Bhuto and Nawaz Sharif

�Of all the violent political deaths in the twentieth century, none with such great interest to the United States has been more clouded than the mysterious air crash that killed President [and Army Chief General] Mohammed Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in [August] 1988, a tragedy that also claimed the life of a serving American ambassador and most of General Zia�s top commanders,� writes Barbara Crossette, the New York Times bureau chief in South Asia from 1988 to 1991. �The list of potential malefactors has grown as the years have passed, compounding the mysteries buried in this peculiar, unfinished tale.�

The one unarguable fact is that no serious, conclusive, or even comprehensive inquiry into the crash has been undertaken in the United States, although one of its top diplomats, Arnold Raphel, and an American general were killed�and in an Americanbuilt aircraft. Congress held a few hearings, but the FBI was kept away from the case for a year. No official report was made public. Indeed, a file in the National Archives containing about 250 pages of documents on the event is still classified secret.

Classified secret because the U.S. government knows damn well who killed President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, Arnold Raphel, and an American general�the Israelis, the same Israelis who attacked the USS Liberty and killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297. �Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident,� Eric S. Margolis quotes James Bamford from his book Body of Secrets. �Why?� asks Margolis. �Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this �third rail� issue.�

For daring to accuse Israel and India of killing General Zia and his entourage, John Gunther Dean was accused of mental imbalance and relieved of his duties at the State Department. �Dean, now 80, has remained silent for nearly 20 years but is now collecting his papers and is ready to share his thoughts. He was declared mentally unfit for demanding an investigation into the aircrash. He lost his medical clearance and security clearance because of his views and was forced to seek retirement in 1988,� writes Huma Aamir Malik for the Arab News. �After he made the charge following the aircrash in which the then US ambassador to Pakistan, Arnie Raphel was also killed with Zia, he was sent to Switzerland to �rest� for six weeks and only then allowed to return to New Delhi to pack his bags and quit.�

Dean says that when he was ambassador to India, various pro-Israel Congressmen and other US policymakers constantly asked him why he wasn�t cooperating with the Israelis to thwart Pakistan�s nuclear program and demonize Pakistan.

He says he was asked to persuade the Indians to be more pro-Israel too. He is on record as having alleged that the Israelis tried to kill him in 1980 when he was US ambassador to Lebanon because he disagreed with Israeli policies. He was accused of being �pro-Palestinian� in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament).

The US did not allow the FBI or any other agency to carry out a full-fledged investigation into the crash.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. Imagine if Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated not by the rabid right-winger Yigal Amir but by a Palestinian. Imagine the banner headlines that would have appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Imagine how many innocent Palestinians would have died in retaliation.

It should be obvious why the Muhammad Zia ul-Haq story has not made it on the pages of the New York Times�the corporate media in the United States has harbored a pro-Zionist slant for a very long time. Our government is controlled by �pro-Israel Congressmen and other US policymakers,� and ever more so since the ascension of the Zionist neocons and their maniacal Christian Zionist allies.

It should also be obvious that Iraq was invaded in the name of Israel�as the Bush*te Philip Zelikow admitted�and yet it is impossible for the corporate media to admit this. A couple weeks before Bush invaded Iraq, then U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Ariel Sharon �he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea,� reported Aluf Benn for Ha`aretz on February 20, 2003. In June, 2002, Joshua Micah Marshall wrote for the Washington Monthly:

The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel�s behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong. Many Israeli analysts believe this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar recently observed frankly in a Ha�aretz column that [Richard] Perle, [Douglas] Feith, and their fellow strategists �are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.� The suggestion of dual loyalties is not a verboten subject in the Israeli press, as it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that �the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him. But the style is the same.�

And yet none of this is news in America. In fact, to suggest such is considered anti-Semitic. The General Zia ul-Haq story will not make it on page C-23 of the New York Times, let alone the front page.

It is imperative that Americans never know the truth�foreign policy in the United States is run by a clan of Zionist gangsters and they will eventually destroy this country.