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| Terror Networks |
| Pearl Case: Pak Keystone Kops continue search |
| 2002-02-23 |
Pakistan Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said police were looking for four more accomplices in the killing, using descriptions provided by a journalist who delivered a videotape showing Pearl being decapitated. Investigators also said police were hunting another suspect, an Arab who is thought to have helped Farooqi kidnap Pearl. Even though I knew intellectually that Pearl had been killed not long after being kidnapped, I was still shocked - and furious - when I heard about it on CNN. My emotional reaction was that the kidnappers are stupid, vicious animals who should be hunted down and killed like dogs, especially when I learned how he had been killed. The Pak cops have shown apalling ineptitude in their attempts at investigation, but the worst part is that they set the incident up to happen by leaving Omar Sheikh and the other Kandahar hijacking thugs free to roam around and play at their filthy games. The net effect was collusion in the killing. The next phase will probably include the Paks regretfully declining to extradite those they've rounded up to the US, instead trying them in their own courts and sentencing them to something stiff, like six months house arrest. Then they can do it again, just like they did it before. Normally, I have only passing sympathy for journalists who are KIA. This is probably a generalization on my part, based on a tiny sample - the two I ran into personally in Vietnam were arrogant jugheads who spent most of their time in Saigon, staying safe while they rode the coattails of Bernard Fall and Dicky Chapelle. As a rule, journalists are not as brave as the average infantryman and they're more expendable - less mission essential. Had Geraldo actually been bagged at Tora Bora when he pulled his "dodging a bullet" stunt, I'd have said "Poor Geraldo" and moved on to the next subject. If you hang out with grunts, you take your chances with grunts. My respect for him would have gone up a couple notches, but that wouldn't have mattered to him because he'd have been dead. Pearl's killing is outside the Dead Journalist category. He was in the zone because he was a journalist, but he was killed because he was an American. This wasn't an attack on journalists or on the Wall Street Journal, it was an attack on us. The US should dump the Paks. The country's a failed state and it's incapable of providing any utility to Western aims. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |