Hamid Gul, who knows a little something about the CIA and the murderous duplicity of the Americans, as he is the former director general of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, and was instrumental in the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad—dreamed up by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Taliban-al-Qaeda Machinator, and organized by the CIA. Gul told Daily Ummat, on October 31: “Bajaur is a plain and open piece of land. Pakistan Army’s scouts are already in that area. Pakistan Army did not need to attack the place with aerial bombing. The strategy of attack shows that it is the US’ handiwork… The US has a track record of sabotaging peace agreements.”

Gul made reference to a peace accord in process between Pakistan and North Waziristan tribal elders. “The announcement that the government plans to push forward with a possible accord with tribal leaders will cause concern in the US, who believe the deal in North Waziristan is responsible for an upsurge in violence in eastern Afghanistan,” reported Jane’s. “Washington is likely to maintain pressure on President Musharraf to continue anti-militant operations in the tribal regions if Islamabad does continue its strategy of disengagement. However, Musharraf is also constrained by domestic public opinion over his engagement with the US in its ‘war on terror.’”

Apparently, such “pressure” included killing boys while they slept at a religious school.

Fox propagandist turned neocon press secretary, Tony Snow, “backed Islamabad’s claim that this week’s missile strikes on a seminary in Bajaur intended to kill Al Qaeda militants” and “a State Department official told Dawn that he had not had any indication that the US had been involved ‘in any means’ in this military strike,” the Pakistan daily reported on November 2, even though “thousands of Bajaur tribesmen would testify to prove that the seminary had been attacked by a US drone and the Pakistan army’s helicopters arrived at the scene 20 minutes later,” the newspaper reported the following day.

Naturally, the corporate media did not report on the situation, and the Pakistani army prevented “journalists from entering the district of Bajaur, in the Tribal Areas north of Peshawar,” Reporters Without Borders reported on November 9. “Two Peshawar-based journalists, Haroon Rashid of the BBC World Service’s Urdu-language service, and Mehmood Jan Babar of the Pakistan’s AVT Khyber TV, were denied access to Bajaur…. Soldiers are checking each vehicle entering the area and have been given strict orders not to let any journalist go to Khar, the capital of Bajaur, or to the site of the air strike.” In addition, five journalists were “interrogated” by the Pakistani military and several “reporters including the correspondent for a privately-owned TV channel, Nowsherwan Qalandar, were beaten by para-militaries,” thus demonstrating once again how democracy works in countries aligned with Bush and the perfidious neocons.

Christina Lamb, appearing yesterday in the Sunday Times, wrote: “Local people claimed the victims included boys as young as 12 and that the tribal area had been negotiating with the Pakistan government for a peace deal. Pakistani officials insist they were shown satellite images of people training and have checked the identity cards of all those killed, and that all were adults.” According to Lamb, the “Americans are believed to have attacked after a tip-off that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda, was present.”

Recall the last time the U.S. supposedly killed al-Zawahiri, in January of this year, 18 people died. “The attack killed eight men, five women and five children [in the Bajur village of Damadola], Pakistani intelligence sources told CNN. Three homes were targeted.”

“Villagers described seeing an unmanned plane circling the area for the last few days and then bombs falling in the early morning darknessABC News reported. “CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack on Damadola village, across the border from Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. sources said.”

“‘We thought it would be less damaging if we said we did it rather than the US,’ Lamb quoted an unnamed ‘key aide’ to Musharraf as saying. ‘But there was a lot of collateral damage and we’ve requested the Americans not to do it again,’” RxPG News quotes the Sunday Times.

“The attack sparked a number of protests across the country. Besides religious leaders, those who protested include political parties like Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz as well as the Awami National Party…. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Pakistan’s principal rightwing Islamist political alliance, has been articulating a survey by its lawmaker from Bajaur that those dead were schoolchildren, some even less than 10 years.”

Once again, the United States, or more specifically the neocons, are cranking up the heat to make sure there is no peace in the Middle East, or South Asia for that matter. It is in the best interest of the neocons and the Israelis to sow chaos and murder in Muslim societies. Musharraf sorely needs peace with the Islamic political organizations in his country—even the most radical, step children of the CIA and ISI collaboration—if he is to remain in power.

Of course, for the neocons, Musharraf’s problems are of trifling if not insignificant importance. He will be sacrificed, yet another Muslim expendable, in the generational war envisioned by the neocons, now more than ever pushed up against the wire as the American people come around, sick and tired of war and the billions spent, the thousands of lives lost.

For the neocons, as Elvis crooned, it’s now or never.