after any terrorist found to be operating here," he said.
Under the terms of the peace agreement, the Pakistani Army promised to cease action in the area and to return captured Taliban weapons and soldiers.
Former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant, said "What this means is that the Taliban and al Queida leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan."
General Sultan said today he "rejected" the idea that Pakistan had created a safe haven for terrorists.
Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the U.S. Central Command, said militants are using Pakistan as a base to infiltrate into Afghanistan, but he said the Pakistani government is not conspiring with them.
"I think that Pakistan has done an awful lot in going after al-Qaida and it's important that they don't let the Taliban groups be organized in the Pakistani side of the border," he said in Bagram, where the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan is located.
Abizaid said he does not believe accusations of collusion between Pakistan's government and the resurgent Taliban rebels or oth
Today:
er extremists.Miranshah: Pro Taliban militants and the Pakistani government signed a peace deal on Tuesday, according to Pakistani negotiators.
The militants said they would stop attacks in Pakistan and across the Afghan border on the condition that the Pakistani government stop air and ground operations in the Waziristan region and dismantle newly built checkposts.
People arrested during military operations will also be released under the agreement and confiscated property, including weapons, would be returned.
This is the best part of the deal:
The peace agreement means that there will be no more free movement for tribes to enter into Afghanistan.
"Except for trade, people will not be allowed to go to Afghanistan to launch attacks," said Nek Zaman, a member of the tribal council who is also a member of the Pakistani parliament.
I'm sure they all got a chuckle after "agreeing" on that part of the deal. With no Pakistani Army or checkpoints in the region, who is supposed to enforce that?
So was Abizaid lying, or was he blindsided by our supposed "allies" in Pakistan? And congratulations to Bush, who was just played the fool by Musharraf, who is cashing in U.S. checks to the tune of $3 billion over five years and was supposedly assisting US efforts on the "war on terror".
That's Bush's allies in action. He's allienated our real allies, and made friends with thugs and despots. Why would we expect anything less?
7 comments:
Mohammed K. is coming to America, and damned if there won't be a plane flying into the building HE will be in... there's never one around when you really need it, is there.
Anonymous,
My preference would be to indict Bush for the laws he has broken, and to vote the Republicans out of office in the 20006 election.
I'd like to see the Republicans out of office, too, Betty... AND the Dems. But, hey, I'm neither... I'm hard to please. ;)
I'd have to agree with the anon comment, somewhat: WHY are we letting this piece of crap trod upon our soil? I'm actually proud Mitt Romney has said "screw you, no security for this guy on OUR taxpayer dime" (not verbatim, but that's how I would put it).
Lib Guy,
I would love to see third parties gain strength, but as long as big money rules campaigns I don't see that happening. We need campaign finance reform.
On the response to U.S. visit by Mohammed K., courtesy should be extended to him. "Let us not become the evil that we deplore".
"Eye for an eye", Betty. That thug got invited by Kofi, to do a PR end-run and make us look bad. This guy is the FORMER leader of Iran, not the CURRENT one. IMO, he deserves the "courtesy" of Gitmo treatment - and by that I mean the Castro's side of the fence Gitmo treatment. As in, what Cuban political prisoners get.
Handing out just punishment for a terrorist murderer, is not "becoming the evil".
Lib Guy,
Gandhi said "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
There are a billion muslims, 95% of which hate us. We can kill and imprison a few of them. But it is like chopping off the head of the hydra, for every one we cut off, multiple new ones spring up in its place.
If the man is guilty of crimes against humanity, let him be arrested and tried in a court of law.
I would like to see us open dialogue with as many Muslim and Arab leaders as we can. I would also like to see us go full steam ahead on developing the alternative energy sources that will let Us (and the rest of the world) stop buying the oil that supports them. The situation there cannot be divorced from the fact that we need their oil, and that we have done them grievous harm by meddling in their affairs, both political and economic.
Let's just eliminate the need to buy their oil, but have polite conversation and cordial and diplomatic relations. Let's take care of ourselves and our allies. Nothing about the current approach makes a bit of sense to me.
ANWR was set aside for exploration, and yet there are those who don't want to utilize an area the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
Drill for oil on our turf, AND move ahead with alternatives - I'm going to make hemp oil-based fuel an issue, even though the drug warriors in BOTH parties demonize hemp, playing on the ignorance of the public by tricking them into believing hemp production would lead to more drug use. Sheer idiocy.
I can't buy the Al Gore model - that the internal-combustion, gasoline-burning engine is a greater threat than nuclear war. If it were, he wouldn't be burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel in those planes he flies around in, hopping the globe to tell people how evil it is to use fossil fuels.
As for "dialogue"... sorry, there are simply some people that won't listen:
"How can we make peace with you?"
"By converting to OUR religion, or by dying, you infidel pig!"
Sorry, but when it comes to thugs like Kim Jong, Hugo Chavez, and that bug-eyed puppet-head in Iran, no amount of capitulation is going to change their minds.
Say what you will about the evils of "Christianity", but at least they don't have a convert-or-die mentality, nor do they stone their rape victims to death, or slice off the heads of their enemies.
"Would you like to hear the word of Jesus?"
"No."
"Are you sure? Well, okay then..."
Contrast to this:
"Worship Allah, or die."
Yeah. Religion of peace. Sure.
I have to say, though, that it's more like 95% of Muslims *don't* hate us - it's the tiny bit that DO, that's the problem. But there are WAY more of them, than there are "Timothy McVeigh" or "Eric Robert Rudolph" types. Hell, put every neo-Nazi, white-power extremist, Black Panther cracker-hater, and Earth Liberation Front eco-terrorist, and you won't be able to equal the number of wigged-out, Jew-hating Islamic nutbags on this planet.
End of rant. Your turn. ;)
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