Musharraf at Texas Hospital for Tests

[DoYouEverWonder]

September 23, 2006, 9:46 PM EDT

PARIS, Texas -- Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf underwent routine testing with his doctor Saturday during an unannounced visit to this rural East Texas town.

Musharraf, whose surprise appearance came a day after visiting President Bush in Washington, was "found to be in excellent health," according to a statement from Paris Regional Medical Center.

Pakistan Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani told The Associated Press on Saturday that Musharraf, 63, visited a friend in Texas who is a cardiologist and suggested he be examined.

"He went through that," Durrani said. "All systems are go. Everything is fine. He is as fit as a horse."

After leaving the hospital, Musharraf attended a private luncheon in the small town about 105 miles northeast of Dallas, The Paris News reported in Saturday's online edition.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-musharraf-hospital,0,7652215.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

Wonder what Musharraf was up to in Texas?

[woodsprite]

1. Probably being 'chipped' so his handlers will know where he is. n/t

[Moochy]

5. Insert Loyalty Module

Now what did Armitage say to you?

"Nothing master."

[annabanana]

2. Jeez. . . I wouldn't want to be in a Texas Hospital

if I were him.

[krispos42]

19. Oh, hell no. Mayo's less than 2 hours from me.

Thought he would have better taste! Hell, Gerald Ford was here only a few weeks ago!

[TomInTib]

3. What the hey?

Isn't he meeting with georgie and SockPuppet Karzai in DC on Wednesday?

Paris, Texas? Come on. We are talking podunk-ville, here (no offense to my fellow Tejanos).

[babylonsister]

4. My very first thought; why was Musharraf in TX?

Is there a super-duper medical facility there? And I wonder who his cardiologist 'friend' is, and I'm real curious!

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Maybe it's an alibi?

I bet he went hunting with Dick Cheney and we know how dangerous that can be.

[babylonsister]

9. Ahh, THAT'S why he needed a cardiologist on stand-by!

:rofl:

[Horse with no Name]

22. delete

[C_U_L8R]

7. Meeting with Bush is bad for your health

he should've opted for the hand sanitizer

[greatauntoftriplets]

8. Secret face lift????

:shrug:

This is damn bizarre.

[DemInDistress]

10. maybe planning the next great attack on America... nt

[SoCalDem]

11. He was told that RFID means

Reading Is Fundamental Dude.. and was sent on his way :)

[DRoseDARs]

12. Now would be a shitty time for a coup in Pakistan...

...considering Musharraf is really the ONLY Pakistani that's actually allied with the United States.

[krispos42]

21. And he's keeping the nukes out of Taliban hands

joy joy joy. Minneapolis is a port city, but thank God it's exporting grains, not importing millions of shipping containers from overseas ports.

There are a few arms makers, here, but not the major stuff, I don't think. ATK is based here, and they make a bunch of stuff for the military, mostly the stuff that comes out of a gun barrel. Everything from 5.56x45mm rifle ammo to 120mm tank ammo. That includes the depleted-uranium stuff, so there is a weekly protest outside one of the plants in Edina.

But if those nukes get loose, I'd really worry about being in a coastal port city.

[varun]

29. Pakistan denies coup rumours while Musharraf away

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400343.html

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan on Sunday denied rumours of a coup attempt against President Pervez Musharraf while he is visiting the United States.

Newspaper offices and journalists were inundated with telephone calls and text messages inquiring about the rumours, which coincided with a widespread power cut.

But television programmes did not allude to them until Geo Television ran a ticker headline saying Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani had accused "rumor mongers" of exploiting the power cut...

[juajen]

13. I'm told by a past visitor to Paris on a regular basis,

that Babcox & Wilcox Foundary, a major producer of reactor vessels, was or is located in Paris, Texas. I'm told this was a huge plant when last visited in 1981. Someone should check this out. Wierd!

[Ilsa]

14. I'm not finding anything related to Paris Tx, just NC, Canada,

Houston (McDermott), and other international, like UAE. But that's a ten minute search, digging up other related links. I haven't gone that far yet.

[acmejack]

16. The build a lot of Boilers.

Industrial and Marine. All of the US Navy steam ships I have been aboard had B&W boilers.

[Ilsa]

18. Yeah, I think there is alot related to offshore drilling, etc.

I'm not sure that Paris tX is involved.

[Horse with no Name]

23. It's not there anymore

most of the factories have shut down.

[daleo]

15. He must have been concerned about being "heart attacked"

Strange things happen to people who say bad things about Bush.

[NYC]

17. Where's his publisher?

I had never heard of the company before.

[rainbow4321]

20. His friend is a doctor at the hospital (according to Dallas media)

The Highland Park they refer to is also chimpass' old stomping ground (around where SMU is and where he/Pickles lived before he was TX gov).


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092406dnmetmushvisit.d99a182.html


Gen. Musharraf arrived at Paris Regional Medical Center in the late morning before traveling to the Highland Park mansion leased by cardiologist Arjumand Hashmi. Hospital officials said Gen. Musharraf was "found to be in excellent health."

After the president had his check-up, he attended a lunch at Dr. Hashmi's home in Paris before departing for Dallas.

Phillip Hamilton, managing editor of The Paris News, said that about 20 people, including at least one other Paris physician, were at the house and dined with Gen. Musharraf. He said the Pakistani president stood up to say goodbye shortly before 3 p.m..

Dr. Hashmi, who moved to Texas recently from Florida, said he didn't remember where or when he met the general, but that they have known each other "for a while." In March, the doctor was among a group of civilians and military personnel given prestigious awards during a ceremony in Pakistan, according to The Pakistan Newswire.

[Horse with no Name]

24. .

[Eurobabe]

25. Maybe the deal was Chain-Knee gets Mushy's heart

that was the trade off for not getting bombed back into the Stone Age..

[DemoTex]

26. How to become a big-shot Paris physician ..

Move to Paris, Texas.

:rofl:

[teryang]

27. Some sort of coercion had to be going on

For Musharref to mention the threat to bomb Pakistan into the stone age. Perhaps a similar issue came up, vis a vis Iran. We're going to attack Iran, do we have your support? No. Well then there will be negative consequences for your country, because you're with us or against us. Mushareff then displayed to them his ability to more than embarass them by what he knows. Various anecdoctal reports show ISI pre-knowledge of 911 and involvement in 911 related events. I'm sure he knows just about everything about 911 and bin ladin. This a country that supported the putative 911 terrorists, proliferated nuclear weapons technology and yet is rewarded with US military support. The fact that nothing happened in Texas, proves he's virtually untouchable.

[MADem]

30. That Stone Age story is NOT NEWS to the rest of the world, just US

Get a load of this story, and please take note of the DATE: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html

Apr 8, 2004

9-11 AND THE SMOKING GUN
Part 2: A real smoking gun
By Pepe Escobar
Part 1: 'Independent' commission

If the 9-11 Commission is really looking for a smoking gun, it should look no further than at Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time. In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh - the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida.

A juicy direct connection was also established between Mahmoud and Republican Congressman Porter Gross and Democratic Senator Bob Graham. They were all in Washington together discussing Osama bin Laden over breakfast when the attacks of September 11, 2001, happened.

Mahmoud's involvement in September 11 might be dismissed as only Indian propaganda. But Indian intelligence swears by it, and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story: Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed's cellular-phone numbers. Nobody has bothered to check what really happened. The 9-11 Commission should pose very specific questions about it to FBI director Robert Mueller when he testifies this month.

In December 2002, Graham said he was "surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States ... It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now." He could not but be referring to Pakistan and Mahmoud. If Mahmoud was really involved in September 11, this means the Pakistani ISI -"the state within the state" - knew all about it. And if the intelligence elite in Pakistan knew it, an intelligence elite in Saudi Arabia knew it, as well as an intelligence elite in the US.

Get Osama bin Laden
On August 22, 2001, Asia Times Online reported Get Osama! Now! Or else ...

On September 9, the legendary "Lion of the Panjshir", Ahmed Shah Masoud, the key Northern Alliance commander, was assassinated by two suicide bombers posing as journalists in his base in northern Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance tells Washington that the ISI may be involved. Masoud himself had told this correspondent, two weeks before he was killed, of the incestuous link between bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISI. A 2002 Asia Times Online investigation would later establish that Masoud was killed as a gift from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, with heavy involvement by Abdul Sayyaf, an Afghan mujahideen commander very close to the ISI and the Saudis. From Washington's perspective, this was also a gift. Masoud was the crucial Afghan nationalist leader, supported by Russia and Iran; after the Taliban being smashed he would never have accepted a feeble, US-sponsored, Hamid Karzai-style government.

On September 10, the Pakistani daily The News reported that the Mahmoud visit to the United States "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council". If he'd been to the National Security Council, he had certainly met Rice. Mahmoud did meet with his counterpart, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet. Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been in Islamabad in May, when Tenet had "unusually long" meetings with Musharraf. Armitage for his part has countless friends in the Pakistani military and the ISI. Mahmoud also met a number of high officials at the White House and the Pentagon and had a crucial meeting with Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs. Rice maintains she did not meet Mahmoud then.

On the morning of September 11, Mahmoud was having a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with Graham and Goss. Goss spent as many as 10 years working on numerous CIA clandestine operations. He is very close to Vice President Dick Cheney. It's interesting to note that two weeks ago Goss suggested to the Justice Department to bring perjury charges against the new Cheney nemesis, Clarke. As it is widely known, Graham and Goss were co-heads of the joint House-Senate investigation that proclaimed there was "no smoking gun" as far as President George W Bush having any advance knowledge of September 11.

According to the Washington Post, and also to sources in Islamabad, the Mahmoud-Graham-Goss meeting lasted until the second plane hit Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. Graham later said they were talking about terrorism coming from Afghanistan, which means they were talking about bin Laden.

Pakistani intelligence sources told Asia Times Online that on the afternoon of September 11 itself, as well as on September 12 and 13,

Armitage met with Mahmoud with a stark choice: either Pakistan would help the US against al-Qaeda, or it would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented an ultimatum in the form of seven US demands. Pakistan accepted all of them.

One of the demands was for Musharraf to send Mahmoud to Kandahar again and force the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. Mahmoud knew in advance Mullah Omar would refuse. But when he went to Kandahar the Taliban leader said he would accept, as long as the Americans proved bin Laden was responsible for September 11. There was no proof, and Afghanistan was bombed anyway, a policy already decided well in advance. ............

The selection above may seem extensive, but it is only a small portion of the entire story at the link above. (The link is to part 2, you can access part 1 from that page if you want to read the full thing.)

[teryang]

31. Saeed Sheik? Who's that?

They've really buried this story. I've seen one elaborate analysis where Washington morphed Saeed Sheik into "ringleader" Khalid Sheik Mohammed in order to obscure the ISI connection to the 911 conspiracy.

Here's another interesting story that went down a rabbit hole:

The Airlift of Evil by Michael Moran, MSNBC

NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2001 — The United States took the unprecedented step this week of demanding that foreign airlines provide information on passengers boarding planes for America. Yet in the past week, a half dozen or more Pakistani air force cargo planes landed in the Taliban-held city of Kunduz and evacuated to Pakistan hundreds of non-Afghan soldiers who fought alongside the Taliban and even al-Qaida against the United States. What’s wrong with this picture?


Something is up. It certainly appears to any reasonable observer that aircraft of some kind or another were taking off and landing in Kunduz’s final hours in Taliban hands. Among the many questions that grow out of this reality:
Was the passenger manifest on these aircraft limited to Pakistani military and intelligence men, or did it include some of the more prominent zealots Pakistan contributed to the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaida?
What kind of deal was struck between the United States and Pakistan to allow this?
What safeguards did the United States demand to ensure the evacuated Pakistanis did not include men who will come back to haunt us?
What was done with the civilian volunteers once they arrived home in Pakistan? Where they arrested? Debriefed? Taken to safe houses? Or a state banquet?

Here's another interesting tidbit from Miami Herald web site, Fri., Aug.2, 2002,

Feds reopen probe of Florida arms deal, by Wanda DeMarzo


...On July 22, Mohsen, Malik, Glass and a man named R.G. Abbas -- described as a contact from the Taliban -- arrange to meet at Tribeca Grill in Manhattan.

Abbas was introduced to Glass as an ISI agent -- the official intelligence agency of Pakistan, which has been linked to terrorism.

''At the meeting Abbas said Americans are the enemy and they will have no problem blowing up this entire restaurant because its full of Americans,'' Glass said. 'As we leave the restaurant, Abbas turns and says, `those towers (the World Trade Center) are coming down.' ''

U.S. Intelligence experts checked out Glass' dinner companions and they were found to have real connections, Stoltz said...

[Javaman]

28. Remember torture is routine to this admin*. You can fill in the blanks. nt