One of my fav milbloggers – Belmont Club – takes up the ever so interesting story of “just WTF is going on in Waziristan?“. It’s got Mushie mad at Abizaid –
The Winds of Change reports that President Pervez Musharraf warned General John Abizaid against cross border operations into Pakistan. President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday warned Pakistan would not tolerate future violations of its frontiers and would thwart infiltration into its controlled areas on the pretext of war of terror. Talking to Gen Abizaid, the chief of US Central Command, who called on him at Army House in Rawalpindi, the president said Islamabad was offering every possible support and cooperation to the US and the international community for fighting terrorism and extremism, however it could not allow anyone to violate its borders under the pretext of anti-terror campaign.
And what’s driving the incursions – the frustrating search for Bin Laden –
Operation Enduring Freedom may have given the impression that Pakistan was the highway to Afghanistan, the reverse may be true. Ahmed Rashid wrote in the International Herald Tribune of the tantalizing view southeast: Gone are the days when U.S. officials said vaguely that bin Laden was somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is and that he is not in Afghanistan – implying he is in Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who is now the U.S envoy in Baghdad, has been more blunt and said that bin Laden is in Pakistan.
And the brilliant irony of these forces carried to a certain logical ends –
by threatening the areas of weakest governance, organizations like Al Qaeda have driven those beleaguered states into the arms of the only power with means and mobility to come to their assistance. It would be the supreme irony if radical Islam’s lasting contribution to history turned out to be the establishment of a global American power.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is
damn right they do, they just don’t care to ‘catch’ him yet bcuz then they’re playtime is over and they can’t be in either Afghanistan or Iraq
I don’t know what self respecting nation would allow foreign troops carte blance to go in and occupy a section of their land. For the yanks in Afghanistan it’s just another mission with other people ending up as collateral damage (a la what they did in the 80’s in Afghanistan). The after effects of intervening is another kettle of fish entirely.
Mind you it’s not like US intelligence has any credibility anymore.