Reply #216: Second link is fantastic as well! [View All]

[robertpaulsen]

The last several paragraphs really put things in perspective:

One doesn't have to wait 20 or 30 years to deduce that the ISI assisted al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. The question is, why is the US government seemingly ignoring the evidence and actively discouraging the media from pursuing these ideas? Shortly after 9/11, Bush said, "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." What about Pakistan's support of terrorism, if not 9/11, then the other terrorist attacks on India since? Is the US afraid of Pakistan's nuclear weapons? If so, what's to prevent the ISI from planning similar future attacks with impunity, against any country?

Perhaps the US has plans to deal with Pakistan eventually. In January 2003, Musharraf warned of an "impending danger" that Pakistan will become a target of war for "Western forces" after the Iraq crisis. "We will have to work on our own to stave off the danger. Nobody will come to our rescue, not even the Islamic world. We will have to depend on our muscle." Pointing to "a number of recent 'background briefings' and 'leaks'" from the US government, "Pakistani officials fear the Bush administration is planning to change its tune dramatically once the war against Iraq is out of the way." If so, could this lead to nuclear war?

Does the US ignore Pakistani complicity in 9/11 because it might be a thread that could unravel in other disturbing directions? For instance, there have been reports of secret deals between rich Saudis, the ISI, and bin Laden. Saudi Arabia has supported the Taliban by paying the ISI. Before 9/11 the Asia Times reported that Crown Prince Abdullah, the defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is secretly a supporter of bin Laden. Furthermore, he made a secret visit in the summer of 2001 to Afghanistan with Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed to confer with the Taliban on how best to prevent bin Laden from being harmed by the US. Another secret meeting between Mahmood and Crown Prince Abdullah may have taken place shortly after 9/11. While such reports are very fragmentary and speculative, it is interesting to note that Senator Graham said "foreign governments" - plural, not singular - were behind 9/11. Newsweek has reported a possible connection between the Saudi government and some of the hijackers , and has since reported that "The possibility of a Saudi link to 9-11 is growing."

Could the thread unravel in other directions as well? For instance, what about the suggestion that Saeed was a CIA agent? A long time regional expert with extensive CIA ties stated publicly in March 2001 that "the CIA still has close links with the ISI," and repeated the claim to CNN in February 2002. An anonymous former senior ISI official has stated, "The biggest problem we have are the rogue elements in the intelligence agencies, especially those who at some time became involved with the CIA." At the very least, the ISI may know very embarrassing facts about the US. For instance, they may know a thing or two about CIA involvement in drug smuggling and/or support of bin Laden in the 1980s. Unfortunately, Daniel Pearl was killed before he could investigate the connections between the US and the ISI, and no journalist seems willing to explore such dangerous subjects since his death.




Let's see how much of this thread we can unravel here at the Plame thread. If Saeed was CIA, there might be a Plame connection.