The Indian media two days back carried a report attributed to US Vice President Dick Cheney that if the United States withdraws from Iraq the future of General Musharraf,( the military dictator of Pakistan) would be endangered and be at stake, or words to this effect. If the report is correct, then it makes strange reading. If he is correctly quoted then it reflects how far strategic credulity can be stretched by the US Administration to justify the continuance of General Musharraf as the military dictator of Pakistan to serve American interests, ignoring the yearning of democracy of the Pakistani masses.

There are no geo-strategic or geo-political considerations or linkages to conclusively highlight that General Musharraf has been actively or passively contributing to United States military operations or war effort in Iraq. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that the Pakistani military dictator has influence over the warring Islamic groups battling the United States and make things easier for the United States. Nor has the United States come up with any evidence that the Pakistani military dictator has actively asserted to control the outflow to Iraq of Al Qaeda and Taliban cadres from Pakistan to Sunni Islamist militias battling United States military forces in Iraq.

In the absence of any such credible evidence being provided by the United States, strategic analysts have no other conclusion than that this latest US assertion that the Pakistani military dictator's future would be jeopardized by a possible withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq is yet one more indicator of what is emerging as a trend betraying that the United States has developed a neurotic obsession with having General Musharraf at the helm of affairs in Pakistan.

This United States obsession flies in the face of all the damning evidence that the United States has in its possession against the Pakistani military dictator of actively working to undermine United States strategic interests, whether it was Pakistan's complicity in 9/11, resurrecting the Taliban presence in Afghanistan presently and providing it the sustenance to battle the NATO forces in Afghanistan or the recent agreement with the Al Qaedists and the Taliban in North Waziristan to let them virtually establish an independent Islamic Emirate in Waziristan with a free run to indulge in international terrorism against Afghanistan and India and extendable to Iraq.

A strange international relations and strategic phenomenon is being presented by the United States to the global community where the sole global superpower is depending upon the mercy of a tin-pot military dictator of Pakistan for its strategic survival in Greater South-West Asia. Even that would have been understandable, but in the instant case the Pakistani military dictator at every step has been double-timing the United States and even after 9/11 and his public assertion that he is with the United States continued with WMD proliferation to American enemies and has continued in an unrestrained manner with his proxy war against Afghanistan and India.

Afghanistan and India at the highest levels have made no bones in speaking out against the Pakistan military dictator and his strategies of destabilization against both his western and eastern neighbors. Afghanistan and India have made it known to the United States their reservations about the Pakistani military dictator.

Disappointingly, for both Afghanistan and India, the United States seems to be totally enamored by the Pakistani military dictator and oblivious to the sensitivities of the two countries with which it wants to establish substantive relationships.

The United States would be falling into a pit of fallacious thinking if it deludes itself into believing that both Afghanistan and India could be pressurized into acquiescing with its strategic priorities resting on the personality of the Pakistani military dictator.