Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, March 5, 2009

The mainstream media has embraced suggestions of an “inside job”, as evidence continues to mount that Tuesday’s attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team was a carefully staged event, rather than a hit and run strike.

Articles in the Independent, the Times, the Daily Mail, Agence France-Presse, and the Telegraph have today focused on unanswered questions and suspicious activity regarding the attack which which killed six police and two civilians, and wounded 19 people.

The evidence that the attack was carefully coordinated has been summarized as follows.

None of the 12 gunmen were killed or captured and CCTV footage has emerged of some of the attackers making a leisurely getaway from the scene in the aftermath of the assault, past an approaching police vehicle, without the security forces chasing them:

On the first two days of the Test match, the Sri Lanka and Pakistan team buses had left together. However, as umpire Chris Broad has revealed, on Tuesday the Pakistan bus left five minutes after the Sri Lanka bus.

“On this particular day, the Pakistan bus left five minutes after the Sri Lankan bus. Why?” Broad said. “It went through my mind as we were leaving the hotel: ‘Where is the Pakistan bus?”

Broad said Pakistan security forces had left the convoy vehicles like “sitting ducks” and that there was “not a sign of a policeman anywhere” when the attack began.

“There were times in the Karachi Test when the Sri Lankans went first and the Pakistanis went afterwards. But after this happened you think My God, did someone know something and they held the Pakistan bus back?” Broad added at a press conference yesterday.

Simon Taufel, an Australian umpire caught in the attack, also confirmed that their bus had been left unprotected once the assault began.

“You tell me why supposedly 20 armed commandos were in our convoy and when the team bus got going again, we were left on our own? I don’t have any answers to these questions.” Taufel said.

Another umpire, Steve Davis commented: “I saw a (man in) uniform with a pistol and I thought this is an insider come to do us away.”

[efoods]The umpires were backed by Muttiah Muralitharan, the most successful bowler in Test history, who questioned whether the terrorists had inside information.

“Somehow in this incident there were no police with guns on the bus,” the Sri Lankan spinner told the radio station FIVEaa in Adelaide. “If someone was there with a gun we would have had a chance of defending ourselves.

“Normally all the buses go and we have four or five escorts. We left at 8.30am and Younus Khan [with the Pakistan team bus] at 8.35am. We divided into two – maybe they knew the information for the right time.” Muralitharan added.

These factors and comments have been presented by the mainstream media in a way that intimates that it is possible that Pakistani intelligence was involved in the attacks, or allowed them to happen.

Of course, this is a possibility, however, it should be noted that six Pakistani security officials were killed in the attack as they attempted to defend the Sri Lankan bus, and other witnesses such as Mehar Mohammed Khalil, the Pakistani driver of the Sri Lankan bus, have disputed the allegation that the Pakistani bus left five minutes later and that the police protection was not present.

Last November, after the Mumbai attacks took place, the corporate media and Indian authorities pointed the finger at Pakistani intelligence, providing a perfect pretext for expanded U.S. military aggression against the country, as promised by then President-elect Barack Obama.

However, as we revealed in our reports at the time, the evidence indicated that Indian authorities had aided the terrorists. It is interesting to note that the mainstream media did little to pursue this angle, yet this time around every major outlet has highlighted the “inside job” theory almost immediately.

Further questions regarding Tuesday’s attack have arisen from the leak of a “secret” report which fore-warned the federal and provincial Punjab governments that India was planning an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

The report, dated Jan 22, warned officials: “It has reliably been learnt that RAW [the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s intelligence agency] has assigned its agents the task to target Sri Lankan cricket team during its current visit to Lahore, especially while travelling between the hotel and stadium or at hotel during their stay … Extreme vigilance and heightened security arrangements indicated.”

However, the government in Punjab and its senior security officials, who were preparing for the Sri Lankan team’s visit, were removed from office by a controversial court ruling days ahead of the test match.

Rehman Malik, Pakistani chief interior ministry adviser, has claimed “a foreign hand” lay behind the attack on the cricketers – which has been widely interpreted as pointing the finger at India.

Malik said: “We suspect a foreign hand behind this incident. The democracy of the country has been undermined, and foreigners are repeatedly attacked to harm the country’s image.”

Malik is said to have “shared” the assessment of the country’s ISI intelligence agency with the FBI director Robert Mueller.

Some Pakistani newspapers have suggested that the Indian intelligence service was involved and that the weapons found at the site of the attack bore Indian markings.

Mehar Mohammed Khalil, the Pakistani driver of the Sri Lankan bus, has also said he believes the terrorists are from India. He said: ‘Their complexions were Indian-type. They were definitely not Pakistani.’

Furthermore, it has been pointed out that similarities exist between the estimated 12 suspected militants who launched the attack in Lahore and those who launched the Mumbai attacks which left more than 170 people dead last year. Both groups of men were young and clean-cut, wore Western clothes and backpacks, and were heavily armed.

The Press Trust of India has reported that a visiting Pakistani peace delegation has branded the incident as “Mumbai No 2 with same people behind it”.

With allegations of Pakistani intelligence involvement and Indian intelligence involvement, it must also be noted that the region is strategically important, both states are nuclear and other globalist led intelligence agencies such as the CIA, Mossad and MI6 have much to gain from playing off India and Pakistan against each other.

However, once again, the overriding story that is being sold paints Pakistan as the problem state.

Will this latest tragedy be used as another excuse to expand the war on terror and increase U.S. military activity inside Pakistani territory?

Yesterday the top American diplomat in Kabul warned that Pakistan is now a bigger threat than Afghanistan.

“From where I sit [Pakistan] sure looks like it’s going to be a bigger problem,” Christopher Dell, who runs the U.S. embassy in Kabul, said.

“It is certainly one of those nuclear-armed countries the instability of which is a bigger problem for the globe. Pakistan is a bigger place, has a larger population, it’s nuclear-armed. It has certainly made radical Islam a part of its political life, and it now seems to be a deeply ingrained element of its political culture. It makes things there very hard.”

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