The logical outcome of continuing to finance Pakistan's double game. "US paying Pakistan to kill American troops?," by Chidanand Rajghatta in the Times of India, July 27 (thanks to Regumrex):
WASHINGTON: A treasure trove of US documents implicating Pakistan in its support for terrorism exploded in the public domain on Sunday, sending officials in both countries scurrying to defend a dubious alliance and straining a phony partnership based on a misreading of the ground sentiment and situation.WikiLeaks, a whistleblower organization that publishes sensitive government leaks from anonymous sources, put a staggering 91,000 documents, mainly ground reports from US military personnel, in public domain on Sunday. Many of the documents exposed Pakistan's double-faced policy of fuelling terrorism in Afghanistan while claiming to be fighting it as an US ally.
In effect, the chronicles suggested that Washington was blindly paying Pakistan massive amounts of money for access to Afghanistan even as Islamabad uses its spy agency, ISI, to plot the death of American and Nato troops, allied Indian personnel, and undermines US policy. The most devastating leaks showed that Pakistan allows representatives of its spy service, ISI, to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize attacks against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai....
"Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harboured strong suspicions that Pakistan's military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants," the New York Times said in its assessment of the report. "The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan's unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety," it continued.
"The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Islamabad as an ally by American officials looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaida havens," it added.
That policy of ambivalence and appeasement continued even into the hours after the WikiLeaks expose, as US and Pakistani officials rushed to control the damage. US national security advisor James Jones condemned the "disclosure of classified documents by individuals and organizations", which, he said, "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security", when, in effect, the documents suggest it is Washington's appeasement of Pakistan which is doing that....
Indeed.
Obama knows how-to tame North Korea,
Obama knows how-to placate Iran;
Obama knows how to ap-pease our enemies,
Obama knows our own nukes we must ban!
Concerning the title of this thread - I'm speechless.
"...deep suspicions among American officials..."
Gee, are they only now becoming suspicious? What will it take to make them "ALARMED?"
I say they evacuate all military personnel, including that last billion dollars, & set the timers on Pakistan's nukes on the way out the door...
Outside of the Arab countries, Pakistan is the most fanatically Muslim. It is that because the Pakistanis, unlike say the Iranians, have no other identity -- pre-Islamic or non-Islamic -- to hold onto, or to appeal to (even in the court of their own minds). Their state was founded of, by, and for Muslims. That's it's sole reason for being. It is riven by ethnic conflicts among four distinct major groups, also defined geographically. Its reason for being is to uphold Islam, the Cause of Islam, as the Pakistani army kept telling the Bengali civilians in the 1971 war, and then raped and looted and killed them if they refused to find that argument convincing.
Pakistan was not a "loyal ally" of the United States at any time during the past fifty years of its extraordinary coddling by successive American governments. It was not a loyal ally in CENTO, but wanted the money, wanted the arms. It was not a loyal ally when it used the arms given to it to wage war on India. It was not a loyal ally when members of the Senate felt so exercised by Pakistani meretriciousness, and the history of collusion and forebearance exhibited by the Executive branch, that they passed the Pressler Amendment. It was not a loyal ally when it managed to get the Americans to ignore Pakistan's role in giving birth to, and nurturing to malevolent manhood, the Taliban, and then sending it to Afghanistan to take over after the Soviets left. It was not a loyal ally when it diverted American funds to pay for the nuclear project of A. Q. Khan, who in turn tried to sweeten his allowance by selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. It has not been a loyal ally since 9/11/2001, that is in nearly a decade, during which it has received not, as we are all supposed to believe because the papers tell us, "$1 billion a year" but, rather, close to 30 billion (that is about 3 billion a year) if we consider debt forgiveness, economic aid, and the real cost of the military aid, not all of which is easily recognized but is, rather, hidden in the larger Pentagon budget.
The game of these generals, with that ramrod straight bearing, and those miens expressing a deep sincerity that the endlessly naive American officials, civilian and military, have such an incredibly hard time seeing through, and are so willing to believe that this or that general, however untrustworthy he "may have been before," has at long last seen the light, and is willing to be our true-blue ally as never before.
Musharraf played that role, and now that he has left the stage to "pursue other interests" that role has fallen to nice, trustworthy, General Kayani.
Really, the comedy has to stop. We've run out of popcorn. And they are no longer serving drinks in the lobby.
Finally the deluded American public will have the truth shoved down their throats. The rest of us had been aware of this double dealing for a very long time.
It's time to stop funding the Pakistanis' game.
The chickens are coming home to mama. American state department, Pentagon, democrats and republicans were perfectly fine while american blood and treasure was being used to kill those "brown indian hindus".
Offcourse the militancy risk has been priced into the lives of an avergae Indian and now unfortunately america will have to do the same.
Even more troubling will be that America will fund (via billion dollar support program) the killing of its own citizens.
For all the greatness of american society at large it is breathtaking that the elected and exectuive branch of governments are an example of extreme stupidity.
Afgangate?... or Pakigate? Truth hurts, especially when it comes in from the field.
So I have known this information for more than 6 years now....and it has taken the United States government with all their resources and networks till now to finally realize the painfully obvious...talk about incompetent leadership
Here is the beginning of a report in the London Times
Leaks: US aid to Pakistan at risk over ‘Taleban links’
Giles Whittell, Washington and Tom Coghlan
July 27 2010 12:01AM
"The White House warned last night that billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan could be at risk if leaked intelligence reports prove that its security forces are colluding with the Taleban. President Obama’s spokesman ruled out a “blank cheque” to Islamabad as the Pentagon launched an investigation to hunt down the source of the biggest intelligence leak in US history."
What does it mean if the Obama Administration warns that "billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan could be at risk if leaked intelligence reports prove that its security forces are colluding with the Taliban"? Does it mean, or are we expected to believe, that the Obama Administration was as much in the dark as everyone else -- except that no one in his right mind who knew about Islam and thus about Pakistan ever thought anything else -- and that now, if it turns out that the Obama Administration, via Wikileaks yet, finally learns of some double-dealing by the Pakistanis, well then...it might just have to cut aid to Pakistan.
Are we expected to believe this piling of nonsense upon nonsense? Can no one in the Obama Administration stop acting like terminal naifs and begin to act with intelligence, based on a knowledge of Islam, a real knowledge of how Islam affects the attitudes, the worldview, the mental workings, of its adherents?
Is that, after three trillion wasted dollars, too much to ask?
What has happened is blind stupidity and is caused by politically correct thinking.
Don't confuse me by the facts. Or we have an agenda and facts that don't fit are ignored. This and the previous administration both fell down on threat and motivation of the enemy.
Heck! They don't even know who the enemy is!
i hope people around the world understand how difficult it is to negotiate with pakistan i' d say even taliban would be a better enemy becos pakistan as enemy nation is deceitful to its roots and as much as they clamour for peace negotiations and cry for indian oppression of kashmir what they really want is to make india bleed with thousand cuts. every pak hates indian secular ideology and they want us to fail. can we negotiate constructively with such a neighbour
"US paying Pakistan to kill American troops?,"
to say no ....would be a big Fu!@#$%^&* lie.
But the bigger the Lie.......... Next thing people will say is Obama got the lockerbie bomber let go and not have cancer.But that would be crazy,,,,,,,right?????????
The real betrayal is of the US (and NATO troops) who put their lives on the line every day. How many KIAs would have been alive today but for the US gov't naively dealing with an entity who lies and deceives infidels as a matter of principle? I guess those 90,000 and more documents would be, for the most part, reports from platoon, company or battalion-level commanders who experienced Pakistani deception first hand.
Pakistan land of pure is a country of backstabber's. Obama doesnt want the truth to get out he will now try to look as to how the documents got to wikileaks. The mohammadans as such believe war is deception as said by their master terrorist pedophile massmurderer mohammad and they are following the teachings here to the hilt. Hopethe people who matter the armymen do get the idea as to what is happening and deal with these double crossers as traitors- give them what they deserve.
The "leak" news is not new news, at least not here. The data has been out for years, and reported by J.W.
To those who may be looking for the answers for the first time, welcome. The posts here will point in the right direction, as long as the sand is under your feet, not around your head.
Read, ask, learn.
Uncle Sam?
Uncle Sap.
Here is a very, very telling article that I have posted here many times before, but will post yet again, for all the new readers who may well have joined us since the last time I posted it.
It is about Iraq, a cri de coeur from an intelligent American contractor who had taken part in the Sisyphean task of attempting to get things built and fixed there; but it might as well be about Pakistan, or about Afghanistan, or anywhere else in dar al Islam, at anytime whatever.
http://antiprotester.blogspot.com/2006/04/life-in-iraq-part-ii-civilization-of.html
Friday April 28, 2006: Life in Iraq Part II, A Civilisation of Deception. Posted on The Autonomist web-site.
Here is how it begins.
"...So what is it about these blessed followers of the "Religion of Peace" that enables them to -- not bend, not spin, not obfuscate -- but flat-out LIE all the time?
"I'm no anthropologist, but the time I've spent in Iraq over the last couple of years has provided me with a big clue as to why these guys seem so able to look the world straight in the eye and lie as easily and frequently as they bend over and . . .well, pray.
"Survival of the Fittest
"Although I'm weak in anthropology, I did get an 'A' in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life's challenges and survive to this day.
"Rabbits are fast runners and fast breeders. Tigers are amazingly skilled hunting machines. Elephants are immensely tough and powerful. Monkeys are highly intelligent and adaptable. Frogs have poisonous skin.
"But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.
"These types of organisms -- "lie-in-wait" predators -- must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike. They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy. For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability -- PC thinking.
"It is no accident that the Muslims chose to openly start attacking the West on their own turf in the '60s and '70s, right around the time when PC ideology in our culture was starting to pick up steam and cloud our collective judgment. Would Muslims have attacked New York while U.S. Grant was president? Or London while King George III was on the throne? How about the Paris riots during Napoleon's time? I don't think so.
"The Deceiver picked up on this latest dominant PC, therapeutic, Leftist strain in Western culture, and, patient and shrewd as he is, has successfully exploited it for the last few decades. The only time they seem to have paid any price was when the United States had good old-fashioned cowboys at the tiller -- Bush I and Bush II.
"They continue to try and deceive by maintaining their false cries of victimhood, blustering lies, and ridiculous charades, for they have internalized and mastered what Sun Tsu considered the most valuable tactic in warfare:Deception.
"They hone these deceptive traits by practicing on themselves, first and foremost, by perfecting the art that most Westerners would call "lying." But to them it's not really lying. To them, lying is simply the most effective means at their disposal for saving face, being clever, getting ahead, and trying to appear superior. Remember, deception is the Muslim's most developed trait; their secret weapon. Its constant exercise is not a matter of shame, it's a matter of pride.
"And they absolutely drool at the sight of an unsuspecting Westerner who waltzes into their midst, like the juicy beetle oblivious to the chameleon, with his Christian-based ideas of "Truth" and "honesty" and "ethics" and "integrity."
"**From Alexander the Great to the 101st Airborne, the first thing the Arabs saw was not our frightening array of weapons, but the big "Tootsie Pop" signs stenciled on our foreheads** {my emphasis - dda}."
And it goes on from there: read it all, it's worth it (the concluding paragraphs are priceless, I won't reproduce them here, but they are completely relevant to the topic under discussion in this thread). Indian posters may like to amuse themselves by translating it into Hindi, and spreading it about.
It goes very nicely with Mr Raymond Ibrahim's scholarly examination of Lying in Islam:
http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
"How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism," by Raymond Ibrahim in the Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010.
"Wikileaks Afghanistan: Iran accused of supporting Taliban attacks"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7910926/Wikileaks-Afghanistan-Iran-accused-of-supporting-Taliban-attacks.html
Could our State Department and Defense Departments, both hijacked by the left, be any more incompetent? First, they have been allowing Iranians to kill our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with impunity for years, and now our suspicions with respect to the double game being played by Pakistan have now been confirmed. Hence, if anyone is curious as to why we are losing this war it’s obviously because the blind is leading the blind.
We need to confiscate and destroy the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan and we need to stop the Iranian ruling Mullahs from acquiring nukes at all cost. The last thing we need to be doing is trying to lift up Muslims, as we should be trying to render them all into abject poverty instead, which includes confiscating their oil wealth and oil assets. Otherwise we will be fighting jihad forever.
. It is that because the Pakistanis, unlike say the Iranians, have no other identity -- pre-Islamic or non-Islamic -- to hold onto, or to appeal to
Yes but that is because there is an entity to its east which can rightfully lay claim to all the history of pre-Islamic Pakistan. Of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms that sprung there in Alexander's wake, to the Vedic Sanskrit which was born on the banks of Indus. Pakistanis have never really shown any interest in claiming their rightful history as it'd bring up the uncomfortable question of how they ended up as Muslims in the first place. If Pakistanis are to be believed they are all Punjabified Arabs, Turks and Persians. Others still explain away their very Hindu caste surnames by claiming that sufi's Islamised their ancestors. We are supposed to believe that all those Kashmiris, still bearing their ancestral Brahmin surnames placing them at the very top rungs of Hindu orthodoxy were somehow persuaded to convert to Sufism. Commonsense tells us there is no way, people who were stellar champions of Hinduism and populated its clergy, converted to Islam of their own accord.
As for Americans paying Pakistan to kill its own soldiers. It has been known to many for years now. This is old news. American elite don't really care, a few hundred soldiers lost seems for them seems to be a "better" option than the actual frightening proposition of doing something about it!
Since I no longer buy into the idea that our government leaders are stupid, the only thing left is for them to be called for what they are...criminals. ONLY a criminal could knowingly give money to the enemy to kill our sons and daughters on active duty. Just wait til they get their hands on our health care system and see how they will selectively kill the youngest and the oldest of us so that they can continue to live the high life paid through graft and corruption.
I have long said that we should give the money to India, a TRUE ally, and fund the Hindu Nationalist Party to aid us in the fight against ISLAM, and I do mean ISLAM, not Islamists, jihadi or any other term that skirts the idea that our true enemy is the "religion" itself.
Afhganistan and Iraq are both failures under Bush and Obama. The idea that we would install governments with pro-Sharia constitutions is insane. We should fight by Muhammad's rules - invade, conquer, ban the other sides religion (Islam), forbid repairs to their mosques by day or by night, tax Muslims (jizya) to the preference of non-Muslims and slowly erode this sick perverse ideology away. This is a fight we can easily win. We just don't have the leadership or back bone to do it.
dda - The link you posted to the blog comes back as no longer available. Can you repost the entire article? Thanks.
Sadly and tragically but truly, it appears that a certain amount of carnage in form of the blood, flesh, guts and forever lost dreams of the most brave young American troops from the vast span of this blessed land, is acceptable by our insensitive elected politicians, armed forces' brass and their lobbyists pals to keep their puposely mismanaged scandalous govermental machine well lubricated be it unwittingly or not, at the hands of the insincere, duplicitous, "Jizya Leeches", the Pakistani "establishment" aka caliphate aka government and their many Islamic terrorist proxies.
When will our people and our so called leaders wake up to the fact that we are being duped by Pakistan and our sons and daughters are paying the ultimate price while the taxpayers are being robbed blind!
WikiLeaks, a whistleblower organization that publishes sensitive government leaks from anonymous sources, put a staggering 91,000 documents, mainly ground reports from US military personnel,
Reports from troops on the ground are an important insight into what is really going on in Afghanistan/Pakistan battle against Islamics. The much reported 'civilian casualties' may now be exposed for what most really were, 'civilian human-shields' casualties forced on either willing or unwilling victims of their vicious tactics. It makes big headlines, but it must be read 'in between the lines' of what the troops are reporting from the ground. War is a messy business, but it is especially cruel to civilians if the enemy uses them as shields against counter-attacks. I suspect this is probably 80% of those 'civilian casualties', that they were held 'hostage' (something Islamics are good at doing) to bring up the (civilian) kill rate. These reports would be very informative and revealing, if the media reported truthfully and were not so soft on Islamic Jihad.
what is even more suprising is that it has taken us this long to notice when my country men were there in 2002 we confronted foreign intelligence agents from all the likely location, pakistan, iran, syria gathering intelligence and coordinating resistance against us almost always funded thru black funds or humanitarian aid which is a cover for white wash money from the us or from saudi arabia if you ever want to see how evil people are follow the money.
no surrender
OK. Sorry about that. It was working not so very long ago; the link must only have broken recently.
Here it is, from my personal copy.
(Whenever I encounter anything good, I *always* keep a complete copy, rather than just saving a link, since I've found links have a distressing habit of breaking over time)
"Friday April 28, 2006: Life in Iraq Part II, A Civilisation of Deception.
"Posted on The Autonomist web-site.
"If the Iran nuclear crisis seems like 'deja vu all over again" it's because it is.
"The United States, along with most of the world, stood in awe during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, as Saddam Hussein seemed to make and break a dizzying array of promises and commitments with frightening speed and ease, right up until the moment we unleashed our tanks and his vaunted armies unleashed their white flags.
"The UN, Europe, and the Clinton Administration jumped for joy at every promise the lovely and talented Mr. Arafat spewed forth in support of the "Roadmap to Peace", until his unbroken streak of broken promises finally ended -- but only because he finally died.
"Now we have a similar scenario with Iran's "enthusiastic" leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (damn Muslim names -- let's just call him "Uncle Mah", shall we?) who makes more promises about "peaceful future intentions" than a convicted child molester up for parole.
"The only difference is, the child molester has a much better chance of keeping his promises to reform and rehabilitate -- and we all know how likely that is!
"So what is it about these blessed followers of the "Religion of Peace" that enables them to -- not bend, not spin, not obfuscate -- but flat-out LIE all the time?
" I'm no anthropologist, but the time I've spent in Iraq over the last couple of years has provided me with a big clue as to why these guys seem so able to look the world straight in the eye and lie as easily and frequently as they bend over and . . .well, pray.
"Survival of the Fittest
"Although I'm weak in anthropology, I did get an 'A' in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life's challenges and survive to this day.
"Rabbits are fast runners and fast breeders. Tigers are amazingly skilled hunting machines. Elephants are immensely tough and powerful. Monkeys are highly intelligent and adaptable. Frogs have poisonous skin.
"But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.
"These types of organisms -- "lie-in-wait" predators -- must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike.
"They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy.
"For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability -- PC thinking.
"It is no accident that the Muslims chose to openly start attacking the West on their own turf in the '60s and '70s, right around the time when PC ideology in our culture was starting to pick up steam and cloud our collective judgment. Would Muslims have attacked New York while U.S. Grant was president? Or London while King George III was on the throne? How about the Paris riots during Napoleon's time? I don't think so.
"The Deceiver picked up on this latest dominant PC, therapeutic, Leftist strain in Western culture, and, patient and shrewd as he is, has successfully exploited it for the last few decades. The only time they seem to have paid any price was when the United States had good old-fashioned cowboys at the tiller -- Bush I and Bush II.
"They continue to try and deceive by maintaining their false cries of victimhood, blustering lies, and ridiculous charades, for they have internalized and mastered what Sun Tsu considered the most valuable tactic in warfare:Deception.
"They hone these deceptive traits by practicing on themselves, first and foremost, by perfecting the art that most Westerners would call "lying." But to them it's not really lying. To them, lying is simply the most effective means at their disposal for saving face, being clever, getting ahead, and trying to appear superior.
"Remember, deception is the Muslim's most developed trait; their secret weapon. Its constant exercise is not a matter of shame, it's a matter of pride.
"And they absolutely drool at the sight of an unsuspecting Westerner who waltzes into their midst, like the juicy beetle oblivious to the chameleon, with his Christian-based ideas of "Truth" and "honesty" and "ethics" and "integrity." From Alexander the Great to the 101st Airborne, the first thing the Arabs saw was not our frightening array of weapons, but the big "Tootsie Pop" signs stenciled on our foreheads. {Note: the author here slips into anachronism; at the time of Alexander the Great there were no Muslims. Though I understand that the pre-Islamic Arabs were no slouches at deception - I gather Herodotus, for example, remarked upon their propensity to deceive - it seems to me that Islam has taken that particular pre-Islamic Arab trait or practice, massively reinforced and sacralised it, and impressed it upon many peoples of non-Arab ethnicity - dda}.
"Agreements
"I never had cause to think about what a powerful concept "Agreement" is until I came to Iraq. Whether some friends agree to meet at a restaurant for lunch, or a supplier agrees to provide 10 truckloads of materials to a jobsite on a specific day, or lease papers are signed on a house, an Agreement gives all parties the incredible power to predict the future. Agreements provide us simple human creatures with the amazing ability to come together and create a shared vision about a future point in time. Then, together as agreed, we can organize and accomplish something towards that point in an otherwise chaotic world fraught with unpredictability.
"But in the Middle East, there is no such thing as an Agreement.
"Whether a verbal commitment or a look straight in the eye or firm handshake or even a written contract, these things here are worth next to nothing.
"Rather than organizing or finalizing anything, these acts merely serve as a continuation of the struggle by one party to screw the other party more than they plan on getting screwed themselves.
"**Accomplishing a given task, taking pride in one's work, achieving competence, and even basic concepts of economic gain through mutual trade, take a far back seat to the massive satisfaction gained by getting something more out of someone else then they get from you** {my emphasis added - dda}.
"Here's how it works on a deal between a plumber and a homeowner, for example: The plumber will agree to re-pipe the homeowner's bathroom, and the homeowner will agree to pay a price for the service. But, the plumber knows from the beginning that the homeowner will come up with some excuse to hold out some payment at the end. And the homeowner knows from the beginning that the plumber is going to cut unimaginable corners and do less work with cheaper materials than what was agreed. Since both were correct in their assumptions, who is to blame? Is it "lying" when both parties correctly assume that the other is doing it?
"The Art of the Deal in Iraq is to figure out, not if someone will try and screw you, but how and when.
"The focus is always on not getting caught over a barrel by the other guy, and to try to get the other guy over that barrel, using deception, lies, misinformation, lies, misdeeds, lies, and finally, more lies.
"The Agreement, that poor casualty of the desert sands, is considered to be a first step, not a final arrival, on the long march to screwing the "other guy." {Nota bene, O diplomats and politicians of India, Israel and the Philippines, whose unhappy lot it is to be 'peace processing' with Muslims - dda}.
"A few days ago, I was called point blank and to my face a "thief" and a "liar" by an 85-year-old Iraqi from whom we are leasing a house. I wrote the lease agreement, including clearly stating the price for the first 6 months, and then a discount price for the second 6 months. These prices were based on verbal (read:painful) negotiations that had lasted for days. Once completed, I gave the lease contract to the gentleman, and he had it for 2 days. He contacted me a couple of times to change a few minor details, which I did. He then signed it, and I signed it, and then I sent it off to our offices in the US for payment processing.
"The day after we signed, the gentleman was beside himself and putting on all sorts of theatrics. With full-blown indignation, he said the price was too low, and "the person" who wrote that wretched lease was trying to trick him and was a thief and a liar! (He knew that "the person" was me, he just wouldn't say so to my face -- more on that below.) He was threatening to back out and we needed the place, so I bribed him with some AC units at the end of our term.
"Only in the Middle East can one be called a thief and a liar for conniving to make the terms of a contract clear, and then expecting those terms to be met after the contract is signed.
"Middle East Muslim "Honor"
"In addition to trying to screw each other, there is the opposite condition of trying to avoid embarrassment -- to "save face" or keep one's "honor" in front of each other.
"Under this cultural imperative the lies fly, efforts die, but the Muslim, forever, keeps his head held high.
"So, for example, when you are talking to a company president about delivery progress of a critical item by his company to a location, he's getting his information from his assistant, who is getting it from the field supervisor, who is getting it from the guy who is related to the guy who is friends with the guy who owns the trucking company, who gets it from the dispatcher, who gets it from the truck driver (who also happens to be the company president’s nephew, but that's another story).
"**Each and every one of these guys, all the way through the chain, will lie to the guy above him when asked about the delay in shipment (and there IS a delay -- always). In order to save face, each will say whatever they think is good news, no matter how false and misleading it actually is. By the time you talk to the boss, who is also trying to save face with you, there is no relationship between what you are being told and what is really happening -- none** {Emphasis added. And I am sure that Infidels attempting to build and to fix things in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been forced to the identical, dismal conclusion - dda}.
"I had steel prefabricated buildings to construct at project sites throughout Iraq. They were to be ordered from a factory in Kuwait, fabricated, loaded, and trucked to sites in Iraq in 11 weeks. I inquired as to progress at least weekly. I was told when they were ordered, when manufacturing began, when they were completed, when the buildings were staged, when they were loaded onto trucks, and when the trucks were waiting at the Iraq border. Everything was communicated with exact details every step of the way.
"The trucks were held up at the border for several days, then a week, then two weeks.
"Excuses abounded. I finally sent a Westerner down to the factory in Kuwait, only to find that the first step -- the order -- had not yet been placed.
"So why did the lies stop at the border?
"Because the final step was to deliver the buildings to a site in Iraq that had Westerners on it, so at that point everyone knew the truth would finally come out.
"I have the same story for drawings development, materials delivery, work crew subcontracting and mobilizations, security incidents, equipment delivery and basically every single step that involved only Arabs {sic: i.e. Arab Muslims - dda} when no Western direct oversight was possible.
"**For us, in order to operate effectively at all, everything must be assumed to be a complete pack of lies until a Westerner gets "eyes on" to give us the real, (and generally very bad), news.** {my emphasis - dda}
'Lying is the only way a completely incompetent person who is trying to screw everyone can possibly retain any sense of dignity among others.
'Welcome to the Middle East {sic: should be, 'welcome to the Muslim world' - dda}.
'Why Not Just Do It Yourself?
"Direct oversight is the key, of course. But if I need to verify that the doorknobs are actually at the warehouse like I'm told, it costs me thousands of dollars in PSD services to go see for myself, and me and my team are all risking our lives in the process.
"And the Great Deceivers know it, and use the security conditions against Westerners here to maximum effect.
"I have projects out on the Syrian border in the Anbar province; a tough area. The area was deemed by the Government too dangerous to allow Westerners to stay at the sites, so the work was to be done by just Iraqi subcontractors, who were supposed to provide progress reports and photos. I was beside myself after two months of good progress reports, but not one photo.
"Naturally, I had to go see it for myself what was going on -- such is life when the Government is asking you every day where millions of dollars of taxpayer money has been going for months and you have not one verifiable answer.
"So I got out there under heavy escort, and naturally the work was way off schedule compared to the reports, which was expected.
"But to find that out, the cost to the project (your tax dollars at work) was about $35,000 in security escort costs, just for me to get to the truth beyond the giant force field of lies. I finally got the roughly 200 photos I needed. That's about $175.00 per digi-photo, for those keeping score at home.
"Of course, any of the Iraqi engineers on site could have taken the photos I had requested repeatedly and simply e-mailed them to me.
"But that would have caused his boss to lose some of his "honor" -- simply unacceptable.
**Good news means honor, bad news means dishonor, and accurate news is never seriously considered** {my emphasis - dda}.
"Hurt Feelings
"The stories are endless (even more endless than the length of this post!) At first we were all offended at being lied to so much. But after a while, you stop taking it personally, and you just start giving credit where credit is due:
"**They can't build anything, can't manufacture anything, and can't fix anything that breaks. But at least they are good at one thing: lying their asses off all day, every day.**
{Emphasis added. And I would remark: in any society so rotten with lies, in which everyone is lying to everyone else, and doing their darndest to screw everyone else to the max, what you have is something most closely resembling a real-life enactment of the lowest pits of Dante's Inferno: a place where NOTHING works, and nothing grows, and in the end, nothing holds together - dda}.
"Think about this the next time "Uncle Mah" starts talking about using his nukes to provide electricity for starving farmers and poor school children.
"He's not lying; he's just trying to tell the PC West (our collective jugular), what it really wants to hear. He's a pleaser, and he's out to "please" you!
"After being in this snake pit for some time, I find it absolutely hilarious that anyone thinks that "diplomacy" or "negotiations" or "agreements" with any Middle Eastern {sic: a more correct term would be, 'Muslim' - dda} leader during a crisis can possibly result in anything productive.
"They have no reservations -- none -- about lying about anything and everything. Their words and agreements mean absolutely nothing. How far can negotiations really take you under such conditions?
{Nota bene, O Israel; and since this thread deals with India, who is in a similar predicament vis a vis aggressive Muslim 'neighbours', nota bene also, O Mother India. Negotiations of any sort are **pointless** when you are dealing with people who are 1. malevolent and 2. pathological liars. - dda}.
"Let's take a quiz:
"Q: Why are there no democracies in the Muslim Middle East?
"A: Democracies are based on the possibility of mutually held Agreements between people.
"Democracy is unsustainable in cultures where lying is acceptable and constant.
"Q: Why is every Muslim Middle Eastern country characterized by either rigid oppression or chaotic violence?
"A: The coercive use of violence is the only way to ensure Muslims in the Middle East will live up to any obligations, including basic social order and function.
"Middle East {sic: Islamic - dda} countries where chaos currently reigns, like Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, are merely examples of what Muslims are like without coercion.
"Q: How is it that intelligence gathering by Western powers, whether it is about the weapons capabilities of an entire nation, or the simple location of a lone thug, is so constantly stymied and duped in the Middle East?
"A: The job of intelligence gatherers is to determine the truth. I wouldn't take that job in the Middle East for all the money in Michael Moore's Halliburton stocks.
"Q: Have you ever seen anything that says "Made in Saudi Arabia"? What was the last thing invented or produced by Middle Eastern Muslims that helped advance humankind? Why are they so incompetent at virtually everything?
"A: Although some individuals with quality talents certainly exist here,
" it would be impossible to gather enough in one place to Agree to cooperate in any sort of complex or significant effort.
"The only time Muslims can stick together long enough to produce anything en masse, like nuclear missiles for "Uncle Mah," is under the threat of force.
"Q: Why is it that Muslim leaders can stare the world in the eye and lie through their teeth without even flinching?
"A: They're not lying, they are "negotiating" with people they assume to be complete suckers.
"Q: Are they right?
"A: Good question."
Thanks, dda, for this brilliant article, real eye opener on the'deceitful' ones of the ROP.
"But in the Middle East, there is no such thing as an Agreement.
Never understood how powerful this is until now! We find ways to agree and progress; they find ways to lie and regress. That's the West-Islam divide in one line, isn't it?