ISI Head Won't Go To India
By Steve Hynd Saturday Nov 29, 2008 2:30pm
I see that Pakistan has reneged on a public promise made only yesterday to send the head of its ISI intelligence agency to India.
With Pakistan offering to help identify and apprehend those responsible, Gilani's office said the head of the Inter Services Intelligence agency would go to India at the request of India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
However, Pakistani officials said on Saturday that the decision had been changed and that a lower-ranking intelligence official would travel instead.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari blamed the about-face on a "miscommunication" with India. He said Singh had asked only that a "director" of the agency — not the chief — go to India to share intelligence.
However, the revision followed sharp criticism from some Pakistani opposition politicians and a cool response from the army, which controls the agency.
This is the third promise involving civilian control of the ISI which has been turned back by the military in recent months. Indeed, the only promise we don't know for a fact to have been unfulfilled is one made just before the Mumbai attacks that the ISI's political department, the one analysts feel was most heavily involved in using terror groups as proxies, was being disbanded. It would be naive to think the military and the agency intend to keep that one either. In fact, it would be ravingly naive to think that support for using terror groups as proxies was confined to "rogue elements" within the ISI and military. That's the story American officials seem to want to stick to but I continue to believe that the Pakistani military are really in charge in that nation and using the civilian democratic government as a convenient front to deflect the West, which wouldn't have accepted another military dictator easily.
However, there are still good reasons to question the other story that they want to stick to as well, the one involving India's finger-pointing at Pakistan as the prime mover behind the Mumbai attacks.
Crossposted from Newshoggers.
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From the Belfast Telegraph....."Mumbai photographer: I wish I'd had a gun, not a camera. Armed police would not fire back.
It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him.
But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-...
who waited, basically, until the perps had finished killing and wounding to enter the school building.
What brave, well-fed SWAT team members.
... am I going to risk my life for my salary?
The police in India are trained and paid to make sure the proverbial unwashed masses don't inconvenience the elite too much. The poor and hungry are easily put down and/or exploited without too much risk of personal harm.
That said, simply out of a sense of protection I would have thought at least one of the police would have tried to shoot the muthah fuckers.
As far as Pakistan goes, regardless of the political will I wonder if any pakistani leaders are even able to control the insanity of brainwashed terrorist youth and other assorted nut jobs.
Finally you hit the nail on it's head. ISI is using the so called democratic government (remember minorities don't have the right to vote in Pakistan) as a front in it's war against India and Afghanistan. Where do you think Taliban got tanks from in 1996? The West has been taken for a ride for a while. Especially after 9/11 all this nonsense about being the most important ally in the war against terror. You know the argument that it is so difficult to control the rogue elements in ISI is as hollow as the argument that researching alternative fuels is so difficult. It is difficult until you actually do something about it.
This has nothing to do with good and evil, proxy war is thebest weapon Pakistan has discovered against India.
[Deleted. If you hadn't called the author a name the opening of your post, it would not have been removed. That kind of rudeness won't be tolerated. If you can't make your point without respect, your comment will be deleted-Sitemonitor]
Looks like their military has become a special interest group, just like ours! Lot's of parallels to pick out actually.
Do you know who's being taken for a ride here? It is we, the public.
Let's assume for a moment, that India is right in accusing Pakistan. How does Pakistan, or the ISI for that matter, benefit from such an attack?
The only party to benefit from all this is the United States. It gives the U.S. a way to attack Pakistan, destabilize it and bring down the ruling regime, without having to directly engage a "close ally" of the United States, as Bush put it. The U.S. can't deal with a nuclear Pakistan, a standoff with Iran and an occupation of Iraq all at the same time. So it enlists the help of India. It turn, India is promised enormous amounts of military and financial aid.
This operation was well coordinated. The attackers were well armed but, most importantly, they were well trained.
Many of you, including myself, frequent this blog often. We all know that Pakistan is the so-called "real front on the war on terror".
The United States has been having a hard time getting Pakistan to cooperate up to its standards.
So, the Mumbai attacks are just a backdoor way at achieving that goal, at allowing the U.S. more access, or reach, if you will, into Pakistan. The fact Indian police and military did very little to stop the attackers further proves my point.
You are kidding us right? Are you stupid enough to believe thatthe indian police didnt do anything? Just because some retarded newsreporter asked a guy with a 1970s single loading rifle to face a nutjob with automatic assault weapons and grenades and he didnt? Do you know what their orders were? What their plan was? Or do you think that retard scribe knew everything and is the ultimate authority in counter terrorism? It doesnt take much to become a journalist in India.. the MSM in India is 10000x times worse than the MSM here (there are various reasons for that.. we cant get into that here). And people like you give us liberals a bad name. YOu see an american conspiracy in everything. Do you believe Pakistan was stable before this that the US needed to destabilize it? Do you know Pakistan has attacked India 4 times since its creation? And lost all 4 times.. so it launched a proxy war in Punjab and Kashmir in India and due to it's success one in Afghanistan. The one in Afghanistan succeeded very quickly and Taliban came to power. Where do you think Taliban got tanks from? Where do you think they got weapons training before Afghanistan fell? OBL is independent of Taliban, he found a safe haven in Afghanistan after he was freed from prison (under the orders of Benazir Bhutto, Mushy rehabilitated him in Afghanistan)... So please stop making up ridiculous stuff without knowing anything and stop accussing the US of everything bad..
You're accusing me of making up "ridiculous stuff" without knowing "anything". You're accusing me of accusing the U.S. of "everything bad" as you put it, yet your argument holds no water whatsoever.
Are you a political scientist? I mean, if I know nothing, then prove me wrong. Your argument is not convincing. It's an oversimplified, dumbed down version of events. By that I mean, for you, things are as they appear (perhaps even always). So, let me get this straight, when was the last time you questioned what you were told or questioned others' ulterior motives? Surely, you're not THAT naive.
The Indian navy has the competence and technological know how to sink a ship hijacked by pirates, but does not routinely check incoming vessels at the main ports of entry to India?
Are you familiar with Cheney's plan to dress up Special Ops teams as Iranian National Guard to attack U.S. ships and use that as pretext to attack Iran?
Are you familiar with Cheney's order to the interceptor aircraft on 9/11 to stand down?
How come the FBI can uncover a so-called plot by 4 amateurs to attack Fort Dix and then foil that plot, but the CIA fails to uncover a plot by - as far as we know - 25 to 100 armed fighters to attack Mumbai?
Sure that can all be coincidence, but the fact remains that there are a lot of contradictions in terms of capabilities and characteristics.
When you consider other "terrorist attacks", like the one at Glasgow airport, the attempted nightclub bombing in London a few days earlier, and the supposed plot to use liquid explosives to bring down airliners over the Atlantic, all these, seem like amateur night in comparison to the brazen, coordinated, well planned attack in Mumbai.
You can call yourself anything you want, heck, you can even label yourself a liberal. But, to accuse me of giving liberals a bad name, when you're not even willing to consider a different perspective, then surely, you're the one who gives liberals a bad name. But I digress.
Feel free to drop that "Stop accusing the US of everything bad" meme. It rings hollow and sounds like something Sarah Palin would say to win over support without having to put forth a coherent argument.
As for Pakistan's stability, if you consider the fact that the military runs things in the country, then a destabilized Pakistan would mean, the military is no longer in power, in other words, they have been over run by an 'occupying' army. That's where India and the U.S. come into the picture. The problem is the ISI and the military apparatus in Pakistan. By pinning this attack on them, it makes it so much easier for India and it's "allies" (the U.S.) to intervene and go into Pakistan.
There, I spelled it out for you.
PS: You still haven't explained what Pakistan stands to gain from such an attack.
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