The author was none other than Gen. Hamid Gul, the notorious former head of Pakistan's intelligence service (ISI), perennial agitproper and America-hater, who is strategic adviser to the six-party coalition of politico-religious extremists known as MMA.

In a subsequent interview in the same newspaper (Nov. 19), Gul flayed U.S. foreign policy now in the hands of warrior princess Condi Rice. The U.S., he said, has created the dilemma of the socio-political and economic collapse in Pakistan.

Now with Rice's appointment, the U.S. will influence and control Pakistan's nuclear program, which is our only remaining strength, through which the right nuclear balance in the region (with India) is maintained.

MMA is planning nationwide demonstrations this week to protest President Musharraf's military offensive in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) to find Osama Bin Laden.

Presumably to preempt the extremist demos, Musharraf announced military operations in FATA were now completed and the army was satisfied Bin Laden was not hiding somewhere in the 2,500-killometer-long Afghan-Pakistan frontier region.

The unmarked border snakes through rugged mountains and remote plains, and with less than 10,000 troops engaged in the search, and the first snowfalls of winter, finding the proverbial needle in a haystack would have been less arduous.

If anyone knows Bin Laden's whereabouts it would be Gul. An internal CIA assessment describes Gul as Pakistan's most dangerous man. He doesn't hide his admiration for Bin Laden and is a personal friend of Mullah Omar.

Bin Laden and Gul share a geopolitical vision that merges Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the oil riches of a post-monarchy Saudi Arabia in a revival of the Muslim caliphate.

Earlier this year, Gul told a closed meeting of MMA leaders who were attending a wake for the deceased wife of the coalition's vice president Sami ul-Haq they should begin planning Musharraf's succession.

Gul's candidate: Dr. Abdel Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and, according to opinion surveys, the country's most popular man since Ali Jinnah, the founder of the republic.

Musharraf and the new Prime Minister Aziz are just the informers and not the real leaders of Pakistan as they were not elected by the people, Gul said in a recent interview that called for elected and brave only leaders. Musharraf has survived eight assassination plots.

Gul's candidate is the same Dr. Khan who confessed to running the world's first international black market for nuclear materials and bomb-making wherewithal. His clients were Iran, North Korea - two of the three members of president Bush's axis of evil (the 3rd was Iraq) - and Libya (now on probation in reform school).

Dr. Khan first began catering the Iranian ayatollahs' nuclear yearnings in February 1986. This was when the secret program was split up and compartmentalized into raw materials, uranium enrichment, plutonium reprocessing, technology procurement and weapons design.

In the 1980s there was no yarn about the need for nuclear power to cover nuclear weapons goals. Then Majlis speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an address to Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) officers rebroadcast Oct. 6, 1988, We should fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons.

The $800 million deal with Russia for nuclear reactors at Busheir was a convenient smokescreen for the different phases of the nuclear weapons program scattered in the rest of the country.

Negotiations between Europe's Big Three and Iran, and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, are pure cat-and-mouse charades. Iran is already in the process of trying to fit a WMD warhead to a long-range missile. And IAEA doesn't have the authority to scour the country looking for nuclear weapons.

After burrowing their way into the club courtesy of Pakistan's nuclear Daddy Warbucks, Iran and North Korea are now the world's 9th and 10th nuclear powers.

The fiercely anti-American Dr. Khan also sent two nuclear engineers to Afghanistan before 9/11 to confer with Mullah Omar (on an agricultural project, Pakistan lamely explained when the news leaked). Gen. Gul was also in Afghanistan for two weeks immediately prior to 9/11.

President Musharraf granted Dr. A.Q. Khan a full pardon. He was allowed to keep his lucre stashed in foreign banks. Musharraf realized that bringing such a national icon to trial would have triggered nationwide riots.

Worse than riots, A.Q.K's handiwork may well precipitate a wider conflict in the region. Both Israel and the U.S. have said a nuclear Iran is unacceptable.

Iran, on the other hand, sees itself bracketed between two countries now occupied by the U.S. - 20,000 U.S. troops to the east in Afghanistan and 135,000 to the west in Iraq. Again, seen from Tehran, Iran is surrounded by half the world's nuclear powers - Russia, Israel, Pakistan and India.

So Iran does have legitimate security concerns. And the fear of U.S. armed forces on its flanks has strengthened the grip of hard-lining ayatollahs.

Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, some prominent neo-cons spoke out in favor of hitting Iran first, not Iraq. They argued, as the Iraqi hawks did about Baghdad, that countless millions were anxiously waiting to be liberated.

For the United States to take on Iran and its 70 million people without a clear casus belli would make Iraq look like a walk in the park. The inevitable strategic debacle would topple Pakistan's Musharraf and bring about Gen. Gul's vision of a nuclear caliphate.

The U.S. Defense Science Board concluded this week in a 111-page report U.S. credibility among Muslims is down to zero and urged policy-makers to spend more time listening to their intended audience and use messages that should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards.

At the same time, another U.S. survey showed levels of anti-American prejudice and hostility in Europe far exceeding those experienced during the Vietnam War. Today, every large European country has a Muslim minority of several million people.

So a preemptive U.S. attack on Iran would only make matters worse for the Bush administration and for the governments still backing the United States in Iraq. We would likely be at the receiving end of a paroxysm of global rage - and Osama Bin Laden, as Hamid Gul suggested, anointed the Muslim world's Jihadi-in-Chief.

Unencumbered by image problems in Europe and the Muslim world, where it has long been seen as the villain, Israel is ready and able to seriously disrupt Iran's nuclear buildup, much the way it killed Saddam Hussein's reactor at Osirak before it went critical in 1981.

Israel won't wait for a wink and a nod from the White House before acting. But the United States will be blamed anyway.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by United Press International. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of by United Press International.

Related Links
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only