smokin' the peace pipe ?

by **rain** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 12:41 am

NATO backs Pakistan deal with Taliban Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent October 14, 2006 A CONTROVERSIAL peace agreement with Taliban-supporting militants in the rugged frontier region of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, emerged yesterday as the blueprint for a possible accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Following this week's visit to Islamabad by General David Richards, NATO's commander of coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan, it appeared the US and Britain had authorised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to attempt to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. Before going to Islamabad, it had been suggested General Richards was preparing for a showdown with President Musharraf over alleged Pakistani double-dealing with the Taliban and al-Qa'ida through its top spy agency, the ISI. It had even been reported he would take with him the address in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta where Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living, and demand Pakistani forces arrest him. But far from criticising General Musharraf, it appears the Pakistani leader's deal with Taliban-supporting tribal militants in the North Waziristan district of the North West Frontier Province could form the basis of an accord aimed at ending the insurgency and bringing the Taliban into the Government in Kabul. From General Musharraf down, senior Pakistani officials are insisting that NATO is now supporting Islamabad's bid to reach a peace accord with the Taliban. Reports in New Delhi quoted General Richards as supporting the agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan, saying it could set an example of how best to deal with such problems - dashing Indian hopes that NATO would not endorse Pakistan's strategy. Reports said General Musharraf claimed that General Richards "absolutely agrees with the environment and my analysis, and he is asking for our help to do the same thing and we will proceed on the same course". General Musharraf maintained that the North Waziristan strategy was "worth a try because there is no other way (than to reach an accommodation with the Taliban), and if we don't do anything, if we think that military will succeed, we are sadly mistaken. We will suffer". The key elements of the North Waziristan deal have been strongly criticised by the Western media, but are now apparently accepted by Britain, the US and other governments that have contributed forces to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan. South Asian strategists in New Delhi said it appeared that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been opposing efforts to bring the Taliban into his Government, had clearly not won the battle with General Musharraf on the issue. Many of the elements of the North Waziristan accord, signed on September 5, could form the basis for a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Under the North Waziristan arrangement, the Pakistan Government has agreed to stop air and ground attacks on tribal militants linked to the Taliban, withdraw the Pakistan army from key points, release captured militants and pay compensation for property damage and deaths of innocent civilians in the region. NATO has 31,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan, coming from 37 countries, including Australia. Indian reports yesterday said that the US and Britain had "clearly bought General Musharraf's 'if you can't beat them, join them' argument by sanctioning a peace strategy". The reports are significant because they suggest that winning against the Taliban amid the tribal culture of Afghanistan would be extremely difficult, even for a force as powerful and sophisticated as NATO's. Down the years, all foreign armies that have sought to assert themselves in Afghanistan have left defeated. Strategists are apprehensive that NATO's effort could go the same way. <a href="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20578507-2703,00.html">www.theaustralian.news.co...03,00.html</a>

by **Byrne** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:36 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>NATO has 31,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan, coming from 37 countries, including Australia. <hr></blockquote>Thanks for that, rain. What is the overall plan of/for NATO? I browsed recently to F William Engdahl's website & found this article published October 9, 2006: <a href="http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Russian_Giant/russian_giant.html">www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Russian_Giant/russian_giant.html</a> It is a fascinating read (some excerpts below) & it suggests that the prize in the Great game is still Russia & it's energy reserves. Interesting is the connections between the originators/facilitators of NATO expansionist plans & PNAC/AEI etc. <hr />  <...> This surprising spread of NATO, to the alarm of some in western Europe, as well as to Russia, had been part of the strategy advocated by Cheney`s friends at the Project for the New American Century, in their ‘Rebuilding America`s Defenses’ report and even before. Already in 1996, PNAC member and Cheney crony, Bruce Jackson, then a top executive with US defense giant, Lockheed Martin, was head of the US Committee to Expand NATO, later renamed the US Committee on Nato, a very powerful Washington lobby group. The US Committee to Expand NATO also included PNAC members Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Hadley and Robert Kagan. Kagan`s wife is Victoria Nuland, now the US Ambassador to NATO. From 2000 - 2003, she was a foreign policy advisor to Cheney. Hadley, a hardline hawk close to Vice President Cheney, was named by President Bush to replace Condoleezza Rice as his National Security Adviser. The warhawk Cheney network moved from the PNAC into key posts within the Bush Administration to run NATO and Pentagon policy. Bruce Jackson and others, after successfully lobbying Congress to expand NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, moved to organize the so-called Vilnius Group that lobbied to bring ten more former Warsaw Pact countries on Russia`s periphery into NATO. Jackson called this the ‘Big Bang.’ President Bush repeatedly used the term ‘New Europe’ in statements about NATO enlargement. In a July 5, 2002 speech hailing the leaders of the Vilnius group, Bush declared, ‘Our nations share a common vision of a new Europe, where free European states are united with each other, and with the United States through cooperation, partnership, and alliance.’ Lockheed Martin`s former executive, Bruce Jackson, took credit for bringing the Baltic and other members of the Vilnius Group into NATO. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 1, 2003, Jackson claimed he originated the ‘Big Bang’ concept of NATO enlargement, later adopted by the Vilnius Group of Baltic and Eastern European nations. As Jackson noted, his ‘Big Bang’ briefing ‘proposed the inclusion of these seven countries in NATO and claimed for this enlargement strategic advantages for NATO and moral (sic) benefits for the democratic community of nations.’ On May 19, 2000 in Vilnius, Lithuania, these propositions were adopted by nine of Europe`s new democracies as their own. It became the objectives of the Vilnius Group. Jackson could also have noted the benefits to US military defense industry, including his old cronies at Lockheed Martin, with the creation of a vast new NATO arms market on the borders to Russia. <…> In brief, NATO encirclement of Russia, Color Revolutions across Eurasia, and the war in Iraq, were all one and the same American geopolitical strategy, part of a grand strategy to ultimately de -construct Russia once and for all as a potential rival to a sole US Superpower hegemony. Russia - not Iraq and not Iran - was the primary target of that strategy. <…> In the context of a United States which has actively moved the troops of its NATO partners into Afghanistan, now Lebanon, and which is clearly backing the former USSR member Georgia, today a critical factor in the Caspian Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Turkey oil pipeline, in Georgia`s move to join NATO and push Russian troops away, it is little surprise that Moscow might be just a bit uncomfortable with the American President`s promises of spreading democracy through a US-defined Greater Middle East. The invented term, Greater Middle East is the creation of various Washington think -tanks close to Cheney including his Project for the New American Century, to refer to the non-Arabic countries of Turkey, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asian (former USSR) countries, and Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. At the G-8 Summit in Summer 2004 President Bush first officially used the term to refer to the region included in Washington`s project to spread ‘democracy’ in the region. <…> On October 3, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that Russia would ‘take appropriate measures’ should Poland deploy elements of the new US missile defense system. Poland is now a NATO member. Its Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski was a former Resident in Washington at Richard Perle`s hawkish AEI think-tank. He was also Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project designed to bring the former Warsaw Pact countries of eastern Europe into NATO under the guise of spreading democracy. The United States is also building, via NATO, a European Missile Defense System.

by **greencrow0** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:38 pm

"<blockquote>Quote:<hr>...where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding".<hr></blockquote> Is there any independent evidence of this...at allllll? gc Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=greencrow0>greencrow0</A> at: 10/14/06 6:39 pm

by **pugzleyca3** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:11 pm

<A href=http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_dead.html> What Really Happened Website on Bin Laden </A> The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said. [New York Times 07/03/06] No use hunting for a dead guy, right? About Musharraf: First he claims he's dead (this is from the same link I posted above): "Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information." And on 10/01/06, he says he's not: NewsTrack - Top News Pakistan president: Bin Laden not dead NEW YORK, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is hiding in the tiny, sparsely populated, heavily mountainous eastern Afghan province of Kunar, Pakistan's president says. "It's not a hunch," President Pervez Musharraf told The Sunday Times of London. Bin Laden is known to be hiding in the strongly tribal province, embedded in the Hindu Kush mountain range, Musharraf said. He said bin Laden might be receiving help from Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the country's prime minister twice in the 1990s, who has been in hiding since siding with bin Laden shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. Musharraf spoke with the newspaper in New York after a contentious White House dinner meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, hosted by President Bush. Del.icio.us | Digg it | RSS E-MAIL | PRINT | SAVE | LICENSE © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved Edited to add more information from UPI. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=pugzleyca3>pugzleyca3</A> at: 10/14/06 7:53 pm

smokin' the peace pipe ?

smokin' the peace pipe ?

Re: smokin' the peace pipe ?

Re: smokin' the peace pipe ?

No use hunting a dead guy?

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