In an article to be published tomorrow, Seymour Hersh reports what I have long suspected. The Bush Administration's relaxed approach to Musharraf's pardon of AQ Khan (Pakistan's nuclear program founder, who traded secrets to Libya, North Korea, and more) was a
quid pro quo for help in getting Osama this spring. That's not surprising. After all, given our dependence on Pakistan as an ally, the US couldn't really force it to discipline Khan for his proliferation activities. (Or, considering the reports that Musharraf and many other top military figures participated in the proliferation, we couldn't expect them to discipline themselves.) But the administration was crowing about the "discovery" (shit, they should have asked me, I could have told them about this two years ago) so much that I figured they were getting something out of making this a public issue. And admission into the tribal lands so they can go after Osama seems to be what they've gotten.
I still have a few questions about this though:
First, Powell in particular was crowing about how successful the CIA had been recently. I thought then, and think now, that he was talking about this deal with Pakistan. But what is so great about this deal, from a CIA standpoint? That is, why would making an international issue of proliferation that was commonly known about count as a CIA success?
Second, why does making this an international incident really help us get access to the tribal lands? Is our "pardon" of Khan just a bone Musharraf can throw the fundies in Pakistan, to say that we're really nice so we should be allowed to enter into the tribal lands?
Third, what does Osama think about all these newspaper reports explaining the Special Forces are on the way? Is he really going to sit there waiting for us, reading about his impending doom? I mean, he got out of Tora Bora without this kind of warning, do we really think he won't get out of the way with this kind of advance warning???
Or, more likely, all of these stories are cover for something else. There is the implausible, but possible, scenario that OBL has already been captured (which would definitely count as a CIA success, if they did it). Or this could be cover for an operation in Afghanistan to get OBL, where he has been reported to have moved to. Or it could be something else altogether. Any suggestions?