The world focused on the Northern areas of Pakistan to capture or kill the al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives. But the harsh reality is that even if these operatives are eliminated, there are other outfits in the rest of the southern part of Pakistan that have the same aims, will and training as that of al-Qaeda or Taliban.

After 2001 Pakistanis were spoon fed the propaganda that the violence in Pakistan is due to America’s presence in Afghanistan. As a result, many hate the U.S. intervention and see Islamists as the defenders of Pakistani sovereignty. Those who support the Islamists for their religious beliefs are relatively few in number, but they are better organized. The arrests of extremists depends on the willingness of Pakistan’s secret agencies and/or the influence of the Saudi government.

The dual policy of keeping the U.S. happy while supporting the terrorist outfits was charted out by the then-President of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He half-heartedly banned some 23 organizations but failed — deliberately — to bring their sponsors to justice.

The story of Southern part of Pakistan is much scarier than the Northern part. Just as the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, those “banned” outfits were on the rise, exploiting the anti-Americanism in the country and misusing the name of religion.

Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament, is the second largest jihadi group in Southern Punjab. It carries out regular public gatherings and has strong influence in the U.K., Europe, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and even in the U.S. Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi was their financial patron-in-chief at one point. Another major financer is Saudi Arabia.

JeM changed its name a few times because of the “ban.” It went from Khudam-al-Islam to Al Rehmat Trust International to Usman Trust. Currently it is operating under the banner of Al Shafi Islamic Medical. Its publications were never out of print.

The failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, spent much of his time at a JeM madrassa in Karachi. He was transported to the North later by Laskhar-e-Jhangvi for further training.

LeJ’s parent organization — Sipah Sahaba Pakistan — changed its name from Millat-e-Islamia to International Quran Movement to Ehle Sunnat wa Jamaat. Its propaganda organ publications were available to the masses outside mosques and various market places.

The LeJ formed and operated its new wing, also known as Lashkar e Jhangvi al Almi (LeJ International). With its headquarters in Pakistan, it covers Europe and the U.K. The LeJ is organized into small cells of around eight cadres each, who operate independently of the others.

LeJ leader Malik Ishaq told an Urdu newspaper about his involvement in the killings of 102 people. He was allowed a stipend and provided a mobile phone in jail. Ishaq was released this year after the courts found no evidence against him.

Gen. Musharraf’s government carried out just one operation against the Islamic fundamentalists, under pressure from the Chinese government, when he ordered the Red Mosque Siege. Pakistani intelligence officials said they found letters from Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the leaders of the mosque, directing them to conduct an armed revolt. One of the leaders was released by the courts later.

The LeJ, JeM and Harkat ul Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) formed a common front called Lashkar-e-Umer with countrywide branches for close cooperation and pooled resources. These groups still support each other in one form or another.

The Karachi-based Al Rasheed Trust, was “banned” and listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department on September 22, 2001. The group is still operating and its chief was one of the few who had direct access to bin Laden.

Similarly, another group, the Falah-e-Isnaniyat Foundation (FIF) is linked with Lashkar and Jamat-al-Dawa and protected by the security establishment. These groups are also supported and funded by the Saudis.

The freehand operations of these groups have radicalized Pakistani society. Anti-Americanism spreads while Arabization has taken hold.

There are more and more mosques in each city, many run by such outfits. In some places three separate mosques of different sects are built next to each other. The sermons delivered there go unchecked and ultimately fuel the hatred and twisted ideology of dividing Muslims and bringing ‘sharia’ of their liking to the world. Public Billboards promoting jihad and hatred of America are everywhere cloaked as appeals for “charity.”

Pakistan’s internal crises include a deep cynicism that has seeped into every nook and cranny of everyday life. Politically, the army continues to run the popular narrative. Socially, if liberals talk about rapprochement with India, they’re accused of being controlled by RAW, the C.I.A. or the Zionists — or all three. The radical view that it’s acceptable to kill Shi’a, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians and destroy their places of worship is widespread.

Because of this chaos, ordinary Pakistanis who want to travel, work and study abroad are finding it harder to do so. In the eyes of many immigration officials around the world, to be Pakistani is synonymous with being a criminal.

It’s been said many times that 9/11 changed the world. After the attacks, Afghanistan and Pakistan felt the heat.

Ten years later, the diseases that had been contained in Pakistan metastasize more rapidly than ever. Pakistan’s militants, all of them, are a threat to international peace. If the West’s strategy for combating radicalism continues on its present parochial course, the world will feel the heat.

The first is in the State Department. This wasn’t just a wasteful decision, but an unethical, immoral, and I have to hope, illegal one. Within the State Department was a woman named Kathleen McGrade. The Daily Caller did some good, old-fashioned investigative reporting on her, and guess what they discovered? Ms. McGrade had funneled $52 MILLION of yours and my taxpaying dollars to her daughter, and her secret husband. I am not making this up, and neither is the Daily Caller:

[snip] Kathleen McGrade helped their company, Sterling Royale Group, win 43 federally funded contracts over the last few years.

McGrade acted as the Contracting Officer (CO) for awards to Sterling Royale Group. McGrade’s husband, Brian Collinsworth, serves as the company’s Vice President. McGrade’s daughter, J.L. (Jennifer) Herring, is its president and CEO.

When TheDC first reached Collinsworth for comment, he denied being married to McGrade. “She is the CO on our contracts, but we are not married in any way, shape or form. That’s kind of funny, but, okay,” Collinsworth said, adding that he and McGrade have no relationship “other than a professional one of a CO to a company.”

Collinsworth also denied that Herring is McGrade’s daughter, and his stepdaughter.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Surprise, surprise, Collinsworth is a big liar. They are indeed married.

Fortunately, the State Department quickly did the right thing – they fired Ms. McGrade:

[snip] “Upon learning of the allegations, the Department immediately relieved Ms. McGrade of her responsibilities,” Laine said in an email. “Subsequently, the Department instructed her company that her employment at the Department is terminated.”

McGrade worked as a federal government contractor, handling the disbursement of taxpayer money for the State Department to other contractors. She worked on-site at the State Department in the office of Overseas Building Operations.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Well, that’s just terrific, but, what about our money? And why hasn’t she been brought up on charges? Forced to pay restitution? Something? The State Department is being mum on any further action, according to the article. Oh, well, okay then. That’s fine – not.

Second, we have the ten year lease signed by representatives of the SEC. Oh, this is a doozy. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

[snip] Chairman Mary L. Schapiro has been under fire for the SEC’s decision last year to sign a 10-year lease valued at more than $500 million for 900,000 square feet of space in a D.C. office building known as the Constitution Center. A recent report on the lease by the SEC’s Office of Inspector General found that the SEC unnecessarily limited the locations it could consider because it overestimated the amount of space it needed. The report cited one employee who described the process used to calculate the space needs as a “`WAG,’ (wild-ass guess) and a ‘back of the envelope calculation.’”

The SEC made its projections based in part on the increased responsibilities related to the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law but also on budget projections that had not yet been approved. After the anticipated budget increase didn’t materialize, the SEC determined it would not need the space in the building, which is owned by David Nassif Associates.[snip]

Oops. Yep, they signed the lease, but then didn’t need the space after all, so…Good grief. These are the people running our government???

Now you see why they were called on the carpet:

In a hearing Wednesday before the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management to discuss the lease, Ms. Schapiro acknowledged missteps and said she wanted to SEC to cede its authority to lease space to the General Services Administration. U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R., Calif.), chairman of the subcommittee, also questioned why there was an urgency to get the deal done in spite of the “collapse of the real estate industry.”

Ms. Schapiro said she had heard there were few options for space. “It was presented to me…that if we were going to have any growth at all, we had to take this space,” Ms. Schapiro said.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

You’ll be glad to know that, according to the article, the Office of the Comptroller has been able to rent some of the space, but they are still looking for tenants for the other third of the sf available. Any takers? Oh, and they are considering whether to investigate this or not.

I’m sorry, but what’s the question there, exactly?? Sheesh.

And finally, last but definitely not least, is the third example of wasteful government spending I have heard of in just two days. If the second one was a doozy, this one is a wallop. It seems that two, not one, but two, Navy tankers which have yet to be completed, are now heading to the scrap heap. They only cost $300 million, so not as bad as the 10 year lease, but still, a mighty hefty amount of taxpaying dollars:

[snip] The Isherwood, stretching more than 660 feet, began its final journey this week, unceremoniously towed Tuesday from its mooring spot in the James River Reserve Fleet, also known as the “ghost fleet,” near Fort Eustis in Newport News.

Its destination: International Shipbreaking Limited in Brownsville, Texas, just above the Mexico border. There, the vessel will be cut up, its innards removed and disposed of, and its steel and other metals sold as recycled products.

The Eckford, of equal size, is scheduled to follow next Tuesday, leaving behind fewer than 20 junk ships in the ghost fleet, the smallest number since its inception during World War I.

Once the two Navy oilers have departed, “it will close one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding and for that matter, federal fiduciary folly,” wrote Joseph Keefe, a global maritime commentator, this week on the website MaritimeProfessional.com. [snip] {Click here to read the rest.)

This just begs the question: why were these tankers ever even authorized?

Someone asked recently what we are sending to countries that do not think highly of us, according to a recent Pew poll. We are going to give Egypt $1.3 billion this year for military aid; thanks to the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, $1.5 billion a year to Pakistan; and the list goes on. Since the Congress has failed to provide or pass a budget for the past couple of years, this CRS report on aid to East and South Asia should provide fairly up-to-date information.

But we cannot leave out the billions of US dollars in aid to Afghanistan that has been stolen, or “lost,” there. Holy crap.

“Waste not, want not” should be our mantra. This is especially true as our Congress and president fight over how much more in debt this nation is willing to go. And at what cost to us, our reputation, and our economy, they are willing to accept on our behalf. They can begin by being a helluva lot more careful as to how they spend our tax dollars, whether for programs at home, lack of oversight of personnel who have no authority to be signing contracts, and to those who do have the authority to sign away millions and millions without doing their freakin’ homework first.

These are just three examples in the past two days that have come to my attention. I am sure you can come up with a few more. Our Congress needs to remember they work for US, and when they waste money on programs or goods they are not going to use, they must answer to US. This isn’t Monopoly money after all, it’s for real. It is well past time they started acting like it.

Pakistan had received about $1.9 billion in military assistance from the U.S. in fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 30, including about $300 million in grants to buy U.S. defense equipment.

U.S. officials hoped the new aid could effectively eliminate Pakistan’s objections that it doesn’t have the equipment needed to launch more operations in the tribal areas.

By July 2011, the U.S. had taken unilateral actions to kill Osama bin Laden and a number of different high level targets through drone strikes. The apparent non-cooperation or push back from the Pakistan military to attack al Qaeda operatives in the northern areas angered U.S. lawmakers. Meanwhile, relations between the two countries soured and hit all-time low — or did they?

Despite the anger expressed by Washington lawmakers, a bill to freeze the $2 billion aid package to Pakistan failed to pass Congress. Now comes news that the Obama administration, in an attempt to appear tough on the Pakistan military, has canceled $800 million of the said aid, purportedly to persuade Islamabad to do far more to combat terrorism.

This cancellation might satisfy Pakistan’s critics, most of whom pushed the administration to press Pakistan to fight militants effectively. But at some point the U.S. has to decide whether paying the Pakistan military is helpful or not. When the aid was initially approved, officials from both the U.S. and Pakistan rejected the notion that the military assistance was a quid pro quo, arguing that they are trying to build a partnership, not cut a deal.

Subtract $800 million from $2 billion and what’s left is the partnership.

The military aid was approved to pressure Pakistan to start operations against militants in the northern areas, which it did not. Now at the time when this aid is being “canceled,” the Pakistani military has already launched a full-fledged operation in central Kurram Agency.

The cancellation of the $800 million plays well in an election year. The American public has grown increasingly concerned about the deteriorating economic situation in the U.S.; add to that the perception that the Pakistan army is less than honest about its sincerity to fight terrorism. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. had no option but to cancel this military aid, which funds the military equipment and the U.S. trainers that Pakistan military refused to accept.

In simple words, the U.S. was not going to hand this amount to Pakistan in cash. The aid is being held back because of training cutbacks including intelligence, surveillance, arms and ammunition and other support equipment. The U.S. had to spend this on its own soldiers, and its own equipment. Since the Pakistan military refused to budge, the U.S. has this money as a little flag on its ledger.

This explains why the Pakistan military announced that suspension of aid would not affect its ongoing campaign against militants in the tribal areas.

The “pause in the military aid,” as the Pakistan ambassador to the U.S. puts it, or “delay” as the U.S. defense department called it, does include a $300 million reimbursement, but the Pakistan army can take advantage of this non-payment to fan the flames of anti-Americanism by claiming that the U.S. is not a reliable partner. This is an $800 million game that Pakistan played, putting the U.S. in a situation where it is left with no option but to follow.

President Lyndon Johnson once asked, “Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg?” Then answered, “It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.” It seems that in this case, this situation has reversed and it seems hot to everyone else but to you.

It’s an open secret that hundreds of Saudi families and nationals were flown out of the States during the days after the attacks. The exodus was organized by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar bin Sulan bin Abdul Aziz, also known as “Bandar Bush” due to his closeness to the Bush family. The ambassador expedited the departures of two families: The Saudi royals and the bin Ladens. But not even the notoriously charming prince could adequately explain why or how 15 out of the 19 hijackers came from a country the U.S. had always claimed as a close ally.

It should, then, be safe to call the Saudi-U.S. relationship a “secret” marriage. Not many Americans know how strong or weak this marriage is, mostly because the Saudis spent billions — and more billions — to spruce up their image or stay hidden from the general public.

The Saudis’ initial attempts at post-9/11 damage control backfired — badly. Exhibit A: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s public show of contributing $10 million to New York for disaster relief. Unfortunately for the Kingdom, the prince had the poor judgment to use the opportunity to lecture the U.S. about its foreign policy at the same time. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani made it clear that New York had no need for his money.

Realizing that their image needed bolstering, the Saudis did what troubled totalitarian regimes the world over do: They hired a PR firm and a gang of high-powered Washington lobbyists. The PR blitz was a flop.

But this did not stop the Saudis, and now, in an ironic twist, the prince is the second-largest shareholder in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corps, the parent company of Fox News Channel, a notorious source of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

The Kingdom’s ongoing image woes have long been exacerbated by reports of a barbaric judicial system, beheadings, the second class citizen status of women and the complete absence of human rights and religious freedom. The flow of Saudi petrodollars into the coffers of terrorist groups around the world has been reported on, analyzed and criticized for years, to little effect.

It is no secret either that Saudis have also been instrumental in bankrolling and backing discrimination and violence against the Shias, as described by Khaled Ahmed in his book Sectarian War: Pakistan’s Sunni-Shia Violence and Its Links to the Middle East:

According to Barnett Rubin, in 1989, the Afghan mujahideen government-in-exile came into being in Peshawar after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. At the behest of Saudi Arabia, the exiled Shia mujahideen of Iran were not included in this government. The Saudis paid over $26 million a week to the 519-member session of the mujahideen shura (council) as a bribe for it. Each member of the shura received $25,000 for the deal which was facilitated, according to Rubin, by the ISI Chief Hamid Gul.

But as the world is watching the developments in the war on terror, the Saudis are out to burnish their image as humanitarians. They know that the someone somewhere might mention the fact that Afghanistan was the training ground and Pakistan was the facilitator, but the majority of the hijackers were the nationals of the Kingdom. Over the last ten years, the situation is Pakistan and Afghanistan has gone from bad to worse, while a major player of this ‘great game’ has kept itself at a distance with its petrodollars.

Given the Saudis’ penchant for funding and exporting extremism and meddling throughout the Muslim world, how would you react if you heard a Saudi prince had bankrolled an expensive research project to create a genetically modified strain of corn that could eliminate world hunger?

The prince does this not for financial gain, but as a gesture of goodwill. The prince also speaks perfect English, appreciates female arm candy and is a target for Islamic extremists at home.

Apparently, the Saudis have found a way to uplift their image.

This prince is a hero, not in a real life of course — but in a Hollywood movie, Unknown. As America prepares to mark the ten year anniversary of 9/11, this pop culture moment is nothing short of extraordinary. The Saudis have achieved a PR coup: Positive product placement. The Kingdom is re-branding.

There’s nothing particularly original about the plot, which consists of a series of predictable spy scenarios — a foreign city, inclement weather, amnesia, car chases, the Cold War, evil multinationals. It’s been done a million times.

But what is totally unexpected is the depiction of a Saudi royal as a generous benefactor, a plot point that is so rare it captures the attention. Even more remarkable is that there have been no debates, no protests, no boycotts, no outrage. The movie came and went without a peep.

Even more intriguing: The film Unknown is based on the novel Out of My Head by Didier van Cauwelaert. There is no benevolent Saudi prince in the original version of the story. So how did this plot twist come about?

Since no one in the press or the world of politics seems to care, it may be a while before we find out.

No serious attempt has been made to analyse this phenomenon even though the transformation of Pakistani society over the last three decades pints to this trend.

This new breed of Taliban supporter is overwhelmingly comprised of the upper-middle class that sprang up out of the villages or suburban areas thanks to the enormous flow of American cash that washed through the region after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and later the U.S. invasion.

The corruption in foreign aid distribution, the secret funds for Afghan Mujahideen and the generous bounties to kill or capture extremists sent the price of real estate sky-rocketing in Pakistan, making the farmers living around big cities rich. Flush with cash, the newly-rich farming class left rural life behind and moved to cities.

This is a major transformation in Pakistani society. Usually population shifts of this magnitude happen over an extended period of time. In Pakistan, it happened over two to three decades, drastically changing a social order that had been in place for almost two thousand years.

Around 322 b.c. a Mauryan ruler, Chandragupta Maurya and his successors expanded his power westwards across central and western India, enforcing principles of governance and laying down rules of administration, including tax collection, maintaining the army, completing irrigational projects, enforcing law and order, devising rates of taxation, and reviving the way of life in the cities and villages. Villages became so self-contained that travel became unnecessary.

The great Mauryan Empire ended in 185 b.c., but the system the King Ashoka put in place remained in place and for the most part untouched, even by the British rulers. Village life remained unchanged until the advent of new technologies. The introduction of mechanized farming and harvesting eased the arduousness of farm work and led to an increase in productivity. But on the other hand it rendered a big chunk of the society unemployed. The void created by idleness was filled with religion. New classes emerged, new rites were formed.

A similar phenomenon was occurring in India, but was countered by the development of industry. Residents of rural areas in search of jobs moved to cities, worked in factories and united under labor unions, forming a new working class fighting for equal rights and better opportunities. In Pakistan, however, attempts to build industry were interrupted time and again by dramatic swings from martial law to democracy and back again. Unstable governance rivalries among industrial barons also slowed or disrupted the building of an industrial worker class.

The segment of the new city dwellers brought with them the customs of village life, including myths, superstitions and family structure. The new urbanites were also largely uneducated and taken aback by the bustle of city life and the ways of residents whose worldview was shaped by modern conveniences. The overwhelming majority of these new city residents have become part of the new middle and/or upper middle class trying to fit into a Westernized lifestyle but with poor results. It is this segment of the population that wants to drink alcohol and travel while at the same time supporting the Taliban as holy warriors. They do not want to let go of their old world values and virtues. They form the base of support for politicians like former cricket legend Imran Khan, whose confrontational attitude towards the West boosts their sense of patriotism.

These new urbanites would fall into one of two extreme categories. If the family had strong but backwards religious beliefs, they spent their money building a mosque or supporting religious organizations – their own way of thanking the Almighty for their unexpected good fortune. If the family had cut its ties with such religious dogmas they choose instead to engage in conspicuous consumption — purchasing high-priced houses, acquiring personal booze collections unmatched in most bars in the West, importing expensive cars and moving money to foreign banks. More important is what they didn’t do with their new found wealth: Reinvest the money into the local financial system.

The way out of this alarming state of affairs for Pakistan is to reform the education system that matches to the needs for the modern industrial era coupled with the formation and development of an industrial and manufacturing sector.

The vast majority of foreign aid provided by the international community is still being targeted at state security agencies, as is a disproportionately large percentage of the country’s budget. The Saudi government discovered long ago that paying to mould the minds of the youth in Pakistan was an excellent investment. The results – the rise of totalitarian Islam, contempt for democracy, romanticizing violent Islamist movements, and sectarian violence – are all too evident. It’s time for the West to become a counterbalance and seriously support civilian governments instead of relying on military dictators to further their agendas. The West should also keep on pressing the civilian administration for good governance if they want Pakistan free of extremists.

Though the leader of the government, President Asif Ali Zardari has been blamed for everything going wrong in the country and is regarded as a corrupt individual, until now there has been a perceived upside that Pakistan is being led by an elected government and not a military dictatorship.

This illusion of so-called civilian supremacy silently burst like a bubble when the head of the ISI, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, and the Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani were called before the parliament to answer for their incompetence related to the May 2 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. The agenda was to inquire about the U.S. attack and why the state security apparatus was unaware of Osama bin Laden’s presence.

But what happened during the closed door meeting revealed once again that the real power in Pakistan still lies with the army and the ISI, not the politicians.

It had been suggested that heads would roll, the foreign aid and the big chunk of national budget that the army receives would be scrutinized. The parliamentarians dropped the ball again and lost another opportunity to exert their authority over other institutions of the state. Once again it became clear who really runs Pakistan.

The last time a civilian government had an opportunity to put the army in its place was in 1971, following the Pakistan army’s defeat in the war that led to the loss of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s then-president and founder of the Pakistan People’s Party, got off to a promising start by placing former dictator General Yahya Khan under house arrest. He re-organized the Pakistan Armed Forces and boosted the military’s morale. But Bhutto also restored their hubris. Years later, his own appointed Army Chief, General Zia ul-Haq, would overthrow Bhutto’s government and send him to the gallows.

During Zia’s 11 year rule, the Russians invaded Afghanistan and withdrew. The army grew so strong that even after Zia’s death in a plane crash, the new chief of the military did not allow the democratically elected Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, to tour the country’s nuclear facility. She was labelled anti-Pakistan and an American agent.

It is ironic to witness that the opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which was created with the support of the army to counter the PPP’s popularity, is now asking the tough questions about covert operations and the finances of the military.

By snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Pakistan’s ruling party, Bhutto’s PPP, is losing its chance to demonstrate leadership and moral authority. They failed to hold the army accountable for the thousands of civilians and security officers killed in the war on terror in Pakistan. They did not press the chief of the generously-funded army to explain how OBL could have lived in a military garrison town for six years.

These are the same parliamentarians who extended General Kiyani’s tenure. The same parliamentarians who extended ISI Chief General Pasha’s tenure. The boastful parliamentarians who had promised to leave no stone unturned roared like lions for the cameras but behaved like lambs behind closed doors.

It was reported that opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar tried to deliver a speech during the question and answer session, only to be snubbed by General Pasha in front of a full house. Pasha claimed that he ‘knew’ why he was being targeted by the opposition leader, alleging that Nisar had asked him for a personal favor, which he, as DG ISI, refused to extend. An embarrassed Chaudhry Nisar was said to have been taken aback as Pasha continued with his ‘counter-attack’.

Then the tail furiously wagged the dog. General Pasha reportedly offered to resign. Rather than demanding that the ISI chief step down immediately, apparently the parliamentarians did not accept his resignation.

The state run television channel could have returned to its heyday of running prime time programming that kept the country glued to their sets by recording that “closed door” meeting to broadcast later as a drama — or farce.

Some idealistic Pakistanis hoped that the U.S. would finally question the secretly played “double game.” After all, the U.S. supported extensions of Kiyani’s and Pasha’s tenures, claiming that keeping the chiefs in their positions would help to continue the war on terror in an orderly fashion. The U.S. abandoned the people of Pakistan by siding with the army once again, pledging support and failing to attach any strings or conditions to the military aid it provides.

Cowed by Kiyani’s and Pasha’s brazen displays, Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution that drone attacks should be stopped and that the operations like the one carried out on May 2nd won’t be tolerated in future.

The parliament has an obligation to explain to the public not only how and why Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, but why the Taliban continues to carry out its bloody operations, and why al Qaeda leaders have been given safe haven. The risk of allowing these questions to remain unanswered is that the military will gain more strength over the civilian government.

The parliamentarians who are supposed to represent the people of Pakistan abrogated their responsibility for the sake of staying in office for few more months, while at the same time making it clear who the country’s rulers truly are.

So why did Charlie Brown keep trying? To quote Samuel Johnson, Charlie Brown’s determination was an example of the triumph of hope over experience.

Like the relationship between the United States and Pakistan for the last 60 years.

Following 1947″s bloody partition from India, Pakistan followed a more pro-Western policy whereas the Indian government defined its foreign policy as more leftist. Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Pakistan were established shortly after Pakistan’s independence. In May of 1950, Prime Minister Liquiat Ali Khan made the first state visit to the United States, stopping in New York, Washington, Houston and Kansas City. The prime minister was seeking financial and military assistance. The U.S. did not see the usefulness of a strong relationship with Pakistan and her interests in Pakistan were limited.

1954 marked a turning point in the history of relations between the two countries, as the U.S. began providing Pakistan with military aid, which would increase over the years. It was in the same decade that Pakistan experienced its first military coup, when its Army Chief Ayub Khan took power in 1958.

It was at that point that the football, in the form of aid, support of civilian government and cooperation in the war on terror entered the picture. Over the years, the U.S. and Pakistan’s relationship would improve and worsen in increasingly dramatic cycles.

The U.S. refused to provide military assistance to Pakistan during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. In April of 1979 the United States suspended all economic assistance to Pakistan (with the exception of food assistance) over concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear program.

The tide shifted in 1981, when Pakistan and the United States agreed on a $3.2 billion military and economic assistance program aimed at helping Pakistan deal with the heightened threat to security in the region and its economic development needs. With U.S. assistance — in the largest covert operation in history — Pakistan armed and supplied anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan. Weapons flowed through Pakistan to arm the mujaheddin through General Zia Ul-Haq, another military dictator who rose to power through a coup.

But the relationship’s cracks were becoming more obvious. As Lawrence Wright wrote in his New Yorker piece “U.S. Support for Pakistan: A Long Messy History;”

At the same time, Zia began giving support to an Islamist organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, the forerunner of many more radical groups to come. In November, a mob of Jamaat followers, inflamed by a rumor that the U.S. and Israel were behind an attack on the Grand Mosque, in Mecca, burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad to the ground, killing two Americans and two Pakistani employees. The American romance with Pakistan was over, but the marriage was just about to begin.

After 9/11, Pakistan, led by General Pervez Musharraf, reversed course under pressure from the United States and joined the “War on Terror” as a U.S. ally. This alliance began rather dramatically. According to Musharraf’s biography, In the Line of Fire, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to “bomb Pakistan into the stone age” if the country didn’t get with the program. It was an “offer” that Pakistan was in no position to refuse. General Musharraf was strongly supported by the Bush administration.

In return for their support, Pakistan has received about $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, primarily military.

Where did the money go? According to Military Inc., by Ayesha Siddiqa, Pakistan’s army, which has never won a war, found creative ways to take advantage of Western largesse, investing in hotels, real estate, and shopping malls. According to a 2008 GAO report, more than a third of U.S. funds provided Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were subject to accounting problems, including duplication and possible fraud.

And then there’s the thorny topic of A.Q. Khan, the father of the “Islamic Bomb.” While Khan was operating a nuclear bazaar, the government of Pakistan argued that if there had been wrongdoing, it had occurred without the military’s knowledge or approval. Critics noted that virtually all of Khan’s overseas travels, to Iran, Libya, North Korea, Niger, Mali, and the Middle East, were on Pakistan government aircraft.

Then comes Osama saga.

For decades, the United States has made the mistake of equating “Pakistan” with its army and supporting military governments. The U.S., in the role of Lucy, has turned aid into a football. Unlike Charlie Brown, the Pakistani people, who do not benefit from this aid, have stopped trusting Lucy.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has also played the role of Lucy, offering assistance in the war on terror. While Pakistan has been helpful and the country’s people have suffered immeasurably as a result of brutal and ongoing terrorist attacks, the army and the ISI, like Lucy, have at times been too clever by half. Despite outward signs that aid will continue to flow to Pakistan’s military, there are growing signs that the U.S. is tired of playing the Charlie Brown role.

Charlie Brown never stopped trying to kick the football. Hope triumphed over experience. Can the same be said for the future of U.S. – Pak relations?

Wow. I am not surprised by this news, though, in all honesty. The photo released by the White House as the Powers-That-Be watched the mission unfold (or at least some of it), made that abundantly clear:

From the get-go, it looked to me like Obama was sitting in the “Kid’s Chair,” while the adults were around the big table. If the White House Insider is accurate, and Larry Johnson is now stating after intel he’s received that the insider is at least 80% accurate, that’s exactly what was going on here. The decision had been made, and not by Obama. As the Insider stated in a previous interview, it was a coup, a term the insider stands by in the update on May 3, 2011 to SocyBerty.

Make no mistake – this is huge. Huge.

So, who did give the order to go after Osama bin Laden? It was Leon Panetta, backed by Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and Jim Clapper. Not Barack Obama, despite his taking credit for it (though that is not a surprise, either – that has been his MO for years and years). If you have not had your fill of Obama BS, just watch his “60 Minutes” interview in which he blathers on and on about his “plan.” As you will read below, there was no such plan, at least not from him.

There is so much to this interview, and I urge you to read the complete post, but here are some key components:

Q: You stated that President Obama was “overruled” by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound. Was that accurate?

A: I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama) I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.” There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so. President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president. (Emphasis mine.)

I mentioned above who was doing the overruling – a star-studded group if ever there was one (well, except for maybe Jim Clapper – you remember him – the Director Of Intelligence who seemed woefully ignorant of Intelligence, who claimed the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular.” Yes, that guy.). Anyway, it was this group against Valerie Jarrett, and her puppet, Obama:

I was correct in stating there had been a push to invade the compound for several weeks if not months, primarily led by Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and Jim Clapper. The primary opposition to this plan originated from Valerie Jarrett, and it was her opposition that was enough to create uncertainty within President Obama. Obama would meet with various components of the pro-invasion faction, almost always with Jarrett present, and then often fail to indicate his position. This situation continued for some time, though the division between Jarrett/Obama and the rest intensified more recently, most notably from Hillary Clinton. She was livid over the president’s failure to act, and her office began a campaign of anonymous leaks to the media indicating such. As for Jarrett, her concern rested on two primary fronts. One, that the military action could fail and harm the president’s already weakened standing with both the American public and the world. Second, that the attack would be viewed as an act of aggression against Muslims, and further destabilize conditions in the Middle East.

Wow. Yes, those should be our primary concerns when it comes to National Security, would it make Obama look bad, and angering Muslims? Good grief. That does confirm what many of us have thought, though. Our National Security has been couched by how it will appear to Muslims around the world, not about what is best for the United States of America. There is something seriously, seriously wrong with that.

The interviewer then asked about how they got Obama to change his opinion, to which the insider said they didn’t – Obama didn’t HAVE an opinion. The complete response is too long to include here, but the term “masterful manipulation” was used to describe how Leon Panetta made this happen. Here is just part of the response by the Insider:

[snip] Basically, the whole damn operation was already ready to go – including the specific team support Intel necessary to engage the enemy within hours of being given notice. Panetta then made plans to proceed with an on-ground assault. This information reached either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates first (likely via military contacts directly associated with the impending mission) who then informed the other. Those two then met with Panetta, who informed each of them he had been given the authority by the president to proceed with a mission if the opportunity presented itself. Both Gates and Clinton warned Panetta of the implications of that authority – namely he was possibly being made into a scapegoat. Panetta admitted that possibility, but felt the opportunity to get Bin Laden outweighed that risk. During that meeting, Hillary Clinton was first to pledge her full support for Panetta, indicating she would defend him if necessary. Similar support was then followed by Gates. The following day, and with Panetta’s permission, Clinton met in private with Bill Daley and urged him to get the president’s full and open approval of the Panetta plan. Daley agreed such approval would be of great benefit to the action, and instructed Clinton to delay proceeding until he had secured that approval. Daley contacted Clinton within hours of their meeting indicating Jarrett refused to allow the president to give that approval (emphasis mine). Daley then informed Clinton that he too would fully support Panetta in his actions, even if it meant disclosing the president’s indecision to the American public should that action fail to produce a successful conclusion. Clinton took that message back to Panetta and the CIA director initiated the 48 hour engagement order. At this point, the President of the United States was not informed of the engagement order – it did not originate from him, and for several hours after the order had been given and the special ops forces were preparing for action into Pakistan from their position in Afghanistan, Daley successfully kept Obama and Jarrett insulated from that order. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

At this point, you may be wondering just who Valerie Jarrett is, and why she has so much influence over Obama, more so than a number of top Cabinet officials. Well, she is the Senior Advisor to the President now, but prior to that worked for Mayor Richard Daley, and hired Michelle Obama as an assistant to the mayor. Oh, but get this – only after “…re-assuring Michelle’s fiancé, Barack Obama, that the job was right for her.” Gee, sexist much?

Anyway, here are some of the ways in which she has been described:

Chicago businesswoman Valerie Jarrett has earned all sorts of nicknames as an aide to President-elect Barack Obama — from “First Friend” to “big sister” to “the other half of Obama’s brain.” As co-chair of his transition team, Jarrett has spent the past week denying rumors, parsing policy changes and insisting that she doesn’t know where she’ll end up in the new administration (although Beltway gossip suggests she may be appointed to Obama’s seat in the Senate). Of her relationship with the 44th commander-in-chief, Jarrett says simply: “He is my dear friend. I would do anything the President of the United States asked me to do.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

And apparently, she has a tremendous amount of sway over Obama in terms of policy, foreign and national. That is quite something for someone who was not elected, or had to pass Congressional scrutiny.

But that is not all there is to Valerie Jarrett (or Michelle Obama). There is more that is not so glowing:

[snip]But not a word about Jarrett’s involvement in Michelle Obama’s patient-dumping scheme at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Jarrett sat of the board of directors.

And not a word about Jarrett’s involvement in Grove Parc — the Chicago slum complex managed by Jarrett’s company, Habitat, Inc. To this day, Jarrett refuses to answer questions about the dilapidated housing development. [snip](Click here to read the rest.)

Yeah, she’s a piece of work, the embodiment of a Chicago-style politics. But she also is someone who has WAY too much power in the White House, and way too much power over affairs of State.

Again, if only 80% of what the White House Insider says is true, this is damaging stuff, indeed. It explains a lot, though, including Obama’s look while sitting in the Kiddy chair while the mission unfolded, and how fortunate we are that there are actual grown ups in this Administration willing to stick their necks out to protect our nation. One thing is for sure – that does not include Obama or Valerie Jarrett. When push came to shove, Obama continued to cave to Jarrett rather than listen to the people in positions to know better. His incompetence is dwarfed only by his narcissism for taking credit for results for which he had no involvement whatsoever.

One thing is crystal clear – Obama is not presidential material, and he sure as hell should not be president again. At least that’s what I think. How about you?

Yep, Hamas has “condemned” the killing:

While many Middle East leaders welcomed America’s military action, the mixed reaction across the region cast a shadow over both the “Arab Spring” and the future of talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

[...]

The Hamas prime minister of the Gaza strip, Ismail Haniya, said: “We condemn the assassination of a Muslim and Arab warrior and we pray to God that his soul rests in peace.

“We regard this as the continuation of the American oppression and shedding of blood of Muslims and Arabs.”

The Hamas reaction put it immediately at odds with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, with which it is due to sign a unity deal today to join the Palestinian government.

Oops. Still, good to know where they stand, isn’t it? Not that I really expected anything different from Hamas.

And how about its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood? (And yes, Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood as its “political arm in December 1987…“) Well, this headline pretty much says it all:
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Sticks With Bin Laden Uh, yeah. That does pretty much say it all, but of course, you know there is more, beginning with the lovely slogan behind the head of Mohamed Badie below:

Mohamed Badie, the leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, talks during a news conference in Cairo on November 30, 2010. The banner in the background reads: “Islam is the solution.” By Amr Dalsh/Reuters

Oh, yes – they are such a moderate group, that Brotherhood, aren’t they? Ahem.

Back to the article:

[snip] Most of yesterday’s headlines proclaiming the death of Osama bin Laden used epithets like “terror mastermind” or “bastard” to refer to the internationally feared mass murderer. (That latter headline is from the New York Post.) But in its first public statement on the killing of bin Laden, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood used the honorific term “sheikh” to refer to the al-Qaeda leader. It also accused Western governments of linking Islam and terrorism, and defended “resistance” against the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as “legitimate.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s response to bin Laden’s death may finally end the mythology — espoused frequently in the U.S. — that the organization is moderate or, at the very least, could moderate once in power. This is, after all, precisely how Muslim Brothers describe their creed — “moderate,” as opposed to al-Qaeda, which is radical. “Moderate Islam means not using violence, denouncing terrorism, and not working with jihadists,” said Muslim Brotherhood youth activist Khaled Hamza, for whom the organization’s embrace of “moderate Islam” was the primary reason he joined.

Yet the Muslim Brotherhood’s promise that its “moderation” means rejecting violence includes a gaping exception: the organization endorses violence against military occupations, which its leaders have told me include Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Palestine — in other words, nearly every major conflict on the Eurasian continent. “I never fought in Afghanistan,” Mehdi Akef, the former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, told me in January, just before the revolt. “But I encouraged them and sent money to Bosnia and Palestine until now.” Muslim Brotherhood leaders have endorsed attacks on Israeli civilians as an exception to their no-violence-except-against-occupation exception, viewing all of Israel as an occupation. “Zionism is gangs,” said Akef. “It’s not a country. So we will resist them until they don’t have a country.”

Huh. So, let’s recap – the Muslim Brotherhood fancies itself “moderate” because they are not “jihadists,” yet they have a jihad against the United States, and think it is A-Okay to target Israeli civilians. But they are “moderates.” Got it.

Get this, though – there are even more contradictions for the Muslim Brotherhood to deal with in its propaganda attempts. Oops, I mean, in stating their credo:

The attacks of September 11, 2001, however, created a real problem for the Muslim Brotherhood’s paradigms, since it was a violent attack against civilians on territory that could not be considered occupied. Rather than denounce the attacks, however, the organization chose to argue, outrageously, that Islamists were not responsible.

In some cases, Muslim Brothers have simply expressed doubts about the “theory” that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks. “I don’t believe it was jihadists. It was too big an operation,” said Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Office who is often touted as one of the organization’s reformers. “This was done by a country, not individuals. It’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s just logical. They didn’t bring this crime before the U.S. justice system until now. Why? Because it’s part of a conspiracy.”

Uh huh. So, even though Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda took credit for 9/11 (and a bunch of other attacks), we aren’t to believe them, or retaliate for them because the Muslim Brotherhood thinks it’s some cockamamie conspiracy theory? Hmm. How do I respond to that? Oh, I know – they can bite me.

Oh, but wait – it gets worse. Guess who they actually blame? This should not be a surprise:

More frequently, Muslim Brotherhood leaders blame a more predictable target. “The Jews and the Zionist lobby,” Muslim Brotherhood legal thinker and former parliamentarian Sobhi Saleh declared to me one March afternoon in his Cairo office, when I asked him who was responsible for the attacks. “And this study is well-known in America and it’s on the Internet. And a Christian preacher in Lebanon gave me a book on this at a conference. And it was a scientific research.”

But of course, it’s all Israel’s fault. That’s right. Sure it was. I mean, really, how can one disagree with such blinding logic? I jest – this is not logic. It’s something (fill in the blank), but logic it ain’t.

Finally, check out the Muslim Brotherhood’s statement on the death of bin Laden. Pay close attention to their victim-hood claims:

[snip]“The whole world, and especially the Muslims, have lived with a fierce media campaign to brand Islam as terrorism and describe the Muslims as violent by blaming the September 11th incident on al-Qaeda.” It then notes that “Sheikh Osama bin Laden” was assassinated alongside “a woman and one of his sons and with a number of his companions,” going on to issue a rejection of violence and assassinations…

[...]

In a way, the Muslim Brotherhood’s statement is vintage bin Laden: it’s Muslim lands, not America, that are under attack; it’s Muslims, not American civilians, who are the ultimate victims; and, despite two American presidents’ genuine, effusive promises to the contrary, Islam is the target. It’s an important indicator that despite its increased responsibility in post-Mubarak Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood may well remain deeply hostile toward even the one of the most basic and defensible of American interests in the Middle East — that of securing Americans from terrorism. (Click here to read the rest.)

Indeed. Poor pitiful things – everyone is SO mean to them. Blech.

Their claims against violence are a bit of a stretch, are they not? Especially when Hamas is a part of this very organization, and they have declared Jihad against the USA, as well as violence against Israeli citizens. Honestly, though, it still boggles my mind how many Americans happily went along with this group taking over Egypt, and how many were even DEFENDING them. But you know, you just can’t make some people see reason or accept facts. One would think, though, that as long as groups like this keep speaking up, those Americans who had/have no problem with the MB might just think again.

Hey, a woman can dream, can’t she?

Their unlikely agreement came as all three insisted it would have been better for the White House to release the post-mortem photos of Osama bin Laden, rather than doing what Sarah Palin called “pussyfooting around.” Sarah Palin via CBS News:

“Show photo as warning to others seeking America’s destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama; it’s part of the mission.”

Most shocking is that the WaPo’s Eugene Robinson agreed with her, although he did so in more polite language. Here is his reasoning:…

[E]ven if they would have “inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden. He was supposed to have cheated death while fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, walking tall through fields of fire as the bullets somehow missed. He escaped the Americans who cornered him at Tora Bora. He evaded capture for a decade, despite the best efforts of the West’s spies and soldiers.

Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man.

Robinson, like WSJ’s Peggy Noonan, believes this would have also quieted conspiracy theorists. But most importantly, Mr. Robinson stated,

The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.

In her article Show the Proof, Mr. President, WSJ’s Peggy Noonan offered her deepest admiration and congratulations to the U.S. Navy Seal team who accomplished this difficult and dangerous mission. While she also congratulated President Obama for telling CIA Chief Leon Panetta to “get this guy,” Noonan acknowledged that “with our president there is always a however….”:

[H]e has spent almost every moment since his Sunday night speech [announcing bin Laden's death] displaying both a tin ear and a chronic tendency to misunderstand his own country. His refusal to release more evidence that Osama is dead is allowing a great story to dissolve into a mystery. He is letting a triumph turn into a conspiracy theory
.
[In this age]… “People believe nothing. They think everything is spin and lies.”

And why not – the spin from a number of administrations, especially this one and the last, would make anyone dizzy. Noonan states:

Mr. Obama misunderstands all this. He tells Steve Croft Sunday on Sixty Minutes that showing photos of the dead Osama would be to “spike the football.” “We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies.” Trophies? Who does he think we are?

I can understand her disgust at his comment. The idea of the “spiking the football” refers to a self-congratulatory, self-aggrandizing mode of behavior. Perhaps the president is viewing this event through his own paradigm. There is nothing resembling a victory lap about those needing to see for themselves that a criminal who delivered a “gutshot” to America has been brought to justice. Noonan states:

It’s not about pride, it’s about proof. “We got him, shot him and immediately threw him in the sea” is not enough. The U.S. government should release all the evidence it has that does not compromise security. Pictures of Osama are said to be gruesome. Then get the least gruesome one and put it out. Release the DNA evidence, incriminating information found in the house, and pictures of the raid. If there was a passport under the mattress, make it public. And let the SEALs tell their story. Allow them, if they are willing and eager, to go on “Nightline,” “Frontline” and “60 Minutes.” If they cannot be identified or don’t wish to be, put a blue dot over their faces, filter their voices, and don’t use their names….

Americans don’t want to spike the ball. They just want to show they crossed the goal line.

She discussed Sunday night’s celebration in the streets. While it may have felt odd and at once discomfiting, it offered at least some small measure of justice – that the architect of this horror was finally punished for his heinous crime.

The National Journal also polled some of our top officials to see who “voted” yes or no on the release of such photos. Interestingly, the divide was not on party lines.

Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Gates voted no, worrying that the photos would provoke a backlash in the Middle East, endangering our troops. House Speaker John Boehner voted “no” saying he had no doubts as to bin Laden’s death, while Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins felt the most important reason to release these pictures would be to dispel suspicions he might still be alive. CIA director Leon Panetta has said he “expected” a photo proving bin Laden’s death to be released.

Apparently, President Obama disagreed.

While I have no wish to look at these gruesome photos myself, it seems to me we should defer to the troops who are currently in harm’s way and then to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 before we consider anyone else’s.

What say you?

**************
*Although (Prez Obama cheerleader) Eugene Robinson did reluctantly admit that Palin had a point on her characterization of Obamacare “death panels.”

Basically, a foreign national has been killed by another foreign army. What does Pakistan have to do with this, then? Nothing and everything. And this nothing yet everything has placed Pakistan between a rock and a hard place.

If Pakistan admits that it helped US forces kill bin Laden it fears a backlash from the different militant organizations with in its boundaries, and if it denies any such cooperation then it will be labeled a supporter of Al Qaeda.

For this reason Pakistan – which is defined as the Pakistan Army and the agencies, including the infamous ISI – stayed silent. So silent that it’s scary. It’s the silence before the storm. This storm is not necessarily directed at the US, the CIA, Afghanistan or India. The tempest could be directed at foreign militants. Remaining silent was a wise approach and the best strategy so far for Pakistan. Be aware of that silence. The pendulum could swing either way. The forces that actually control Pakistan — and I’m not referring to politicians — could back any horse at this point. Or spread the wager across the board. Only time will tell.

The US media has been hammering Pakistan day and night. The media should consider Pakistan’s tight spot here. The US needs help, not just rooting terrorist networks out of Pakistan but in Afghanistan as well. It’s not easy for a country to sustain repeated bombardments, knowing that it depends on the country doing the bombing for large quantities of foreign aid. Already, a number of politicians and the Pakistani media are defining the bin Laden raid as another example of infringement of sovereignty and using bin Laden’s death to goad the US to pull out of Afghanistan. Rock, meet hard place. If only the US media understood that.

Then there have been conflicting reports coming out of various US departments. But the fact is that the raid could not have succeeded without the ISI’s help. Clearly bin Laden’s time was up. Given the ISI’s deserved reputation for treachery and intrigues, wouldn’t there have been a strong and deep bunker under that mansion to hide bin Laden? Or a maze of tunnels to help him and his family escape? Bin Laden was trapped, with the local support on the ground.

Obama said last night that he got confirmed reports of bin Laden’s location last week. I looked out for events that happened last week. President Obama was busy dealing with Trump’s nonsense, while the Pentagon was hosting ISI chief General Pasha. Coincidence? I don’t think so. There must have been a deal, a tit for tat.

Pakistan’s religious quarters have already started to question then authenticity of the killing. Above all, they have started asking US to wrap up their “war” and leave the region. Which again the US or NATO cannot afford to do. Not yet at least. The US has to deal with Afghanistan, Karzai, the Taliban, the Quetta shura…and the list goes on.

So let’s not get carried away here. The war is not over yet. Bin Laden killing has improved Obama’s approval ratings, but bin Laden’s death has hardly put a dent on al Qaeda. Keeping in mind that Al Qaeda’s's real ideological inspiration is al-Zuwahiri, who’s still very much alive. And probably on the ISI’s watch list too.

I had another post all ready to go this morning of Lara Logan’s interview on “60 Minutes,” but that can keep until tomorrow. Today, the big news, as President Obama announced late last night, Osama bin Laden has been killed.

The reports have been a bit conflicting on just how he died, however. Initially, reports stated he had been killed by a drone attack last week, and that they had kept his body to determine through DNA analysis that it was indeed him.

Obama’s statement to the nation, though, claimed that he had (reaffirmed) the order to the CIA to get bin Laden (Bush initially gave the order), and that bin Laden was killed yesterday. Now we are told it was a Navy Seal who took him down, on a mission aided by CIA intel, as well as information gleamed from Khalid Sheik Muhammad at Gitmo. Apparently, the Pakistanis aided the US in this mission as well.

Following are excerpts of Obama’s remarks on this historic event (and I am glad he was finally able to use the word, “terrorist,” since it was one he and his Administration have worked hard not to use. Ahem.):

“Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

“It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

“And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

“On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to (emphasis mine – you knew it was coming, right?), or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

“We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

“Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support. And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

“Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

“And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

“Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

I admit, while watching this, I was waiting for Obama to say, “I just returned from Pakistan where I, personally, took out Osama bin Laden, with the help of our military. And you thought George Bush was a cowboy. He doesn’t have anything on me.” Sorry, but there were just a few too many “I”‘s in there for someone who has downplayed the whole issue of terrorism.

Yes, he gave the command to proceed, which is good. Yet many are acting as if this is showing great leadership on his part, while to me, it seems like a no-brainer. I mean, really – have our expectations of him sunk so low that the opportunity to take out this mastermind of terror is seen as a sign of “leadership”? Wow.

Back to the comments:

“For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

“Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must — and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad.

“As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not — and never will be — at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Hillary Clinton just made the point that bin Laden killed many Muslims, too, just as Obama did, and that bin Laden had made threats against Pakistanis themselves. One can make of that what one will…

More from Obama:

[snip] “Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

“The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.

“So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.

“Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.

“We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

“Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.[snip]

There is a bit more to this speech, and you can click here to read it.

Can I just say, though, listening and watching Obama last night really puts a lie to the meme that he is such a great speaker. He isn’t. His speech was stilted and halting, with a number of mistakes as he read the teleprompter. It was blatantly clear that he was – you could watch his eyes move.

I am confused as to why they chose to bury bin Laden at sea, and so quickly. I would have thought they would want to perform an autopsy, recover the bullet that killed him, see if he really was ill, all of that. So that choice is interesting to me. Why the rush to dispose of him? Oh, wait – here is why – it is in keeping with Islamic tradition.

Huh? Okay, so Obama makes it crystal clear that bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. However, we do know he was the leader of Al Qaeda, a Muslim organization, but alright. Interesting distinction Obama (and Clinton) are making here. Still,we finally get this mass murderer, we have his body, and we forgo obtaining some answers to uphold his religious tradition? Wow. What do you think about that? Is it an attempt to stave off more attacks?

If so, that is a bit misguided. We KNOW there will be reprisals from Al Qaeda as a result,as Leon Panetta has acknowledged we can expect. Honestly, these people are bound and determined to get us anyway, so taking out this one man who has caused so much damage to our great nation is a reason to be thankful, even if one abhors violence, or killing for any reason.

Bringing justice to this man who has done so much damage to our nation as a result of the tireless efforts of our intelligence community and our highly trained military, is a good day. Thanks to all of those who have worked to this end, though it is not an end to the war on terrorism. Bin Laden may be gone, but there are others out there wishing us harm. Our military and intelligence officers continue to have their work cut out for them, regardless of Obama taking the credit for this, it belongs, IMHO, to those who were on the ground. Well done.

There is a video I want to share with you. It is an impromptu celebration at Ground Zero after learning of bin Laden’s demise. This pretty much says it all, though there are many good videos out there of interviews with family members of those lost on 9/11, and first responders. I urge you to take a look and listen when you have time. Until then, I leave you with this:

UPDATE: A few of you have been kind enough to provide links regarding why Osama bin Laden was buried at sea. Here are the pertinent facts:

[snip] The official described the procedure to NBC News as follows:

* The deceased’s body was washed and then placed in a white sheet.
* The body was placed in a weighted bag.
* A military officer read prepared religious remarks that were translated into Arabic by a native speaker.
* After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased’s body eased into the sea from the USS Carl Vinson.

The rites sparked a debate about Islamic customs, with some Muslim clerics calling the procedure humiliating and others saying it was proper.

A U.S. official said that the burial decision was made after concluding that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. There also was speculation about worry that a grave site could have become a rallying point for militants.

President Barack Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial. [snip]

Okay, so there weren’t a lot of countries willing to accept his body. There is cremation, after all.

And how do you feel that so much care was taken to prepare his body according to Islamic tradition? Wow…

And that would be this Bloomberg article, Saudi Women Inspired by Fall of Mubarak Step Up Equality Demand. Wow, right? Honestly, I did not see this as a potential change, primarily because of the influx of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the very likely scenario that women who enjoyed more freedoms in Egypt, will soon be losing them (if they haven’t already). Sill, this is exciting:

Activists among Saudi Arabia’s women, who can’t drive or vote and need male approval to work and travel, are turning to the type of online organizing that helped topple Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to force change in a system they say treats them like children.

The “Baladi” or “My Country” campaign is focused on this year’s municipal elections, only the second nationwide ballot that the absolute monarchy has allowed. The election board yesterday said women will be excluded from the Sept. 22 vote. Another group, the Saudi Women’s Revolution, citing inspiration from the Arab activism that grew into revolts against Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is pressing for equal treatment and urging international support.

The wave of anti-regime protests that spread from Tunisia and Egypt into some of Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf neighbors, such as Bahrain and Oman, hasn’t translated into mass street demonstrations in the kingdom that holds the world’s biggest oil reserves. Saudi rulers have taken steps to ensure it won’t, pledging almost $100 billion of spending on homes, jobs and benefits. They also deployed thousands of police in Riyadh on March 11, when a protest was planned by Internet organizers — a group that increasingly includes Saudi women.

“Women are raised to fear men and to fear speaking out,” said Mona al-Ahmed, a 25-year-old in the coastal city of Jeddah. She said she joined the Women’s Revolution campaign after her brother refused to let her take her dream job, as a biochemist, because it would involve working in a mixed-gender environment. “I opened my eyes one day and said, ‘This is not the life I want’,” al-Ahmed said in a phone interview.

Well, I suppose that is one way of keeping the people in place, right? Ahem.

But this is telling indeed of how women in Saudi Arabia, our ally, live. We may hear bits and pieces about it, but at this point, it seems we just take for granted women are treated like shit there.

Think I am being hyperbolic? Think again:

[snip] Like other opposition and protest groups in Saudi Arabia, the women’s movement faces a tough task. The kingdom ranked as the least democratic state in the Middle East, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 Democracy Index.

“Women will not participate in this session,” Abdul- Rahman al-Dahmash, director of the kingdom’s electoral commission, said at a press conference yesterday, referring to the municipal balloting. “There is a plan, though not with a definite time, to put in place a framework so that women can participate in upcoming elections.”

Baladi said on its Facebook page that Saudi women “are like other women in the world who have hopes and ambitions” and must be allowed to vote.

While Saudi Arabia was placed in the top one-third of nations in the United Nations 2010 Human Development Report — higher than European Union member Bulgaria — its score for gender equality was much lower. On that UN measure, which includes assessments of reproductive health and participation in politics and the labor market, the country ranked 128th of 138 nations, below Iran and Pakistan. [snip]

You know it is bad when you rank BELOW Iran and Pakistan on the treatment of women. Seriously. How bad must you be to be WORSE than Iran and Pakistan??

Let’s just pause for a moment and see how women are treated in Iran (I warn you, this is a difficult video to watch, contains violent images):

Women are worth half as much as men. They are culpable at the age of 9 for “crimes,” while boys aren’t until they are 16. Women cannot divorce their husbands. Men can have many wives. And that is but a minute amount of with what these women live.

Well, how about Pakistan, then? This video gives a good overview (again, difficult to watch):

“Considered to be the property of men.” Uh, yeah. Not allowed to leave the house. Infant girls killed. Slave girls trapped from other countries and sold every day. Education morally corrupts girls, thus they should not have it.

And Saudi Arabia is farther down the list than Pakistan in its treatment of women.

I’m sorry, I need a moment to compose myself.

Back to the reality facing women in Saudi Arabia:

[snip] Saudi Arabia enforces the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam and its clerics say that requires strict segregation of the sexes, including in government offices, workplaces and public spaces such as restaurants. Other areas of discontent highlighted by women writers and activists include family law. A Saudi man can end his marriage by telling his wife, “You are divorced,” while women must go to a court or an authorized cleric to get a dissolution. Custody of children above a certain age is usually granted to the father.

Saudi Arabia is also one of the few countries that has a high rate of executions for women, Amnesty International said in a 2008 report. (Emphasis mine.) Adultery is among the capital offenses.

[...]

Those are among the goals of the Women’s Revolution group, which began as an exchange of Twitter messages among likeminded women, and now has more than 2,000 Facebook supporters. “Women are treated like minors, except if they commit a crime,” the group said in a statement on Facebook. “Then they are equal.”

Alia al-Faqih, 19, said this year’s Arab revolts inspired her to join the group and demand change in her country.

“The protesters in Egypt and Tunisia did something that was almost impossible,” she said in a telephone interview from Jeddah. “If they could bring down two tough presidents, why can’t we demand our rights?”

Why, indeed? Women in Saudia Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and many countries around the world must do just that – demand their rights. Though as noted above, with the increased presence of the Sharia Law-loving Muslim Brotherhood rising up in Egypt, simply getting a change at the top does not mean a change throughout the country. And in the case of Egypt, it is a change for the worse for women.

And speaking of change, there has been some lip service paid to changing the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, but it is largely window dressing:

[snip] Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Abdullah, who turns 87 this year, has pledged to improve the status of women. He opened the kingdom’s first co-educational university in 2009, appointed its first female deputy minister, Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, the same year, and has promised steps to improve access to jobs for women, who make up about 15 percent of the workforce. That would help improve productivity in the kingdom’s oil-dominated economy, say analysts including John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi.

A change of policy in 2008 allowed women to stay in hotels without male guardians, and an amendment to the Labor Law allowed women to work in all fields “suitable to their nature.” Women can now study law at university, without being allowed to practice as lawyers in courts.

At some companies, such as billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Co. (KINGDOM), women are permitted to work alongside men. That isn’t typical, though. Most companies that hire women must provide a women-only section that is off- limits to the male staff.

Human Rights Watch concluded in January that “reforms to date have involved largely symbolic steps to improve the visibility of women.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Yes, superficial reforms at best in Saudi Arabia, not the systemic changes in attitude and treatment of women that need to change.

I know I have asked this before, but how, how, in the Twenty-first century, are women around the globe still being treated as less than human, as chattel, as property, as worthless, as animals, as dirt? How do we, as a nation, not demand that the countries with whom we do business treat women as full human beings?

Lest anyone think this is a problem “over there,” I assure you, what happens to women there affects women here. When an 11 year old girl can be gang raped, by adult men, numerous times, right here in Texas, as well as California, we must acknowledge that what happens to women and girls here, in Saudi Arabia, around the world, matters.

It matters a lot. Just after I finished writing this, I received an email from MADRE about the kidnapping and torture of a youth activist in Iraq. This kind of treatment of women is happening day in and day out, sadly.

And so, for those women in Saudi Arabia, may the ripples continue to widen. May they change the way women are treated, at home and abroad, may the treatment of women matter as much as the oil beneath the sands, and may women be treated as fully human around the globe. That is my prayer…

Does Pakistan suffer today because of his death? Yes. Does it change anything on the ground? No. 

He was slain because he called the notorious blasphemy law as black law. He stood up for a Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy and was sentenced to death by a local court. Taseer wanted his government to repeal the blasphemy law that was incorporated in the 1980s by the military dictator General Ziaul Haq. It was a legitimate demand. In his own words, “these are man made laws and men can correct this”. 

These black laws will now be repealed or not? This does not change anything on the ground either. 

Nothing will change on the ground because nothing changed a decade ago when a Christian cricket player on the national team was allegedly forced to convert. Nothing changed when pop singers one after another started denouncing their own careers and joined the elite mullah ranks. Not a thing changed when two boys were lynched publicly just last year. These were the obvious symptoms of a society turning intolerant, self-righteous, and violent. A society without the respect for law and order. 

It changed nothing back then, it will not change anything now. Hence, the events that followed Salmaan Taseer’s gruesome murder are disturbing. These events have nothing to do with a religion, or its preaching, but everything to do with the mindset that has been developed over the years. Evidently, this mindset is irrespective of class. The jubilant response on Facebook and YouTube was not by the uneducated and madrassa clan. A Pakistani blogger summed it up well: “If you go through the profiles of Qadri supporters on Facebook, you’d think Justin Bieber was the cause of extremism in Pakistan.” 

The killer’s overwhelming welcome at the courts by men who know how and why a law is made demonstrates that the liberals – a minority in Pakistan – have been reduced to an endangered species.  

And that is what has changed. And that is what matters today on the ground in Pakistan. 

Do a little math. The killer is a 26 year old man and hails from a semi-urban area. He joined the Elite force in 2003 which means he was 18 then. General Musharraf toppled a democratic government in 1999, and the killer must have been 14. And this is the age group that’s using the Internet, Facebook, YouTube and blogs more aggressively. This is the age group that went through a whole “moderate enlightenment” phase fully sponsored by Pervez Musharraf and shamelessly supported by George Bush for almost over a decade. And this is the group that has the street power in Pakistan. This is the group that is the future of Pakistan. Its mind has been infiltrated by private television, launched during Musharraf’s era. Instead of promoting freedom of speech, it promoted violence, illiteracy and conspiracy theories. It produced the “I-know-more-than-you-know-coz-I-like-that-anchor-and-you-dont-watch-that-show” minds, whereas before young men from the same age group used to extract influence from their family heads. 

The dual game of the military government ten years ago, fully supported and encouraged by the US government, produced a whole generation that detests its own constitution and Western freedom of speech values. This generation is the raw material available to and exploited by religious groups, ready to kill and get killed. My philanthropist friend Manzur Ejaz believes that the right wing in Pakistan is organized and has ideological strength. It has been supported by the State machinery through an education system and infested state institutions, while its opposition lacks committed people, organization and a cause. 

This sorry state of Pakistan is pretty much an example of Martin Niemoller’s ‘First They Came.’ 

They came first for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.



Then they came for me

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

This existing situation has nothing to do with the drone attacks carried out today or the policy changed in favor of Pakistan. The ruling party was once considered a liberal group, but now its own members and sitting ministers publicly announced that they will shoot a blasphemer themselves. They align themselves with so-called “moderate” Muslim politicians like Imran Khan who have practiced Western values but sympathise with the Taliban. 

This indicates that now the dominant political philosophies are right, center to right and very right groups. It has men that have a soft heart for fundamentalists. The absence of a left–because the representative parties or groups were systematically dismantled by military dictators–will bring more extremism. 

Persons with liberal thoughts need protection, which requires some strategy as well as strength. It has to organize itself and build an anti-mullah manpower. It’s a war now, and decisions taken today will reflect the systems adopted in the future. And that will change everything on the ground.

–
Crosspost: ThePakistanUpdate.com

It is believed that his cover was blown in retaliation for naming ISI chief Ahamad Shuja Pasha in a US lawsuit by families of 26/11 Mumbai attack victims. The suit asserts that Pasha and other ISI officers were ‘purposefully engaged in the direct provision of material support or resources’ to the planners of the Mumbai attacks.

A similar legal complaint was filed in Pakistan on behalf of Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan who said that his son and brother were killed in a drone strike. Khan was seeking $500 million in compensation, and accusing CIA’s top officer in Pakistan of running a clandestine spying operation out of the United States Embassy.

This locking of horns should have been tackled sensibly. Instead, the confrontation ended up costing CIA an experienced officer. Interestingly, not many Americans known the name of the former CIA station chief, whereas whole of Pakistan is familiar of his name, especially the people in North Waziristan. Yes, North Waziristan, which the US believes is the new haven of militant extremists. 

This is not the first time that the two agencies have engaged in a power struggle. On September 30th this year, a US fighter helicopter crossed into Pakistan airspace and fired on a position occupied by Pakistani soldiers. As a result of this attack, three soldiers were killed and the rest severely injured. 

Hurting an ally came with a huge price for the US when Pakistan halted the flow of NATO supplies into Afghanistan through the Torkham for at least 10 days. It’s not that the trucks were just parked and were driven away after the ban was lifted. The Pakistani agency made sure to set an example and did not guard the trucks. As a result, the trucks were attacked by terrorists. 

These are just two major incidents that happened this year on Pakistan’s home ground, where the CIA, NATO, the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department cannot act without the ISI’s blessing. Its not your turf, but theirs.
Not helping ease relations were notorious incidents such as the threat by an obscure American pastor to burn the Quran, protests against a proposed Islamic Center in New York City and a Pakistani official delegation cutting its trip to United States short because of protocol issues. 

To make matters worse, none of the internecine US-Pakistan clashes were reported properly in the American press. The coverage was either one-sided or full of accusations. The media did cover the NATO trucks blockage, but offered neither context nor an apology for the cause of the attack. It did cover the removal of the CIA spy but did not suggest establishing person-to-person contact rather than strictly military-to-military relations. 

US agencies, whether on or off the ground, have to realize that Pakistan has sacrificed a lot more than it deserves. The Americans at the same time need to know that United States’ presence in Afghanistan has radicalized Pakistanis and turned many of them not only against the West. One count says the Pakistan army has lost more than 3,200 soldiers in recent fighting against Taliban forces along their border with Afghanistan. This does not include the civilians killed by drone attacks or by the suicide bombers.

This little rift between the two agencies is an open secret, and has been going on for years now. Every now and then, the CIA tries to prove that it has more resources and pushes ISI to ‘act as advised’. It needs to bring its ego down a notch, just for the sake of the war which both countries have to win.