Peter Bergen: "US didn’t strike in Pakistan for fear of toppling Musharraf"

[sabra]

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C10%5C14%5Cstory_14-10-2007_pg7_4

Washington: The United States decided against striking Al Qaeda locations in Pakistan in 2006 because it was afraid the strike would destabilise General Pervez Musharraf and his government.

According to Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, who is also the CNN’s terrorism expert, “America has handed $10 billion to the Pakistani government since September 11, 2001. Yet the Taliban and Al Qaeda remain headquartered in Pakistan. A US military official in Afghanistan with access to intelligence information told me this spring that Taliban leader Mullah Omar ‘is still in Quetta,’ ... And a Western official based in Pakistan told me that ‘target folders’ about the locations of high-value Taliban and Al Qaeda targets were provided by the US government to Pakistan in late 2006 – but never acted upon. Moreover, the Bush administration has, at least on one occasion, refused to do what Pakistan will not.”

Rumsfeld nixed attack: “This July, the New York Times reported that Donald Rumsfeld nixed a proposed 2005 attack on a meeting of Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan - a meeting thought to include Zawahiri - in part because the operation, which would have involved several hundred special forces and CIA personnel, could have destabilised Musharraf,” he added.

After Tora Bora, Bergen writes in the current issue of New Republic, Al Qaeda’s leaders fled into the tribal areas of western Pakistan, where they began the long process of rebuilding their devastated organisation. That process has gone far better than they could possibly have imagined as they slipped out of Afghanistan in late 2001. With the Bush administration’s attention in Iraq, Al Qaeda took the opportunity to reassert itself along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Art Keller, a CIA officer stationed in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 2006, told Bergen, “People are going from the Afghan-Pakistan border to Iraq to learn the tactics and then come back. Seems like the reverse of the way the war on terror was supposed to work.”

[NightWatcher]

1. So if Musharraf is toppled now/soon, do we go in?

Are we gonna be in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Venezuela..........?

Am I missing somebody?

[WCGreen]

2. That's news....

I think almost everyone who follows the intrigue amongst the nation-states in the area would realize that we didn't want to rick toppling another government in the region...

[central scrutinizer]

3. nuclear proliferation on steroids if he falls

Another reason to develop nuclear capabilities - the US will have to defend you, no matter how corrupt or brutal you are.

[CK_John]

4. That also assumes we wanted Al Qaeda caught at the time. * needs an enemy to continue the oilrage.

[go west young man]

5. Maybe this had something to do with it.

There was no mention of the money that was wired to lead hijacker Mohammad Atta on September 10th, allegedly by order of the Head of the Pakistani ISI (which is funded in part by the CIA). The Report stated that the issue of who funded the attacks is "of little practical significance." <4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Press_for_Truth

In the video at this link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3979568779414136481

At exactly 1 hr 7 minute mark the ISI link is questioned.