At last our scruples, never very potent or profound to begin with, are about to be overcome. Or rather wrestled to the ground which is how best we like our doubts to be vanquished.

The appointment of our Washington ambassador, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, as the UN's new man in Baghdad seems to be the perfect fig leaf, or call it the smokescreen, for sending Pakistani troops to Iraq. Once we have a Pakistani carrying the UN flag there, how can we not send troops for his protection? Our road to Baghdad is likely to be paved with this excuse.

Only the innocent will be taken in by the notion that the UN is an independent body or that its secretary-general acts independently. There is a passage in Richard Clarke's whistle-blowing book "Against All Enemies" which should help put this issue in perspective.

"Albright and I," he writes, "and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General of the United Nations, a secret plan we had called Operation Oriental Express, reflecting our hope that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head.

In the end, the US had to do it alone (with its UN veto) and Sheehan and I had to prevent the president from giving in to pressure from world leaders and extending Boutros-Ghali's tenure, often by our racing to the Oval Office when we were alerted that a head of state was telephoning the president.

In the end Clinton was impressed that we had managed not only to oust Boutros-Ghali but to have Kofi Annan selected to replace him." So there we have Annan's UN antecedents, how he came to occupy the top slot, and why he happens to be the most American-toeing secretary-general in the UN's none-too-glorious history.

Incidentally, the Jamie Rubin cited in the above quote is husband to the CNN newsperson, Christiane Amanpour, which perhaps is another indication of how things play out in the real world.

Kofi Annan has appointed Qazi but who choreographs Annan's performance? His American godfathers. Thus Qazi, while a direct Annan appointee, is an indirect American one. His diplomatic skills may be considerable but you can bet your last rupee that's not the reason he has been chosen as UN special representative for Iraq.

Scanning the skies with a powerful telescope it becomes clearer that Qazi is the Trojan horse with whose help the American administration is hoping to overcome the last scruples of the Pakistan army and get it to send troops to Iraq.

Odysseus's wooden horse, in whose belly the Greeks lay hidden, breached the walls of Troy. Qazi's Trojan horse is meant to vanquish the doubts of his own country's army.

It's no secret that the US is desperately looking for foreign gendarmes to help police Iraq so as to take some of the pressure off its own army. Pakistan has long been prime American candidate for this role.

Because (1) the Pakistan army, from an American point of view, is reliable and (2) when Pakistani troops get killed, as they were in Somalia during the Clinton administration, no one in Pakistan creates a fuss.

Our idea of a "strategic relationship" with the US, something which our present leadership professes to have, is to go the extra mile in acceding to American demands. If there was a prize for pro-Americanism beyond the call of duty, we would get it.

Sending troops to Iraq has been a sticking point not because our president, in his heart of hearts, has been less than willing but because Pakistani public opinion, for whatever it is worth in Pakistan's military-dominated milieu, has been dead opposed to the idea.

But with the Qazi smokescreen in place, this problem may be on the verge of being resolved. No marks for guessing what the likely argument will be: that Pakistani troops are going for UN security and to help our own man, Ashraf Qazi. Clever.

American aims are wider. They want the UN back in Iraq to give their occupation and the epic mess they have created a semblance of international respectability. The UN won't be calling the shots, the Americans will, even if they insist that the UN is playing an important role and 'sovereignty' has been handed over to the Iraqis.

This whole undertaking rests on a pack of lies. Indeed, what gave us the Iraq war was a coalition of lies, made up of Bush and his war party, Blair and his false assumptions, and almost the entire western media, Fox News leading the pack but CNN, BBC and the rest of the caboodle not far behind, beating the drums of war.

This coalition is now stuck in a hole not so much because the lies are coming unstuck as because Iraqi resistance to the American occupation has been so fierce and relentless, something the Americans never counted on in their wildest dreams.

Over 800 American soldiers have died since the start of the Iraq war, three to four thousand have suffered serious injury, many of these maimed for life. Anti-war sentiment is strong and getting stronger in Europe, Japan and America. No wonder Michael Moore's marvelous polemic against the Bush march to war, "Fahrenheit 11", is drawing record crowds in the US.

But if this is where international opinion stands, trust the Pakistani government, under the banner of "enlightened moderation" - its latest catchword - to be thrilled at the prospect of walking into an exploding minefield.

Never reinforce failure is one of the first maxims or clich is taught in the military academy or the staff college. By sending troops to Iraq, Pakistan will be doing just that: trying to rescue a doomed undertaking.

Why can't our leaders think for themselves? Why must they be pawns in US hands? No doubt Bush's re-election bid is in deep trouble and the Bushies are ready to clutch at any straw in order to turn the opinion polls in their favour. But that is their problem, not ours. Since when has Islamabad become a sub-headquarters of the Bush re-election campaign?

What will Pakistan gain by doing America's dirty work in Iraq? We are already on a fixed salary for the services we are performing for the US: a three billion dollar package spread over five years and the great boon of non-NATO ally status, whatever this humbug means.

We can go into Iraq but there'll be no raise in salary. There will, however, be something else to pay: a public relations disaster for the army. How many false moves can any army afford?

For 57 years the army has marched in tune with dominant Punjabi thinking (never mind other kinds of thinking in Pakistan). Even while overthrowing governments and rewriting constitutions - twin skills in which it has acquired formidable expertise - this link has remained unbroken. Now for the first time it is in danger of snapping because of the extreme pro-Bush policies Pakistan is pursuing.

Although Bush and Blair continue to insist that the decision to go to war was correct because the world is a "safer" place without Saddam - admire their chutzpah for this - their WMD cover, the real excuse for going to war, has been blown to bits.

But more than this it is Iraqi resistance, heroic beyond words, which has turned America's ill-fated adventure in Iraq into a lost cause, past rescuing and past redemption. This being the case, sending troops to Iraq in any form or guise should be the last piece of outlandish folly playing on the minds of Pakistan's senior military commanders.