Iran is described by America’s President George Bush as “a centre of evil and the greatest enemy of America in the Middle East."
And yet — is it really? There is evidence to suggest that — as with too many other important issues — Bush has this one wrong. Dead wrong. Katrina in New Orleans wrong. The key to this conundrum was exposed just last week during a photo-op meeting intended to portray Bush as a world diplomat, hosting Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai — two men who are far from friends, yet who are both vital to the Connecticut Texan's World Crusade for Crude Control.
The American media missed the ball completely, being focused instead on the growing Foley scandal. It thus fell to the foreign media to be doing the job our media refuses to do.
Musharraf is treating his trip to the US as a book promotion tour, with a little international diplomacy thrown in for seasoning. But as those following the book story already know, Musharraf is hardly being a diplomat. American news sources have reported that Bush had to get between Karzai and Musharraf at some point during their meetings, but didn't relate the reason for the row. According to Gazeta Wyborcza of Poland,
Musharraf rebuked Karzai for failing to battle the terrorists in Afghanistan assiduously enough.
Karzai responded by claiming that the war against the Taliban and remnants of al-Qaeda would have been over long ago if only they were not given refuge in Pakistan.
Musharraf immediately parried, stating that the crux of the problem is Afghanistan, because Karzai rarely sets foot outside his palace in Kabul and doesn't understand his own country.
An angry Karzai reminded his neighbor that in the mid-90s, it was Pakistan that assisted in the creation of the Taliban movement, and was one of only three nations to recognize them as the government of Afghanistan.
Holy Terror War, Bush Batman! Biff! Pow! Blam! Socko!
Even George would have to get into the middle of this before one of these two puppets revealed something significantly damaging to his international neo-confidence operation. His effort was for nothing, for something significant has emerged. In fact, several somethings. They don't bode well for Bush — or for the nation he leads for greed.
Recently, Musharraf revealed on CNN that he was threatened by Richard Armitage with "bombing back to the Stone Age" if Pakistan did not support the Bush Terror War for Oil (Bush TWO). After two weeks of 'Pakistan bashing' by CNN correspondents, including the use of such epithets as 'Qaedastan' to describe that nation, Pervez Musharraf - a man whose personal war service record is lengthier than that of the entire Bush Administration executives and Cabinet Secretaries (with the exception of Colin Powell) — fought back as a war veteran knows how to do — he attacked.
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Article comments
1 - Baronius
I have no idea why I read this whole piece. I think about 2/3 of the way down, it became an exercise in stamina. It's such a nasty article that there's no reason to consider the points it made, but interestingly it doesn't make any points.
Afghanistan and Pakistan being key to controlling the world's oil supply? What does that even mean? A Big Mac has more oil than either of those countries. And they're puppet regimes, but Bush can't control them, but that would mean they're not puppet regimes. Pakistan has been secretly supportive of the Taliban - big secret there - but the US was wrong to twist Musharraf's arm?
Then there are the sources in this article. North Korea and China consider the US wrong; I'm convinced. Lindsey Barrett, cited in this article, blames the US for squandering the goodwill of Arafat and Iran. Oh, forget it. This isn't even worth commenting on.
2 - Dave Nalle
Don't forget the part about how when foreign leaders are voted out of office it's for supporting Bush, but when countries choose new, more conservative, more pro-Bush leaders like Stephen Harper or Angela Merkel it's not mentioned.
Dave
3 - Seven of Six
Now the latest revelation from Frist at Kos. Something is in the air. Good job, this ties some of the new information together.
4 - Donnie Marler
Poor Democrats, they could fix everything if only they could win a damn election.
5 - Nancy
Yup; just stick your heads back in the sand, all you Bush supporters, and continue following your Fearless Leader in his State of Denial. The entire rest of the world plus half the citizenship of the US say Bush is full of crap - but of course, all of THEM must be wrong, because you KNOW you're right. You keep telling yourselves that, even as you're following your leader down the toilet....
6 - scout
pess, everyone knows the importance of the middle east oil reserves, but Turkey is bought and paid for, and long ago, like about 1918 when they got their ass kicked.
It is important to realize that our official policy is anything but what we hear. So, we would have no problem using both IRAN and Turkey to contain the Kurds, all behind the Kurdish back. For they are important to for the Israeli oil supply, but the Turks have been important for Israel, and for years. So, just like with Saddam, we would use Iran to help the Kurds, then bomb the crap out of Iran for their oil. Sound familar? yeah.
7 - Bliffle
The PBS documentary on Frontline shows pretty clearly that the resurgent Taliban is supported by the Pakistan Intelligence service, ISI. GWB blew it when he didn't follow thru on Afghanistan and diverted into Iraq. He had the REAL terrorists in his gunsights and didn't pull the trigger. We will live to regret it.
8 - Nancy
As usual Rumsfield is clueless - almost as clueless as W. If they have any idea of who exactly the enemies of the US are (& we have a lot more of them now, thanks to them) then their 30-second attention spans preclude them from doing anything constructive about it, obviously. Frankly I think W considers rank & file, working class Americans to be his enemies, from the way he treats us.