What was new in Musharraf's speech that Jaswant and Vajpayee are going ga-ga over it ?

The General pronounced what he has always been saying.

But he gave an excuse to Vajpayee to retract his ill conceived, rank stupid, and megalomaniacal steps towards war.

The General decided not to oblige Vajpayee by allowing him to fulfill his new found ambition of 'waging and winning a war against Pakistan'.

Thankfully, the war 'charade' will stop for the time being.

However, let us look at the cost of organizing this 'war drama'.

Hundreds of crores have gone down the drain in unnecessary troop mobilization. More than forty lives have been lost in minefield accidents. Thousands of poor villagers were forced to leave their hearth and homes. Farmers have lost their standing crops. Stock markets have lost their momentum.

On the other hand, Musharraf got a global audience to project the progressive image of Pakistan and himself.

And above all, Kashmir is placed on the world platter, thanks to childish and thoughtless tomfoolery of our idiotic leaders.

The terrorists have finally achieved what they wanted. Kashmir is an international issue now. Vajpayee fulfills his long cherished dream to follow into the footsteps of Nehru. Seemingly successful diplomatic moves by this government are in fact suicidal and counterproductive. Jaswant played a ridiculously shortsighted diplomatic game to save his dirty ass and to justify his doomed foreign policy.

It was Nehru who went running to the UN when Pakistanis invaded Kashmir almost immediately after partition. However, his daughter, Indira, undid the damage to a large extent by Shimla Accord. She created a document that nullified all the UN resolutions of the past and took the Kashmir issue out of the ambit of the UN. This was a big thing. Vajpayee had opposed Shimla accord then. Later, he used it as the basis of Lahore Declaration and Nawaz Shareif re-endorsed it in spite of grave opposition from Pakistani generals.

All this exercise will come to nothing now. Kashmir is no more a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. It has become a matter of great concern for the rest of the world, the US and the UK in particular. In view of this, Pokhran 2 seems more of a strategic mistake than an assertion of India's technological and military prowess. It has left us dealing with a recalcitrant third rate neighbor without raising our stature as an important regional power vis-a-vis China.

This government followed a foolish and whimsical course by beating war drums for domestic consumption. It was yet another exercise in 'hype' mongering at the cost of our national interests.

Helpless Indians have continued to die in terrorist attacks even after 13/12 incident with none of the leaders shedding any tears for them.

There is a positive side to it too. I don't think Indian army is ready for a full fledged war. In spite of what a bombastic army chief pontificates to the media, there are gaping chinks in our armor. If we go to war, it will be at a huge cost and the victory will only be possible because of our numerical superiority. Our army has no definite strategy in place for a war. Many of our generals are an apathetic, sloppy, and slothful lot. They are busy securing their future. Quite a few of our army officers are corrupt and they have made a business out of their army careers. The series of fires in our ammo dumps points to something very serious. These fires may have been attempts to cover the corruption tracks. We need a major shake up and investigation here. Who will bring it about? Fernandes! Vajpayee! Who?

Can you imagine the horrible state we are in? We don't know who to trust among our leaders. They all look the same, self serving bastards who are compromising our national security, prostituting our national interests to achieve cheap, dubious, and fraudulent diplomatic gains, and taking the whole nation for a ride by using a servile media that hides their ineptness and stupidity.

Look at Mr. Advani, the pseudo Avtar of Sardar Patel and now a delivery boy. He goes to the US to deliver evidence to Bush and Powell and Ashcraft and CIA officials about Dawood Ibrahim and Shakeel and Memon. It is really funny. Here on home turf, we have not been able to get a single judgment from any of our courts against these goons but we want Bush to pressurize Musharraf to take action against them. Even if these fellows are handed over to you, I am sure they will be released on bail next day by your courts. These bastards are still operating their networks in India using big guys and influences. Your policemen, judges, successful film stars, politicians, businessmen, retired IB and CBI officials and a score of others are on their payroll. You have not been able to touch any of them. Even if you a catch them, they go scot-free for the want of evidence. You have not been able to prosecute successfully a single guy among many who perpetrated the worst of the terrorist attacks in the history of India, the Mumbai Bomb Blasts.

Terrorism, corruption, high class crime, scams, and every other scourge that beset our body politic are direct results of inept, insincere and irresponsible handling of country's affairs by this government.