Armitage threatened Pakistan blitzkrieg

After Richard Armitage was named as the source in the Valerie Plame leak, there was a paroxysm of unseemly crowing from the right-wing pundits, who predicted that Plame would not now sue Armitage because he is such a handsome, straight-shooting unimpeachable kinda guy. Well, now it turns out that Plame is suing Armitage. And, better yet, this comes to light. From BBC, Sept. 22:

The US threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan’s intelligence director.

“I think it was a very rude remark,” Gen Musharraf told CBS television.

Pakistan agreed to side with the US, but Gen Musharraf said it did so based on his country’s national interest.

“One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did,” he said.

The extracts from the CBS show 60 Minutes, which will run on Sunday, were released on the same day that the White House praised Pakistan for its co-operation in America’s “war on terror”.

See our last post on Pakistan.