Muslim Duplicity A Major Impediment To U.S. Aims In Both Iraq And Afghanistan

Last night in Karbala, Iraq, five American soldiers were killed when insurgents, riding in American-appearing equipment and pretending to be Americans, burst in on a security meeting and opened fire. This was another lesson for beleaguerd American forces that they can never trust an Iraqi. Altogether, 27 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq over the weekend.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, it is becoming more and more obvious that Pakistani intelligence agencies are the major supporters of the Taliban assault from Pakistan into Afghanistan which increasingly jeopardizes American and NATO forces.

The Koran tells Muslims that it is perfectly o.k. to lie to an infidel, and what we are finding in the Middle East is that supposed allies are, in fact, foes, and a great danger to the U.S. and other Western countries.

The experience of New York Times Afghan reporter Carlotta Gall is certainly instructive in that regard. When Gall went to Quetta, Pakistan, to report the extent of Pakistani support for the Taliban, her belongings were seized by Pakistani intelligence and a Pakistani photographer who helped her was threatened and told not to work for an American reporter again. A Pakistani agent punched Gall twice and her computer was seized and inspected to try to find out who had been talkiing to her.

Shades of the Daniel Pearl execution, whose Pakistani perpetrators have been arrested, but never executed, as promised.

Gall, in the lead story in the New York Times this morning, describes how Quetta, the reputed hiding place of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, has become a base for the Taliban from which to strike the Afghan regime of Hamid Karzai and the Western forces that support him.

Gall reports, "One former Taliban commander said in an interview that he had been jailed by Pakistani intelligence officials, because he would not go to Afghanistan to fight. He said that, for Western and local consumption, his arrest had been billed as part of Pakistan's crackdown on the Taliban in Pakistan. Former Taliban members who have refused to fight in Afghanistan have been arrested -- or even mysteriously killed --after resisting pressure to reenlist in the Taliban, Pakistan and tribal elders said."

So much for Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff's assurances that Pakistan -- a country that never should have been created in the first place -- is an ally of the U.S. in the War on Terror.

We see the same kind of thing in Iraq, where the regime of Premier Nouri al-Maliki says it is supportive of American forces, while at the same time it encourages the murderous Shiite militias to kill Americans and their own fellow-citizens, who happen to be Sunnis. In fairness, Sunni insurgents, often allied with al-Queda, are killing thousands of Shiites at the same time. American troops are caught in the middle between these two groups.

This is why the Crusades were fought centuries ago -- to curtail a religion which is so dishonorable it cannot be believed on any count. We are fooling ourselves in the Middle East to say that we can trust fundamentalists of this horrible religion, dominated by violent elements, slaveholders and the like.