Ex-Pak spy chief: 9/11 was a pretext to a war already under consideration

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is a "lost cause," said a former Pakistani intelligence chief, and the United States needs to negotiate peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "You have to talk to him, and I'm sure it will work out very well," Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview to air Sunday. 

U.S. intelligence documents published last week by WikiLeaks cited Gul and implicated Pakistani intelligence as supporting al Qaeda. Gul has denied the allegations. "I'm quite a convenient scapegoat," he said. "I don't support any one faction in Afghanistan. I support the Afghan nation."

The career military officer, who supported the U.S.-backed Taliban resistance against Soviet occupation during the 1980s, called the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan "unjust" and said he sees legitimacy in the Afghan insurgency against Western forces. "This is a national resistance movement. It should be recognized as such," he said. "They are Mujahedeen of Afghanistan as they were during the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union."

The attacks of September 11 were a pretext to a war already under consideration, Gul said. "I think some of the neocons, who were very close to President [George W.] Bush, they wanted that he could embark on a universal adventure of Pax Americana, and they thought that the world was lying prostrate in front of them," he said. The 2001 terrorist attacks helped win the public support for the neocon plans, he said.

There was no legitimate reason for the United States to attack Afghanistan, Gul said, because the FBI had no solid evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in the attacks on New York and Washington.

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