Yes, no doubt, although one difference is that I did not hear about the kind of terrible human rights violations we know go on in Saudi Arabia, and women do OK there. I was in a smallish, quite conservative city, and all of the women I met were well educated, and most had jobs, and careers, and full freedom of movement.

Extreme understatement. Last year I spent nearly three weeks in the family home of a friend in Pakistan, every moment of the time in close contact with “ordinary” Pakistanis, and could not elicit a single positive syllable about Musharraf from a single person. Widely disliked and disrespected would be a nice way to put the popular sentiment I found there.

Yep you said it … blah blah blah…. Thats all it is. There is no evidence what so ever that Hezbollah has any wants or desires to attack the US. Besides they get there money from supporters here.

Its fuuny how many here in the States view Hezbollah and even Hamas. While many from the Middle East have a different view point on both organizations. Both organizations have political arms that have gotten out of ccntrol and can be a regional destabilization powers, but that is part of our fault and very much Israel’s fault. Again our foreign policy has been out of whack for a very long time in the ME Region.

As far as attacking us here in America? More Bush-aid obedience performance drink babble…..

I realize that those people are crazy. They still seem to be in control. The fact that people are evening talking about attacking Pakistan is proof of it.
Lord help us.

IMO, “Al Qaeda Prime”(1) is not to be underestimated even
though operational capability has been reduced as
alluded to in this Stratfor report. However, once
again, I invoke the simple hypothesis of Dr. Boaz
Ganor i.e. terrorist groups require both operational
capacity and motivation before they act.

IMO, countermotivation has been a nonfactor in the
reduction of the global spread of Al Qaeda ideology.
Al Qaeda has achieved longevity. Al Qaeda can
selectively recruit and train which is a luxury
afforded to such crime organizations as the Mafia.

There has also been much talk recently of the effort
of “moderate” Muslim NGOs to convert and subsequently
“radicalize” youth toward a future of violent Jihad.
This, IMO, is essentially the battlefield, if you
will, for hearts and minds.

Michael Chertoff’s “gut feeling” suggested to me a
putative “Al Qaeda Prime” attack of a magnitude
exceeding 9/11. The hypothesis that Al Qaeda wants to
exceed the casualities of 9/11 with the next attack
and that they will not attack unless they can do so
rendered Chertoff’s comments, IMO, disjointed.

Was the “gut feeling” based on al Qaeda operational
capacity or motivation or both?

Recently, Daveed Gartenstein Ross has commented on
Musharaff’s succession: “Prominent Pakistani military
and intelligence figures–individuals like retired
Gen. Hamid Gul and Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg–are
ideologically sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
It is not inconceivable that they could seize power.
Few have thought through the tremendous geopolitical
implications of such a succession. Given Pakistan’s
nuclear arsenal, the changes to the global war on
terror would be instantaneous and dramatic.”

We know that Al Qaeda is motivated - ‘primed’, if you
will. It just may be that Al Qaeda Prime’s operational
capacity could return swiftly.

(1) TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE REPORT
07.25.2007
Al Qaeda and the Strategic Threat to the U.S. Homeland
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

The Bushies always fall for the jackass with the scars, or the “civilized native” like Musharraf, or the scoundrel who tells them what they want to hear, like Achmed Chalabi–”plausible rogues” like this Tribal Frontier Force or the Afghan proxies who let us down at Tora Bora.

Yul Brynner picked damn good professional gunmen to go with him down to that village because he would have to bear the consequences with the villagers if they weren’t up to snuff. Our Confederacy of Dunces in power in Washington can afford to screw up time and again because there are never any consequences for them to bear. That needs to change.

The Bushies always outsource to the jackass with the scars.

On the equipment, I read a memoir by a Colonel Herbert about his service in Vietnam. At one point he protested when he was ordered to turn over some sophisticated military equipment to the corrupt South Vietnamese Army. He warned his superiors that within a month–at most–the equipment would be in the hands of the enemy, but the order stood. Sure enough, they found an enemy weapons cache soon afterwards and THERE was the fancy equipment that their “little brothers” had sold as soon as they got it!

Read the plans about Pakistan.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining “natural” Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.

The Bushies may be spending millions to help al Qaeda and the Taliban. Don’t forget, Pakistan has nukes and Musharraf just survived his what is it 7th assassination attempt by these guys.