http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060921/ts_nm/pakistan_usa_musharraf_dc U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan after 9/11: Musharraf By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss 14 minutes ago NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the September 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America's campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. ADVERTISEMENT Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show "60 Minutes" that will air on Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf's intelligence director. "The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,"' Musharraf said. "I think it was a very rude remark." Armitage was not immediately available to comment and a Bush administration official said there would be no comment on a "reported conversation between Mr. Armitage and a Pakistani official." But the official said: "After 9/11, Pakistan made a strategic decision to join the war on terror and has since been a steadfast partner in that effort. Pakistan's commitment to this important endeavor has not wavered and our partnership has widened as a result." Musharraf is now in Washington and is due to meet President George W. Bush in the White House on Friday. The Pakistani leader, whose remarks were distributed to the media by CBS, said he reacted to the threat in a responsible way. "One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did," Musharraf said. Before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, Pakistan was one of the only countries in the world to maintain relations with the Taliban, which was harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and many Pakistanis were sympathetic with the neighboring Islamic state. But within days of the attacks Musharraf cut his government's ties to the Taliban regime and cooperated with U.S. efforts to track and capture Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces that sought refuge in Pakistan. The official 9/11 Commission report on the attacks and their aftermath, based largely on government documents, said U.S. national security officials focused immediately on securing Pakistani cooperation as they planned a response. Documents showed Armitage met the Pakistani ambassador and the visiting head of Pakistan's military intelligence service in Washington on September 13 and asked Pakistan to take seven steps. SUPPORT FOR BIN LADEN They included ending logistical support for bin Laden and giving the United States blanket overflight and landing rights for military and intelligence flights. The report did not discuss any threat the United States may have made, but it said Musharraf agreed to all seven U.S. requests the same day. Musharraf said in the CBS interview he was irked by U.S. demands that Pakistan turn over its border posts and bases for the U.S. military to use. He said some demands were "ludicrous," including one insisting he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States. "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views," Musharraf said. With Taliban fighters still fighting in Afghanistan and statements by the Afghan government that Pakistan must do more to crack down on militants in its rugged border area, the issue is again a sensitive one between Islamabad and Washington. Musharraf reacted with displeasure to comments by Bush on Wednesday that if he had firm intelligence bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would issue the order to go into that country. "We wouldn't like to allow that. We'd like to do that ourselves," Musharraf told a news conference. Musharraf's comments came days ahead of the publication by New York-based Free Press of his memoir "In the Line of Fire." Advance copies of the memoir have not been released to the media for review before its September 25 publication.
from Al Jazeera [rquoter] However, speaking at a joint press conference with Musharraf on Friday, who is currently on a diplomatic visit to the US capital, Bush said he had never heard of the threat. "The first I've heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper today. "I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words." Musharraf responded by saying that he could not discuss his own remarks as, under the terms of a biography book deal he has signed, he cannot comment on such issues until the work is published later this month. 'Caught off guard' Armitage himself also later denied he had made the alleged comments, saying he had never threatened to use military force and that he was not advised to. He told the CNN news channel: "I told him that... for Americans, this was black or white, that Pakistan was either with us fully or not. [/rquoter] Honestly I tentatively believed Musharraf’s story and thought that there may have been some sort of overheated conversation with Armitage or something else so that the comments might not have been deliberate and premeditated until I read the bit about Musharraf's book deal. This just smacks to me of Musharraf trying to rewrite history so that he looks better in his book and to sell a few more copies.
I don't care if we threatened Pakistan or not. What matters to me is the safe haven being given to Bin Laden. They might not be actively protecting him, but they aren't goint to hunt him down and they won't let us do so either. Also, Pakistan is involved in the timing of the Iraq war. Pakistan was supposed to allow us to deploy into Iraq from the North but refused at the last minute. When this happened a huge amount of heavy equipment would be delayed 3-4 weeks. The Iraqi's knew this and figured we'd wait. We did not, we wanted the element of surprise instead. Perhaps if we'd been pressuring Pakistan all this time instead of destroying Iraq, we'd have him. Would that bring down Al Queda? Nope... but I still want that son of a b****.
You mean we were going to deploy from Pakistan over Afghanistan and Iran? Because those countries stand between Pakistan and Iraq. You are mixing up Pakistan and Turkey which doesn't speak well to your grasp of the situation.
Early reviews of his book indicate that it is full of exaggeration, blatant lies, and revisionist history. but then again,what else do you expect from a genocidal megalomaniac? Amazingly, even the Pakistani newspapers are calling him out on the "bomb back to stone age" claim: btw, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed referred to in the article above is the same guy that has been linked to the funding behind the 9/11 attacks
