QUOTE of the WEEK concerning the Killing of 24 Pakistani Soliders at their Checkpoint by the USA

TARIQ ALI on Democracy Now:

“Well, Amy, the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers and the bombing of their checkpoint makes no rational sense at all. The United States did it. They knew it was a military checkpoint. They knew that it was Pakistani soldiers. They haven’t yet been able to come up with any reasonable explanation as to how that happened. So one has to assume that it was deliberate. And this happened roughly at the same period as Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, sent a message to the Pentagon saying, “Come and help us against our own army. We’ll do whatever you want,” which has become a huge scandal in Pakistan. It’s like a Clancy novel. And the ambassador actually going and pleading. This ambassador has now been removed. Another one has been appointed. So all sorts of things are going on behind the scenes, of which we haven’t yet heard the whole—the whole story is yet to come out.“

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/20/tariq_ali_obamas_expansion_of_af

NOTE

Runner up for Quote of the Week from Tariq Ali was:

TARIQ ALI: Iran, in my opinion, the Pentagon generals are not in favor of a war on Iran, because that would overstretch the United States, and the Iranians will—are quite a strong country, economically and militarily. They will probably respond within Iraq, within Afghanistan, on the Lebanese border, and in Iran itself. So, is the United States going to be prepared to fight four wars to do something that the Israelis want more than anyone else? I mean, ideally, the United States should have been mending its fences with Iran. I mean, Nixon did it with China. Obama should have flown to Tehran and done a deal with them. They refused to do that, because of the pressure of the Israelis, and the result is now tension. And if the Iranians close down the Straits of Hormuz in any conflict, which they are threatening to do, this will affect oil supplies to the West. And given the economy is already in a mess, the situation will become catastrophic. So I think it would be a crazy president who ordered bombing raids on Iran at the moment.