America was going to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age

Frederico

Just heard it now on Channel 4 news.. "apparently" America threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age just after 911 if it did not aid against the Taliban. America f*ck yeah!

In other news, more people are apparently tortured in Iraq now than when Saddam was in power, 3000 are killed a month..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5368360.stm


It just gets more and more depressing.. 94% of Fox News readers think the US should stop funding the UN..

http://www.foxnews.com/studiob/#

Hmmmm, Stone Age and Taliban as friends and neighbours on the one hand, or the US as an ally on the other.

I guess it wasn't such a difficult choice for Musharraf...

mike65

94% of Fox News readers think the US should stop funding the UN

and 94% of Guardian readers eat muesli, you point being...?

Mike.

Dirk Gently

I remember reading something about that a few years ago but didn't pay too much attention to the story as I more or less guessed that Pakistans support for Bush was more about survival rathar than a decision they came to by themselves. Apparently the Americans had subs off the coast and bombers at the ready if my memory serves me right. They more or less told Pakistan to co-operate or they would pull the trigger and hit their military and nuclear sites. I believe it's called cowboy diplomacy.

mike65

Heres some grist to the 9-11 conspiritors mill - the meeting at which the threat was supposedly made involved the two below.

Richard Armitage and Lt-Gen Mahmood

Mike.

Dirk Gently

mike65 wrote:

Richard Armitage and Lt-Gen Mahmood

a most colourful report. makes me want to buy a packet of skittles for some reason.

sceptre

clown bag wrote:

I believe it's called cowboy diplomacy.

Gunboat diplomacy. Cowboy diplomacy is generally used as a term where military forces are actually deployed in a military action, though the distinction is pretty narrow (projection of force versus application of force).

Mind you, if your president is from Texas and likes to chant "Bring 'em on" while swinging his daddy's wrinkly saddle bags around...

(though I'd call that "asshole diplomacy" myself)

Capt'n Midnight

Sabre Rattling ?

And no you can't bomb someone back into the stone age.
You can bomb then back to the 19th century maybe.

The yanks could do with reading "The Prince" the bit about old and new Princes. yes they can win the war, but not the peace. The problem is that they might try or worse destroy your infrastructure and leave you to pick up the pieces.

Sgt. Sensible

Deleted User wrote:

Hmmmm, Stone Age and Taliban as friends and neighbours on the one hand, or the US as an ally on the other.

I guess it wasn't such a difficult choice for Musharraf...

There are 28 million Pashtuns in Pakistan making them the 2nd largest ethnic group in the country so Musharraf would obviously be a bit wary about allying himself with a state that bombs and bombs and bombs Pashtuns in Afghanistan. The Taliban are predominantly Pashtun.

billy the squid

Frederico wrote:

Just heard it now on Channel 4 news.. "apparently" America threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age just after 911 if it did not aid against the Taliban. America f*ck yeah!

In other news, more people are apparently tortured in Iraq now than when Saddam was in power, 3000 are killed a month..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5368360.stm


It just gets more and more depressing.. 94% of Fox News readers think the US should stop funding the UN..

http://www.foxnews.com/studiob/#

Maybe if the Us started paying the UN then they could stop funding it, are they not the country who owe the UN the most?

lostexpectation

mike65 wrote:

Heres some grist to the 9-11 conspiritors mill - the meeting at which the threat was supposedly made involved the two below.

Richard Armitage and Lt-Gen Mahmood

Mike.

one can't deny that the US had reasons to pissed at pakistan, some of its people were involved in 911 but then the border is grey area and not exact so they were saying we not going to be too careful

Jimboo_Jones

Deleted User wrote:

Hmmmm, Stone Age and Taliban as friends and neighbours on the one hand, or the US as an ally on the other.

I guess it wasn't such a difficult choice for Musharraf...

If you are being forced into doing something at the point of a gun, then the people holding the gun are hardly allies


I wonder if this really was the case though - or if it is just a ploy for Musharraf to distance himself from Bush with his people?

Frederico

This is an exact example of shortterm vs longterm. The US wants quick and decisive action, something bigger than 911 to satisfy the revenge lust, so it has to invade a country. Threatening Pakistan in the sensitive weeks and months after 911 was obviously going to work. Shortterm.

Now the longterm problem is starting to show itself. Pakistan is becoming resentful of the US, more sympathic towards the Taliban and will probably be the next hotbed for Al Qaeda if it isn't already.

FOX news just scares me. Last week's poll was; "Oil supplies depleting - Should we invade Iran next?"

tallus

Deleted User wrote:

Hmmmm, Stone Age and Taliban as friends and neighbours on the one hand, or the US as an ally on the other.

I guess it wasn't such a difficult choice for Musharraf...

he wasn't really given a choice.

Frederico

Frederico wrote:

Now the longterm problem is starting to show itself. Pakistan is becoming resentful of the US, more sympathic towards the Taliban and will probably be the next hotbed for Al Qaeda if it isn't already.

Possibly. Or else the Taliban would be in control of two countries by now. Either way, though I don't like their methods, I'm glad the US is pulling out a few stops to suppress the Taliban - better than 'peace in our time' diplomacy anyway. How successful that will be in the long term is anyone's guess.

bonkey

Frederico wrote:

"apparently" America threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age just after 911 if it did not aid against the Taliban.

I would imagine that there is a degree of poetic license being employed here.

For a start, Pakistan is a nuclear nation. You don't threaten to bomb nuclear nations back into the stone age. Its just asking them to do everything they can to be in a position to put a nuke up your jacksie, or the jacksie of some closer-by buddies of yours should conflict ever break out.

Most likely, Pakistan was told if it didn't support the US, it would be considered a supporter of the Taliban, which would result in reprisals up to and including military action.

You can threaten to take limited military action against nuclear nations unlike the "do it or we destroy your nation" ultimatum. No-one's gonna start a nuclear war because you fired a few cruise missiles at some key targets, and/or dropped some bombs on suspected AQ hideouts in the mountains. But threaten to flatten Islamabad (which would be implicitly part of the stone-age threat) and you're playing a different ball-game.

The Bush administration might be dangerously pro-war, but they're not downright gung-ho crazy.

Frederico

Deleted User wrote:

Possibly. Or else the Taliban would be in control of two countries by now. Either way, though I don't like their methods, I'm glad the US is pulling out a few stops to suppress the Taliban - better than 'peace in our time' diplomacy anyway. How successful that will be in the long term is anyone's guess.

But first you must answer me these questions three.. question the first..

Why was the US willing to do business with them (Taliban) less than a year before?

Are you suggesting the Taliban could be in control of Pakistan by now if they hadn't have been attacked? (note: not destroyed)

Why did the IRA stop bombing civilians in England.. Force or Diplomacy?

Personally I think the US donned a giant cowboy hat and went in to kick ass and chew bubble gum, while the thinktanks and most normal, intelligent people were saying "eh I don't think you have enough troops in there guys, eh I think you should be giving a bit more money to you know, rebuild the place"..

Frederico

bonkey wrote:

I would imagine that there is a degree of poetic license being employed here.

For a start, Pakistan is a nuclear nation. You don't threaten to bomb nuclear nations back into the stone age. Its just asking them to do everything they can to be in a position to put a nuke up your jacksie, or the jacksie of some closer-by buddies of yours should conflict ever break out.

Most likely, Pakistan was told if it didn't support the US, it would be considered a supporter of the Taliban, which would result in reprisals up to and including military action.

You can threaten to take limited military action against nuclear nations unlike the "do it or we destroy your nation" ultimatum. No-one's gonna start a nuclear war because you fired a few cruise missiles at some key targets, and/or dropped some bombs on suspected AQ hideouts in the mountains. But threaten to flatten Islamabad (which would be implicitly part of the stone-age threat) and you're playing a different ball-game.

The Bush administration might be dangerously pro-war, but they're not downright gung-ho crazy.

No, they threatened to bomb them back to the stone age.
Artimage literally used those words.

Frederico

Frederico wrote:

Why was the US willing to do business with them (Taliban) less than a year before?

Because it served their purposes at that time. I think they should never have done business with them and kicked their ass years before. At least they finally got around to it...

Frederico wrote:

Are you suggesting the Taliban could be in control of Pakistan by now if they hadn't have been attacked? (note: not destroyed)

Not reallyin control. But they could be a lot closer. The less influence the Taliban has, the more I like it.

Frederico wrote:

Why did the IRA stop bombing civilians in England..

The US and Bill Clinton intervened...another reason to be grateful...

Frederico

Deleted User wrote:

The US and Bill Clinton intervened...another reason to be grateful...

Fair enough.. but not with force... same with ETA in Spain.

bonkey

Frederico wrote:

No, they threatened to bomb them back to the stone age.
Artimage literally used those words.

Incorrect.

There are two points here:

1) We are being told by reporters what Pakistani intelligence tell them Armitage is claimed to have said. We don't know that Armitage actually said what they claim, or how close to verbatim their reproduction is.

2) With the exception of one or two siotes I can find, most are reporting that het choice was alleged to be that Pakistan "could choose to live in the 21st Century or in the Stone Age". Nowhere in that statement is Pakistan directly threatened with being bombed.

Some reporters have chosen to interpret the statement to mean this, but there is no credible evidence that I can see that Armitage actually said "We will bomb you back into the stone age".

He may have threatened to bomb them. He may have suggested that opposition to the US would result in them ending up in Stone Age conditions, but there are very few credible reports that suggest he threatened Stone-Age-through-bombing.

Taliban gaining influence, internal conflict, international pariah status and minor emnity from the US would be more than sufficient to bring about conditions like those in Afghanistan - which was often described as Stone Age.

Armitage could just as easily have been letting Pakistan know that teh cost of not doing business was very high without - as I say - actually overtly threatening a massive military campaign.

jc

lostexpectation

you havn't seen the footage of the interview then bonkey, don't be such a know it all till you've seen it

Frederico

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm

Allegedly.. complete with a picture of Armitage who looks like the kind of guy who "wouldn't" dare say such a thing right after 911.

bonkey

lostexpectation wrote:

you havn't seen the footage of the interview then bonkey, don't be such a know it all till you've seen it

An interview? As in someone telling you their version of what happened?
Its not a video of the negotiations, with Armitage recorded making the threat?

I'll watch it when I go home, but I don't understand at the moment how its possible for an interview after the fact to change the point I'm making. Some people are alleging he threatened to bomb them. More seem to be alleging something else. All of them are allegations, not facts.

I can see how the "choose" could be misreported as a bombing threat, but I don't see how the reverse could be true. I can also see that US-bashing seems to be all the rage at the moment, what with Chavez in the UN , the whole torture debacle, and the rest of it, so I'm somewhat skeptical of claims made in the last day or so compared to versions of the same story which have been around for a while now.

But, like you say...I haven't seen it yet, so we'll hopefully both accept that this is just me musing about what I'm going to see and that I remain open to having my mind changed.

freddyfreeload

Frederico wrote:

Now the longterm problem is starting to show itself. Pakistan is becoming resentful of the US, more sympathic towards the Taliban and will probably be the next hotbed for Al Qaeda if it isn't already.

The real irony is that Pakistan is, and always has been, a Taliban/Al Qaeda hotbed. Home to the famed Madrassas that were the training schools for first the Mujaheddin, and now the Taliban.

And during the US/UK assault the majority of the Taliban weren't killed, they simply returned to Pakistan. They're still there now, using it as a base to stage their attacks on troops in Afghanistan.

Couple this with the fact that (regardless of how it was phrased) the US did pressure Musharraf to support their attack on Afghanistan, and the lie is really given to their professed aims. Their only real interest in the Taliban is in keeping them alive, and behaving like a genuine threat.

The interesting thing is that the US were happy doing business with the Taliban right up until the moment they refused to sign the Unocal pipeline deal.

It was only after that that their despotic and brutal nature was played up in the US media. Then 911 gave them the pretext to go in. Now the pipeline (to supply Pakistan and India) is in place and the US has a military and/or political presence in all the crucial territories in the region, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Iraq. The only piece missing from the puzzle is Iran. Though for how much longer?

Bottom line, for my money: Afghanistan is still a mess, but the Unocal pipeline is in place. Iraq is a mess, but the oil is ringfenced and the region destabalised. The Taliban and AQ are still with us - mostly sheltering in a US ally's territory. Meanwhile the US is putting the last pieces together to completely control the bulk of the world's dwindling oil resources and keep them out of Russian and Chinese hands.

The US don't want the Taliban and Al Qaeda dead or defeated. They need them alive and kicking because without them their War on Terror would end, and with it so would their pretext for the military intervention necessary to protect their geopolitical assets.

ff

Frederico

The thing about Pakistan is that, whilst there are many Taliban sympathisers and supporters, they are more concerned with India than they are with the States. Basically problem number 1 is India.

Whereas in Iran problem number 1 is America.

Pretor

India isnt the only issue, its one of many...
Besides bombing Pakistan to the stone age is a colossal error, the US isnt that stupid even if it was out for revenge, think about it, there was already anger amongst pakistani's with the thought of allying with USA if the US did bomb Pakistan thats just gonna generate more terrorists in a country with nuclear weapons...

Musharraf had alot of problems before that, the country was/is divided in more ways than one - Terrorists in Kashmir trying to stop a peace process with india, Tribal country to the northwest where the government has little influence and the prospect of a civil war in the southwest province, He had to make a hard decision and luckily one that didnt tear the country apart completly...

LostinBlanch

Well I'm prepared to believe it. One thing you can say about Bush, he does mean (and do) what he says, no matter how f**king crazy.

But he also said at the time, if you're not with us you're agin us, or words to that effect :rolleyes:

Frederico

Pretor wrote:

India isnt the only issue, its one of many...
Besides bombing Pakistan to the stone age is a colossal error, the US isnt that stupid even if it was out for revenge, think about it, there was already anger amongst pakistani's with the thought of allying with USA if the US did bomb Pakistan thats just gonna generate more terrorists in a country with nuclear weapons...

Musharraf had alot of problems before that, the country was/is divided in more ways than one - Terrorists in Kashmir trying to stop a peace process with india, Tribal country to the northwest where the government has little influence and the prospect of a civil war in the southwest province, He had to make a hard decision and luckily one that didnt tear the country apart completly...

India was the main issue, can't let a rival get ahead.

Lets see what we can do with Pakistan. Its just after 911. America has world sympathy, there is barely an ounce of skeptisism then that there is now. Lets just say Pakistan refuses to cooperate with America..

Demonise Pakistan in the media for a) supporting/aiding/funding the Taliban, quite easy. b) supporting/aiding/funding Al Qaeda. c) having weapons of mass destruction. d) being some sort of military dictatorship. e) being an enemy and a threat to India the largest peace loving democracy in the world.

Indoctrinate the public that Pakistan is a terroist lair, has been all along, etc.

I mean its not hard to see what the US could have done with Pakistan. Considering whats happened after 911, its well within the realm of possibilities that the US could have come to the Brink of or literally attacked Pakistan.

freddyfreeload

I think some of you guys may be missing the point here. It really doesn't matter whether Musharraf was threatened with the precise words "bombed back to the stoneage," or not, pressure of one kind or another was exerted and he took the only choice he really had. That was common knowledge at the time, and nothing has really changed.

Almost certainly Musharraf is just posturing. As this article from the Pakistan Times shows.

Surely the most critical point here is that the The Taliban (supposedly the US's No1 enemy) is being allowed to reside largely unmolested within Pakistan by both the Pakistan and US governments. Washington and Pakistan are merely finessing what is essentially collusion to perpetuate the Taliban to their mutual benefit.

Pakistan's military government (more specifically the ISI) gets to keep the para-military group it created, while the US gets to keep its all important bogeyman.

ff

lostexpectation

I can't believe the leader of country said, 'Oh read it in my book'.