This thing surfaced again around 19th - 22nd of April, 2010 and the things that annoys me the most is that people do not do any research on their own account and are as usual blaming everything on the perfect scapegoat, the "corrupt politician" and this forgery adds to their already uneducated accounts. It is highly pathetic to see that this old forgery has re surfaced again and the reasons are obvious to me.
Firstly, even back in 1990 it was proven to be a forgery. As NYT noted,
”But the frenzied efforts to portray Ms. Bhutto as a tool of the Americans are beginning to backfire. This week, an adviser to Nawaz Sharif, president of the Islamaic Democratic Alliance and the leading candidate for Prime Minister if Ms. Bhutto’s party is defeated, circulated a letter purporting to be written by Ms. Bhutto to Peter Galbraith. Mr. Galbraith, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, is a friend of Ms. Bhutto’s from college days at Harvard.
The letter, however, is so patently a forgery that it has made the Islamic Democratic Alliance look foolish.
Apart from the inexplicably formal salutation, ”Dear Peter Galbraith,” the letter misspells as Solarzs the name of Representative Stephen J. Solarz, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Asian affairs, It asks Mr. Galbraith to ”please use your influence on V. P. Singh the Indian Prime Minister, to engage the Pakistan Army on the borders, so that they do not impede my way."
Source :
New York Times, October 18, 1990
Secondly, what is amazing is that the
PML-Q used this old forgery in their election campaign in 2008 as well and nobody here (or anywhere on the interweb) has been able to remember that it appeared on the front pages of leading newspapers on Nov 14, 2007. They had thought that people must have forgotten that this was a forgery, and national amnesia would allow people to absorb lies again. Indeed it did, but the best part is that people suffered from amnesia within two and a half years and this is making rounds again. The News covered this in 2007:-
PML ad campaign against Benazir backfires
Thursday, November 15, 2007
By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani
ISLAMABAD: A letter forged by an over-smart opposition leader against Benazir Bhutto 18 years ago, came back to haunt him on Wednesday when the ruling PML used it in an ad campaign against the PPP but in vain.
A PPP spokesperson said Benazir Bhutto and the PPP would take firm legal action against the advertisement. The letter, said to have been written by PPP leader Benazir Bhutto to her friend Peter Galbraith in late 1990, was then circulated by the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) to defame Benazir Bhutto before the 1990 elections. The letter was forged by then opposition activist Naveed Malik, who now is an opposition leader.
The letter was used on Wednesday by the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) in huge half-page ads in different newspapers. A senior marketing expert said at least Rs 5 million was spent on the ad.
The letter was first released by Naveed Malik, political adviser to the then Punjab chief minister, with the aim to demoralize PPP voters in the 1990 elections. The PPP lost by a big margin but later the polls were declared as massively rigged.
On Wednesday, Malik admitted that the letter had then been forged by the IJI but tried to wriggle out of the blame. He said as the advisor to the chief minister, he was misguided by certain elements working on a mission to damage Benazir's image and to help the IJI.
Naveed said in a letter e-mailed to The News that he was suspicious about the integrity of the letter at the time of releasing it to the media. “Later, while investigating the facts, I came to know that there were certain elements working on a project to defame Benazir in the public.”
He said that this letter was in the custody of Ghulam Haider Wyne, the then PML provincial chief, in the office record of the PML Lahore, which is now under the control of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chaudhry Pervez Elahi.
Munawar Anjum, a spokesman of Benazir Bhutto, told The News that Benazir never used letterheads titled "Mrs Benazir Bhutto" as stated on the said letter. He said that the name of Mr Peter Galbraith was deliberately misspelled as Gailbraith in the letter to evade legal action in case Mr Galbraith legally challenged it.
Galbraith was also the senior advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1979-1993 and not in the NDI as stated in the forged letter, Munawar further revealed. Munawar also disclosed a very interesting point that the said forged letter was full of grotesque grammatical mistakes, which could not be committed by PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, a former student of Oxford. Munawar told The News that the PPP will take strict legal action against the defamation campaign against Benazir by the PML.
Source :
The News, Novemeber 15, 2007
When it re surfaced in 2007, a critical and thoughtful commentator (read not a sheep that can be herded by a jpeg of a forged document) on
Five Rupees noted that F-16 deal was scrapped 12 days after the supposed letter was signed. Those believing in the authenticity of the document, the proof of the "treacherous" activities of "dirty politicians" should also believe that a congressional staff member was able to get a 1.6 billion USD deal scrapped. So much for wisdom and intelligence.
Thirdly, I am amazed that people don't even consider what is visible on the face of the document. If you are indeed convinced by the document, even at first sight, you must also then believe that someone who went to Radcliffe (Harvard) and Oxford, and who was the president of the Oxford Union would be more articulate than the near
tooti phooti angrezi in the supposed letter. I am seriously amazed by the absence of critical thought.
Adding to it are glaring errors in your text (out of the dozens that float on the interweb). Peter Gailbraith was never the US ambassador in Delhi. His father, was the Ambassador in India from '61 to '63 and Gailbraith himself served as ambassador in Croatia not in India. Even a cursory search would have revealed this but finger pointing and lame accusations take the better of everybody's judgment.
The most ironic thing is that it has emerged when the ISI, MI and the entire establishment is under fire and possible scrutiny for its involvement in the entire BB assassination episode. People are yet again trying to flog dead horses (who were fake even the first time around) and trying to divert attention from their own “rogue” acts.
What is highly disappointing is that every freaking uneducated, illiterate and pathetic blogger thinks that he can be the most objective and informative political analyst and without verification (or purposely) spreads lies and forgeries across the blogosphere and effects negatively the free thought of citizens.
I am not a PPP activist or worker but I feel that bad mouthing politicians, especially through fake means has been the establishments tool since time immemorial and it would be necessary that the young impressionable minds aren’t just thrown at propaganda by the establishment.
While a political commentary on this is not necessary, for this is a forgery, I believe that following posts would most definitely try to summarize a complex 63 year history and summarize Benazir's life and her political ideologies and goals in single sentences. Remarks on such comments are unnecessary and pointless and my sole purpose was to prove conclusively that this was a forgery and what prompted this long post was the absence of critical examination that I witness everywhere, not that I have never committed this sin.
