Loading ...Musharraf: US threatened to bomb Pakistan after 9/11
September 22nd, 2006
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 war campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Assistant 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.”
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 about the cooperation extended by Pakistan.
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.
“If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” Musharraf said.
Source: Reuters
September 28th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
[…] The Musharraf Truth Tour is officially over. He had a few hits, like “The USA threatened to bomb us ‘back to the stone age’ after 9/11″, “Iraq war makes world more dangerous”, and how could we forget “We sold ‘al-Qaeda’ suspects to the CIA”. But like all good things this, too, must come to and end. As I said yesterday, he would either revert back to his old self or be knocked off — he made a wise choice in that regard. “It’s not a hunch,” the Pakistani President told The Times. “Kunar province borders on Bajaur Agency. We know there are some pockets of al-Qaeda in Bajaur Agency. We have set a good intelligence organisation. We have moved some army elements. We did strike them twice there. We located and killed a number of them.” […]