Pakistan: Our Mendacious Ally (William Greider)

Source: The Nation.

The keepers of secrets are telling a wonderfully self-glorifying tale to the American people. How US intelligence agencies patiently pieced together scattered bits of evidence to find Osama bin Laden. The secret warriors also put in a plug for torture, claiming it helped spring the information that eventually solved the mystery of Osama’s whereabouts.

Alas, there is one big hole in this version of events. If the United States had wanted to know where the terrorist king lived, they could have simply asked our billion-dollar ally, the government of Pakistan. Osama, it turns out, lived right down the street from a Pakistani military academy and in a resort town only thirty-five miles from the national capital.

The mendacity is rather obvious. Somebody is not telling us the whole truth, hoping perhaps that joyous Americans won’t push the point further. The contradiction, however, is covered with American blood and treasure. Given the facts, it is impossible to believe the government of Pakistan did not know exactly where we could find Osama. Did our intelligence agents ask their intelligence agents? On this obvious question, US officials turn coy. Their slippery evasions strongly suggest they are not telling the truth either.

A “senior US official” told Washington Post columnist David Ignatiius that the CIA “has carefully examined this question but has ‘zero evidence’ of Pakistani government knowledge of bin Laden’s location.” Ignatius squirms a bit at this obvious non-answer, which he acknowledges is “not quite the same as saying the Pakistanis didn’t know.”

more: http://www.thenation.com/article/160376/pakistan-our-mendacious-ally

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Great read.

PB

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: 'A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.'