What a curious, and sudden,
reversal: now we have Democrats claiming to have “inside” information
that justifies a war, whilst Republicans are skeptical. Well, not so
curious, really, since the Democrats now have a war of their own, the war
against Pakistan, to defend.
Obama’s Gulf of Tonkin
A war of their own: Democrats target
Pakistan
by
Justin Raimondo,
May 17, 2010
The claim by the US government that the Times Square would-be bomber,
Faisal Shahzad,
was “trained” and “directed” by the Pakistani Taliban is looking more
bogus by the moment.
The latest: one of at least three people arrested in connection with
the alleged “plot,” Mohammad Shafiq Rahman, hadn’t seen Shahzad in years,
and even admitted to his employer that he knew the accused. One Larry
Adlerstein, who had hired Rahman to do some computer work for his art
business, told reporters:
“Just a few days ago he had a conversation with Rahman about the
attempted bombing in New York City [in the course of which] his employee
made a surprising admission. ‘As a matter of fact’ [said Rahman] ]I know
this guy accused of trying to bomb Times Square. I haven’t seen him in 8
or 9 years but I know him.’
“Adlerstein says Rahman described the suspected bomber, Faisal Shahzad as
‘an undirected person….no political positions, just a drifter.’”
Rahman has been
arrested on trumped-up immigration charges, but ask yourself: if you
were part of a terrorist plot, and had assisted someone already in
custody, would you admit to knowing the accused? This is just plain
ordinary common sense: but that’s not what inspires our intrepid G-men.
In an
attempt to follow the money trail, and find – or invent – a foreign
link, US investigators have spread their net far and wide, apparently
including any individuals who ever had significant financial dealings
with Shahzad over a ten year period. This has led, so far, to
arrests – all on immigration charges – in Brookline, and Watertown,
both in Massachusetts, and one in Maine. There is no information
coming out of the immigration cops, since they aren’t answerable to
anyone – and refuse to even confirm the identities of those being held.
The authorities often use vague and constantly-shifting immigration laws,
easily violated by non-lawyers, to wring information out of green card
holders and non-citizens in general. No need to ship them off to
Guantanamo, or Bagram – just let
ICE deal
with them.
Yet as those who know the detainees are coming forward to present
a fuller picture, it looks like there’s nothing at the end of the
money trail but the administration’s Taliban conspiracy theory asserted
as fact.
It took a Republican senator,
Kit Bond, to point out the obvious: that US Attorney General Eric
Holder is “playing games” – political games – with the case. The senior
Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, Bonds averred that he
has seen no convincing evidence “so far” of Shahzad’s purported link to
the Pakistani Taliban. Holder “is only interested in looking tough on
terrorism on TV, since he’s now told the intelligence community to skirt
the national security law and give only the details he wants and when to
Congress.” The administration is invoking “national security” to shield
what it knows about the alleged plot from Congress, while
going on television announcing the “link” had been established.
Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee,
claims she has definitive evidence of the Taliban link, but refuses
to debate the matter with Bond “in public.” What a curious, and sudden,
reversal: now we have Democrats claiming to have “inside” information
that justifies a war, whilst Republicans are skeptical. Well, not so
curious, really, since the Democrats now have a war of their own, the war
against Pakistan, to defend.
This war, covert up until
a few
months ago, first reared its head when Hillary Clinton paid a
tempestuous visit to Pakistan and directly accused her hosts of
sheltering Osama bin Laden. The resulting firestorm marked a new low in
US-Pakistani relations, and one has trouble believing it was merely a
random temper tantrum on Hillary’s part. You’ll recall that during the
presidential campaign, Obama openly
declared his intention to go into Pakistan, given the chance to do
so, and it’s entirely unsurprising he’s doing just that.
First, however, his administration must come up with a rationale, and
apparently they’ve settled on the
pathetic act of a demented
“
lone wolf” – as Gen. David Petraeus characterized Shahzad – as being
good enough for government work. In short, the Shahzad case is Obama’s
Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The parallels are striking, and instructive: in both cases, the
government constructed a completely made up story in order to pursue a
preordained path to war. Just as
there was no attack on any US ship in the Tonkin gulf, so there was
no attempted Taliban plot to blow up Times Square – just another American
nut who went
postal. And this time, too, the media is falling down on the job,
refusing to question what increasingly looks like a crude fabrication.
As for the Pakistanis, they too
believe Shahzad was a lone nut: Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN,
Hussain Haroon, described him as a “misguided soul” who acted alone.
While acknowledging Washington may have other intelligence, in an
interview with CBS News Haroon averred: “All I am saying is that the
evidence I have points in one direction that it does not have the
signature of the Taliban. This is not, and I repeat not, a
Pakistan terror threat.”
The ambassador went on to note Shahzad is not even a Pakistani citizen,
and he brought up Hillary’s accusation –
reiterated this month – that his government is hiding bin Laden.
Haroon and the Pakistanis see the looming threat of direct and massive US
intervention in Pakistan, and are doing everything possible to stave it
off. Yet the floating of this absurd conspiracy theory is a clear signal
that the Obama-ites are hell-bent on war.
The irony here is that, as Haroon reminded his American audience,
Pakistan has captured and handed over to the US more actual terrorists –
i.e. top al-Qaeda operatives – than
our own FBI, or any other law enforcement agency anywhere. This is
how we thank them – by setting them up for an invasion on bogus charges
of “harboring” terrorists.
When it comes to reporting the Shahzad case, it’s incredible that the
“mainstream” media isn’t challenging the administration’s narrative.
Although maybe, given the media’s longstanding
infatuation with
the President, this is just a case of love being blind.
As it turns out, Shahzad was fingered in a
leak to the media even before he was arrested. This has all
the earmarks of a manufactured story, straight out of the Bush
administration’s neocon-written
play-book [.pdf]. Except that the tall tales told by the boys over in
the
Pentagon’s policy shop were a helluva lot more credible and
believable, on the face of it, than this ill-smelling narrative about
Shahzad and his tenuous “connections.”
Here at Antiwar.com, we’ve been
pursuing this story –
challenging it, offering
alternative explanations for Shahzad’s actions, all the while
wondering why we seem to be a lone voice in the wilderness. Well,
actually, there’s no need to wonder: the media sure doesn’t have a very
good record of speaking truth to power – or even questioning the
assertions of the powerful, no matter how arbitrary and fact-free they
may be. These glorified stenographers are happy enough feeding on “leaks”
from their favorite government insiders, but are remarkably incurious
when it comes to pursuing the motive behind the leakage.
That’s why Antiwar.com is so necessary – and why you need to act
now to ensure that we’re still around asking the questions the
“mainstream” doesn’t even dream of broaching.
Speaking frankly, our current fundraising drive is seriously deficient,
and rapidly heading toward disaster. If this goes on much longer, the
only media outlet with any reach that’s challenging the administration’s
big lie won’t be exposing much of anything. Because we’ll be out of
business – gone, kaput.
I’m not exaggerating. Unless our fundraising picks up significantly,
we’ll have to start laying people off – and, in a surprisingly brief
time, we’ll have to close our doors. Antiwar.com has always operated on a
shoe-string – and now the string is about to break.
It isn’t just our survival that’s at stake. This financial crisis is
hitting us at a moment when the danger of a greatly-expanded war in
Pakistan looms large. Unless we can expose the utter falsity of their
ludicrous conspiracy theory involving Shahzad, this administration will
surely take us into a greatly expanded war on Pakistani soil. The need
for Antiwar.com has never been greater. So please give, today, right now,
before we have to call it quits.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/16/obamas-gulf-of-tonkin/
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