US selectively champions democracy, easy with autocrats: ex-official

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has said, Pakistan would lose any conventional war with India. Speaking to news agency ANI, he said that the the tensions between India and Pakistan after the December 2001 attacks on the Indian Parliament made the US intelligence community believe that the two nuclear-armed neighbours were on the brink of a war, particularly after the military standoff under Operation Parakram.Kiriakou discussed how Washington "purchased" Pakistan's former president Pervez Musharraf with millions in aid, and claimed that the US once controlled Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. He also criticised the US's selective morality in foreign policy, accusing Washington of working "comfortably with dictators" and prioritising self-interest over democratic ideals.

Kiriakou said the US had very good relations with Musharraf’s government. “Our relations with the Pakistani government were very, very good. It was General Pervez Musharraf at the time. And look, let's be honest here. The United States loves working with dictators. Because then you don't have to worry about public opinion and you don't have to worry about the media anymore. And so we essentially just purchased Musharraf,” he said.

However, the former CIA officer added that Musharraf played a double game - publicly siding with the US, while covertly allowing Pakistan's military and extremists to continue terror activities against India. "The Pakistani military didn’t care about Al-Qaeda; they cared about India. Musharraf pretended to side with the US on counterterrorism while committing terror against India," he said.

Kiriakou called out the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, saying Washington selectively champions democracy, while working comfortably with autocrats. "We like to pretend we're a beacon of democracy and human rights. But it's just not true - we do what benefits us that day," he said.He said the US–Saudi relationship remains purely transactional. "Our foreign policy in Saudi Arabia is as simple as this — we buy their oil and they buy our weapons," he said, recalling a Saudi guard telling him, "You are hired help. We paid for you to come here and defend us." Kiriakou served in the CIA for 15 years as an analyst including as chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.  Kiriakou had turned a whistleblower in 2007 and exposed the CIA's "torture programme" in a television interview. He spent 23 months in jail. The charges against him were later dropped, with the former CIA officer remarking that he has "no regrets, no remorse."