Second act of the memo drama

I firmly believe that there is no truth in the claims made by Mansoor Ijaz either about President Zardari and Haqqani or the ISI chief. These claims were belied by unity and solidarity shown by both the civilian and military leadership in the wake of unilateral action of May 2 by the US.
President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani extended full support to the ISI and the Army in warding off the American pressure and the Army leadership also exhibited its subservience to the civilian leadership. It was a time to get united rather than conspiring against each other. In the face of the US attack at Salala, they have again proved that they are on the same page and united to steer Pakistan out of the dire straits. Therefore, there is no cause for giving credence to the convulsions of a man like Mansoor Ijaz.
It might well be a conspiracy to create an ambience of confrontation between the civil and military leadership and then exploit their vulnerabilities to achieve certain objectives. At this critical juncture of our history, the civil and military leadership needs to tread cautiously and stay united as they have been in the past and not allow such incidents to vitiate the ambience of trust between the two. Mansoor Ijaz is a man of dubious character with a reproachable credibility. Mike Mullen is on record to have said that he did not take any action on the memo because he was doubtful about its authenticity. Initially Mansoor Ijaz claimed the memo was written with the approval of President Zardari and later he said that the President was not aware of the specifics of the memo. This backtracking from his earlier stance is enough to scuttle his credibility. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who chaired Obama's strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan has termed the memo as a "clumsy fake" saying Ijaz has a long track record of fabricating information for self-promotion. US Ambassador in Pakistan has also dubbed the statements of Mansoor as "pack of lies". These assessments from high profile US sources are more than enough to see through the motives and machinations of the man who is an avowed critic of the military and ISI. Our politicians and media should have paid due attention to these revelations before creating an unnecessary hype.
Pakistan is confronted with challenges of enormous magnitude that require an impregnable unity among all segments of society and state institutions. Our politicians owe it to the nation to exhibit greater responsibility and shun their propensity to prefer their narrow political gains over the national interests. The media also needs to act responsibly. Now that the case is in the Supreme Court and the parliamentary committee is also seized of the matter, it should avoid speculative and unsubstantiated stories about the episode.