Musharraf to Bush - Keep your tanks off my lawn.

President Parvez Musharraf is now in Washington and is due to meet President George W. Bush in the White House tomorow. It promises to be an interesting meeting especially as the President has just said that the US would bomb Pakistan if they knew Osama bin Laden was there.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show "60 Minutes" due to be aired on Sunday, said at the time of 9/11, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, signatory of the neo con's agenda spoke to Musharraf's intelligence director.

"The intelligence director told me that (Richard Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'"

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.

Musharraf said some demands made by the United States were "ludicrous," including one insisting he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States.

Against these disclosures it is interesting to read what Richard Armitage, now a private citizen and Director of Philips Conoco, has recently written...

Richard Armitage wrote in an article in the New York Times on August 20th 2006 with Kara L Bue (a deputy assistant secretary of state from 2003 to 2005, and the slip of a girl in a red 2 pc. suit in the picture (c) US State Dept) "Keep Pakistan on Our Side"

"On Sept. 12, 2001, the United States gave Pakistan a stark choice — be with us or against us. Understanding the dangers and opportunities of this choice, President Pervez Musharraf chose to stand with America, and since then he has taken tremendous steps to fight Islamic extremists and move Pakistan toward enlightened moderation."

Richard Armitage was one of the main architects behind US covert support to the Mujahedin and the "militant Islamic base," both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well as in its aftermath.

UPDATE Friday 22nd September 2006

Richard Armitage interviewed on BBC 4 Radio "PM" program denied ever sasying any such thing, but doesn't know how what he said was reported to President Musharrif. Dubya apparently (he says) only discovered this threat when he read about it in the papers - which is trange because they must be including political items on the Sports Pages of the papers in Washington.