Written by Humayun Gauhar.

I ended last Sunday’s article, “Who killed Benazir?” with the promise that, “Perhaps I’ll continue with this next week because there’s so much to tell, unless something happens – which is well within the realm of possibility – that demands more attention.” Well something did happen, to wit President Obama’s seminal speech in Cairo to what is euphemistically called ‘the Muslim World’. It demands attention, but also requires consideration, not a knee-jerk article written in a couple of days just to show that I recognize the importance of the speech. It is precisely because I recognize its great importance and its great potential that I am leaving comment till full consideration.

When the West has no cogent argument it accuses Pakistanis of wallowing in conspiracy theories. Sure people are vulnerable to conspiracy theories – I guess the most have to do with Kennedy’s assassination – but who plants their seeds? Here’s an example. Many believed that Benazir damaged the justification for the continued US presence in Afghanistan by saying to Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera that Osama Bin Laden was dead, killed by Omar Saeed Sheikh, the former or current MI6 agent, God alone knows which. This view gained great currency when the BBC website first edited out Benazir’s crucial sentence – one excuse was that perhaps she had “misspoken” – then apologized and restored it.

I said last week: “People have heard the interview many times. Benazir said the words deliberately and cautiously, after stopping and taking a breath before uttering Osama’s name. Spurious excuses such as these insult people’s intelligence and beget conspiracy theories for which people are then mocked by the perpetrators of spurious excuses.”

It has been alleged by President Musharraf that British born Omar Saeed Sheikh was first recruited by MI6 but then “turned”. Perhaps he didn’t and is a “double agent”. I have never read any clarification of this from the British authorities, which also causes people to see possible conspiracies.

The Seymour Hersh kafuffle started with his startling statement, to put it mildly, at the University of Minnesota on March 10 this year. “Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination wing, essentially. And it’s been going on and on and on. And just today in the Times there is a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It’s been going in…under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.”

Wow! That’s more damning than anything I’ve ever read or heard from the worst American enemy. Look at it.

1) Its a rogue “executive assassination wing” (or death squad, same thing) because “Congress has no oversight over it.”

2) It is “under President Bush’s authority” no less, far worse than being under Vice President Dick Cheney’s authority.

3) It goes into countries secretly because it doesn’t talk to the US ambassador or the CIA station chief. That’s typical hit men stuff.

4) They have a list of people to execute, whom they find, kill and then leave – the opposite of Schindler’s list, what?

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