Saving Private Raymond

Raymond Davis must have spent one hell of a very lonely Valentine’s Day this year, banged up in a Lahore jail with only a foam pad on a cotton mattress for company. Compare his plight to Mumtaz Qadri, who was the lucky recipient of flowers, chocolates, and greeting cards from his throngs of admirers, both male and female; Davis must have felt like the one kid in third grade who doesn’t get a Valentine from anyone because nobody likes him (The Hallmark card signed: “With love from your friends at the US Consulate, Lahore” doesn’t count).

By now, everyone – even the New York Times, that bastion of investigative reporting and journalistic objectivity – has cottoned on to the fact that Raymond Davis is a CIA spy, arrested and jailed after shooting two motorcyclists in Lahore who may or may not have been ISI agents, petty thieves, Pizza Hut deliverymen, or recruiters for the Pakistan Cricket Board. Similarly, Davis may or may not have been a technical officer for the US Consulate in Lahore; a diplomat with the US Embassy; a security contractor; a tour guide for American tourists to Pakistan; or a Hollywood movie star. I can just imagine the conversation going on between Davis’s agent and the studio heads at 20th Century Fox: "No, Matt Damon will NOT play him in the movie version. We're in talks with Mr. Bean instead."

The heavyweights of American foreign policy, namely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, have been begging the Pakistani government to recognise that Davis, no matter what avatar he has assumed, has diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Conventions, and that he should be released to US authorities to be tried in America. The Pakistani authorities are enjoying the discomfiture of the US government, as well as the leverage that holding a top CIA spy brings

For more detail   Saving Private Raymond

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