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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (10397)	11/5/2007 2:26:04 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25737

Exactly....Mushareff is the winner over Putin in your little "how can bamboozle Bush better" contest. Right after 9/11 Mushareff recognized that as a former supporter of the Taliban he and his cronies needed to "appear" to abandon them and ally with America or not only national opinion in the U.S. but World opinion would justify any U.S. action taken against him and his government. He did this masterfully, talking one thing in public while in private thwarting everything we needed to do (which you listed). Everytime the heat for democratic reform began to build again, he waived the bloody shirt of "islamic militants" and we backed away and gave him everything he wanted...more money, more authority. He denied us at every turn in our efforts to chase down OBL, he signed a "peace treaty" with the Taliban, he walked away from the rule of law in his own country. And what did America, the nation that keeps harping to the rest of the Middle East about democracy, do? We let him get away with it..and now why is anyone surprised? The lawyers and opponenets are being rounded up (not islamic militants, I might add) and all in the name of stopping those pesky Islamic militants... And will we cut off aid to him now. No. He is "our dictator", so no matter what he does, we have to keep feeding him.....

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (10397)	11/7/2007 9:44:11 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 25737

Shades of the Shah November 05, 2007 5:52 PM blogs.abcnews.com ABC's Z. Byron Wolf Reports: Republican candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., looks at the situation in Pakistan and sees Iran in the '70s. He looks at Iran today and sees short-sightedness in US foreign policy in the '70s. He is not the only one, but for different reasons. Gary Sick was the desk officer on Iran in the '70s at the National Security Council and now a professor for Columbia. Sick wrote recently for Newsweek and the Washington Post that there are similarities, at least topical ones, between Iran in the '70s and Pakistan now. Sick complains that the US seems, as with the Shah, to have "put all our eggs in one basket." Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said much the same thing on ABC News' Politics Live today when he warned that President Musharraf's power grab could lead to him becoming "the next shah" and is extremely dangerous for stability in the region. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and, like Hunter, is running for President, warned the Pakistani President to hold free and fair elections. "General Musharraf has embarked on a course that is dangerous for his own nation and for relations between the United States and Pakistan. He should return quickly to the path of democracy, stability, and the rule of law," Biden said in a statement. But where Sick and O'Hanlon are extremely concerned by Musharraf's actions, Hunter is worried that Musharraf is going to be the next Shah if the U.S. Government "abandons" him to turmoil in that country. Here is the full written statement from Hunter, who is the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee: "Recent events in Pakistan are occurring against the backdrop of enormous U.S. interests, especially given that Pakistan's border with Afghanistan contains a sizeable and lethal community of Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. As a supporter of the U.S. in the war against terrorists, President Musharraf faces the challenges resulting from both political opposition and anti-American sentiment." "President Musharraf clearly seeks to retain control of Pakistan during a state of emergency. He apparently sees this control, which requires the use of military and police forces, as the only remedy for an increasingly lethal Al Qaeda and Taliban presence." "When the Shah of Iran weakened in the 1970s, the U.S. government did not anticipate the Shah’s successors and did little more than facilitate his exit. Today's confrontation with Iran over terror and nuclear weapons development is the legacy of short-sighted American leadership in the 1970s. Further, Pakistan possesses something the Shah never had - nuclear weapons." "We must be careful to ensure our Iranian mistake does not reoccur. As politics in Pakistan continue evolving, we should not rush to abandon Musharraf but work with him to get Pakistan back on the path toward democracy, including the release of political dissidents and the reinstatement of the Supreme Court. We may also consider lending our own security capabilities to ensure the strongest possible protection of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile." November 5, 2007 in 2008: Republicans