Comments people? A lot of the news “highly placed sources” stories that have been leaked recently seem to be suggesting a new shift towards focussing on KSA and Pakistan.
I wrote last week how the Americans are slowly but surely building a case to occupy Saudi oilfields. The theory now being promoted is that Osama in a cave attached to a kidney dialysis machine couldn’t possibly have masterminded and orchestrated 9/11. It was the Saudi government, or at the very least disgruntled Saudi princes, using Saudi Air Force pilots. The further contention is that the Saudi dispensation will collapse if they don’t mend their ways and the largest oil reserve in the world will fall into the hands of Islamic militants. So American should consider seizing their oilfields.
It doesn’t stop there. It seems that Crown Prince Abdullah’s recent visit to Pakistan was deviousness incarnate. A case is now being built that the visit had to do with Pakistan giving the Saudis nuclear weapons or technology in exchange for cheap or free oil. The mischief was started by the Israeli Military Intelligence chief, Ashron Zeo (phonetic spelling) who informed the Foreign and Defense Committee of the Knesset that the Saudi government had asked the Pakistani government to deploy nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia. This is how mischief starts because this is how the seed of disinformation is planted. Right on cue UPI’s Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote that, “Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on nuclear weapons cooperation”, something “an unimpeachable source” had told him. The “unimpeachable source” could either be an Israeli radio broadcast about Zeo’s statement or it could be what de Borchgrave claims, a “ranking Pakistani source known to this correspondent for more than a decade as a knowledgeable insider.” I bet it is some clapped out official, civil or military, who loves the sound of his own voice, but we will never know for sure, will we?
The reasoning is spurious. It was “a lightning, hastily arranged, 26-hour” visit. So what, though this writer also knows from an unimpeachable source that there was nothing “lightning” or “hasty” about it. Crown Prince Abdullah stopped over on his return from the OIC summit in Kuala Lumpur. That Defense Minister Prince Sultan was not with him is neither here nor there, though one wonders what he thinks of being labelled “pro-American” in the current vitiated atmosphere. If President Musharraf received Crown Prince Abdullah at the airport and he was given a 21-gun salute, does it mean that a secret nuclear pact was signed? To ‘prove’ that Pakistan exports nuclear technology, de Borchgrave informs us that, “the CIA believes that Pakistan already exported nuclear know-how to North Korea in exchange for missile technology.” The weight of what the CIA wrongly believes is enough to sink an ocean liner. This is journalese of the most supercilious kind at its best. The beauty comes when de Borchgrave says that, “This correspondent and the chief of staff of the North Korean Air Force stayed at the same Islamabad hotel in May 2001.” Wow! Does that prove that Pakistan exported nuclear technology to the North Koreans for missile technology? And would such a sensitive and secret deal be done with an Air Force Chief and he be put up in a hotel for American journalists to see? Give me a break.
Then comes the peach. “Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia see a world that is moving from non-proliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons.” Tell me more. What’s new? This is according to the “unimpeachable Pakistani source”, the “knowledgeable insider.” Which red-blooded Pakistani (I am loath to use the word ‘patriotic’) would run his mouth like this to a foreigner, leave alone an American journalist?
We are blandly informed by the way, without any “unimpeachable source” being quoted, that, “Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is now estimated between 35 and 60 weapons.” What a gap! What kind of an estimate is this, either half or one? Is this how big the gap in the CIA’s estimates is? How can it be trusted with anything? Further in the article we are informed that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is estimated at “between 200 and 400 weapons.” What a gap again, but at least we have open admission that peace-loving Israel which is forced into violence by Palestinians has nuclear weapons.
The important information in the de Borchgrave article is that, “Saudi officials also remind their interlocutors that a closed meeting – later well publicized – of the U.S. Defense Policy Board in 2002 listened to an expert explain, with a 16-slide presentation, why and how the United States should seize and occupy Saudi oilfields in the country’s eastern province. Richard Perle was then the chairman of the Pentagon-funded Defense Policy Board.” I rest my case.
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