Does Pakistan know where Osama is?

Ralph Peters:

Reliably sympathetic to non-Western lies, the BBC reported yesterday that a prisoner in Pakistani custody knows a guy who saw Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan last January.

Headlines!

Now, Osama may, indeed, pop over the border into Afghanistan now and then -- but this report is a shameless Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence agency concoction.

Why? Because the Pakistanis have taken a lot of heat recently over suspicions -- including those raised in The Post -- that they know where Osama is but shield him for their own benefit.

Even party-line US government officials have grown skeptical about the Pakistani government's deaf-and-dumb show.

The Pakistani solution? With remarkable luck, you suddenly discover a captive who knows somebody who recently dusted Osama's slippers -- in Afghanistan, not Pakistan.

As long as Osama's at large in the AfPak border area, the aid keeps flooding into Islamabad. But after we locate Osama's lair, the porkbarrel goes bare.

When the Pakistanis handed the "scoop" to the BBC -- which is only skeptical of Western claims -- they knew just what they were doing. Without pausing to raise a single question, our "mainstream" media rushed to report the "breaking news."

...

It is a credible argument although the al Qaeda leadership has been attacking Pakistan since the government went on the offensive against the Taliban. One of the real test will be what the government does after it finishes its campaign in South Waziristan.