Why Bush Was Shaken .... - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

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Fri Dec-28-07 09:43 AM
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Why Bush Was Shaken ....

" A former high-level State Department official, who maintained close contact with events in Pakistan, told me in October 2001 that he understood that Musharraf had assured the Bush Administration that ‘only the most reliable military people remain in control of the arsenal, and if there’s any real worry he’d disarm them. He does not want the crazies to precipitate a war.’ By then, however, the administration was reviewing and ‘refreshing’ its contingency plans for securing, or possibly ‘exfiltrating,’ Pakistan’s warheads in the event that Musharraf’s government lost control.

"An elite undercover unit operating under Pentagon control with CIA assistance – trained to slip into foreign countries and find suspected nuclear weapons, and disarm them if necessary – was exploring plans for an operation inside Pakistan, past and present government officials told me. ‘They’re good,’ one American said. ‘If they screw up, they die. They’ve had good success in proving the negative’ – that is, in determining that suspected facilities in third-world countries were not nuclear-related.

"The American team was apparently getting help from Israel’s most successful special operations unit, the storied Sayeret Matkal, also known as Unit 262, a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry. Members of the Israeli unit arrived in the United States a few days after September 11th, an informed source said, and trained with American Special Forces units at undisclosed locations.

"Such operations depend on intelligence, however, and there is disagreement within the Administration about the quality of the CIA’s data. The American intelligence community could not be sure, for example, that it knew the precise whereabouts of every Pakistani warhead – or whether all the warheads that it found were real. …. A government expert on Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities depicted the issue in strategic terms: ‘The United States has to look at a new doctrine. Our nuclear strategy has to incorporate the fact that we might have a nuclear-armed fundamentalist government in Pakistan. Even if we know where the weapons are now, it doesn'’ mean we'’l know where they are if the fundamentalists take over. .…’

"A senior military officer, after confirming that intense planning for a possible exfiltration of warheads was under way, said that he had been concerned of warheads was under way, said he had been concerned not about a military coup but about a localized insurrection by a clique of ISI officers in the field who had access to a nuclear storage facility. …."

--Chain of Command; Seymour Hersch; pages 292-294

Yesterday, I posted a thread that said President Bush looked shaken when he delivered his brief comment about events in Pakistan. I suspect his discomfort can be attributed to a couple of things: first, his "comfort zone" is when he feels he is in complete control, and in terms of public addresses, can deliver a scripted message; and second, because while the assassination of Bhutta was not unexpected, at the time when Bush was preparing to face the cameras, US intelligence could not say for sure who was behind the assassination, and hence, there were serious questions about what (if any) the US response should be. Thus, the sad excuse for a president appeared to be doing a Barney Fife impersonation when he was pushed in front of the cameras.

Of course, the Bush administration and the republican puppet-candidates will say that the assassination was the work of "terrorists." They will refuse to consider, much less discuss, the possibility that the Bush-Cheney "war on terror" – especially the horrible failure in Iraq – has made the world a less stable, and indeed increased the risks for violence to spin far more out of control than it has in the past six years.

While the administration will point fingers towards al Qaeda, they will refuse to acknowledge the overlap between the Pakistani military and ISI with al Qaeda. The fact is that they are as closely connected as was the Mississippi police forces in the 1950s and ‘60s, and the Ku Klux Klan.

It is important that the democratic candidates for president speak openly and honestly about these issues. The democratic members of congress must also step up to the plate, and be honest about the fact that the administration has done severe damage to our national security – including their policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, as well as the lies about Iran; the Office of the Vice President’s criminal operation against the intelligence community’s WMD programs (the Plame scandal); and the OSP’s role in the neocon/AIPAC espionage scandal.

The damage done by the Bush-Cheney administration can not be repaired in a brief time. It will, in fact, take decades, in the best case scenario. But we can begin today. That requires the democratic leadership to step up to a level of honesty and bravery that only a very few of them have even considered in the past.

We do not have a "perfect" candidate. But we have a group of candidates who can combine talents and skills to work for a stable and safer future for our country, and indeed the world. For example, if Senator Biden is not the nominee, he most certainly should be the Secretary of State in the next administration.