Pakistan's army has standing orders now to
open fire on any US troops entering Pakistan to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the frontier provinces.
Pakistan's army spokesman says its forces have orders to open fire if U.S. troops launch another raid across the Afghan border.
Pakistani officials issued sharp protests to Washington after helicopters ferried U.S. commandos into Pakistan's South Waziristan region on Sept. 3 for a highly unusual ground attack into a militant stronghold.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is
lobbying Capital Hill to authorize and proceed with a planned upgrade of Pakistan's F-16 fleet on the American taxpayers' dime.
Despite recent territorial tensions with Pakistan, the Bush administration is prepared to fight an uphill battle with Congress over the proposed use of counterterrorism funds to upgrade Pakistan`s F-16 fighters today. The State Department believes it has the authority to implement.
My head hurts.
3 comments:
A standing order to shoot Taliban and Al Qaida on sight may be a wiser choice
Pakistan is saving face versus the tirade the AQ-AQM/Taliban may conduct within their on urban environment against a "apostate" government. The BS deal brokered some time ago within the tribal area addressed recently by one of their own Generals sic, "saying the FATA agreement was nothing more than appeasement". The PAK military does nothing, some are suppsoedly even related to the Taliban members. Anyone knows when fighting an insurgency you cannot afford sanctuary to the insurgents irregardless of local majority pashtun culture. Yesterday it was 70K pak troops in the territory, today it's 100K, tomorrow it'll be something else. Unfortunately, we still need to engage the Pak government for the long haul! Segregate the foreign fighters from their support mechanisms, address the needs of the tribal area and do something about the issues and close the border area of Afghanistan-the bad guys need to eat too!
Pakistan's government, military and intelligence services are lousy with Taliban and AQ sympathizers. That we're actually paying to upgrade their F-16s while they're preventing us from taking action where they won't makes us look like fools.
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