Daily Times : 'Bush unembarrassed by Pakistan emergency'

'Bush unembarrassed by Pakistan emergency'

Khalid Hasan | November 22, 2007

WASHINGTON: President General Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of a state of emergency would have been very embarrassing for Bush, “if Bush were the type of a guy to get embarrassed,” according to Professor Marjorie Cohn of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, who is also president of the National Lawyers Guild.

She argues that the real motivation for Musharraf’s declared emergency is not to defend the country against “Islamic extremists”, as he claims, but to maintain him in power. He acted to prevent public protests that lawyers and political parties were organising. She says the Bush administration is scurrying around in damage control mode. She notes that Negroponte during his Pakistan visit did not complain about Musharraf shutting down the Supreme Court and replacing it with his loyalists. Negroponte also failed to tell Musharraf to release the judges and lawyers from prison. “So much for democracy and an independent judiciary,” she adds.

Professor Cohn writes for the online portal Information Clearing House, “American citizens whose tax dollars are being used to prop up this ruthless and corrupt regime should demand an accounting of how their money is being spent.” She is of the view that the Pakistani leader is “playing Bush for a fool”. She quotes Adrien Levy, author of ‘Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy’ as saying, “The [Musharraf] agenda is to destabilise Afghanistan, to create a government there which is favourable to Islamabad.