Bury Me Broken

Pakistan: Friend or Foe

When the United States sought to retaliate after 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan was the first target struck. It was a well established fact that Pakistan had aided the Taliban as well as terrorism and in the best interest of Pakistan, the country joined the ‘war on terror.’ Friday, President Bush approved the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, a move that has many dumbfounded including former and president Secretaries of State, Democrat and Republican congressmen and intelligence personnel.

India was also ‘up in arms’ as it has been in conflict with Pakistan for half a century including a recent 2002 dispute over the region of Kashmir that had both sides posturing including India testing nuclear weapons. Indian Prime Minister Singh said the move would shift the balance of power in the region. Former Republican senator and author of the 1985 law under George H.W. Bush to ban aircraft sales to Pakistan called the move “disastrous” and that it raises the country of Pakistan which aids terrorism and commits atrocities on its own people to the same status as India, “the world’s largest democracy” and gives Pakistan a delivery vehicle for its nuclear weapons.”

Even if one agreed with Sec. of State Rice that this move allows us to have good and improving relations with both countries or if one believes that this allows the U.S. leverage in insuring Pakistan will continue to aid in the war on terror and allows us to impact human relations in the country, all other forays with Pakistan should be in perfect working order if we have agreed to sale them F-16s to dismay of their neighborhood. This, emphatically, is not the case.

The same day that this news came out the Los Angeles Times published an article on the illegal sales that have occurred with Pakistan in attempting to acquire nuclear weapon instruments. “A federal criminal investigation has uncovered evidence that the government of Pakistan made clandestine purchases of U.S. high-technology components for use in its nuclear weapons program in defiance of American law,” [emphasis mine] is the lead graph in the Times article.

“Even though President Bush has been pushing for an international crackdown on such trafficking, efforts by two U.S. agencies to send investigators to Pakistan to gather more evidence have hit a bottleneck in Washington…”

Current and former intelligence officials said the same elements of the Pakistani military that they suspected of orchestrating efforts to buy American-made products may also have worked with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear program who supplied weapons know-how and parts to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

So let’s recap. The same country that aided in terrorism for years, aided the Taliban government that assisted in 9/11, has been secretly purchasing nuclear weapons technology and selling it to the ‘axis of evil’ N. Korea and Iran as well as Libya, will not cooperate with our attempts to question black market weapons king A.Q. Khan and has all manner of human rights violations, we are selling them F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear payload. What’s our objective again?

posted by niteskolar @ 8:02 PM