/s
How's that.
And that's a GOOD thing.
That is the prime reason the strike was a success....
“Turns out Pakistanis did not give permission for the latest strike in South Waziristan which killed six insurgents and destroyed a container load worth of arms/ammunition. “
Target. Match. Fire.
Nicely done. The Paks should be sending thank you notes instead of complaints.
“Pakistan Did Not Give Permission for Latest Missile Strike”
They didn’t???? Oops.
Well, my question would be, why didn't the Paki's take them out? And furthermore, if they didn't want to, or couldn't, why didn't they give us permission to do it? Sounds like plausibe deniability, to me. How come the media can nuance things for foreign nations, but not the U.S.?
Since when did international diplomacy or war ever require governments to openly say what they are planning or doing?
Does Orbat believe in the Tooth Fairy?
The Pakis idn’t give their permission?
Or didn’t even know it was going on?
Either way, p on ‘em.
Dead Terrorists.
Thats a GOOD THING.
Who knew or said what? Who gives a rats ass?
I agree with his comment on the press...
A bigger bunch of half-wit, half-educated people is hard to find..
and...
We periodically slam the American press for its imbecility, so we are overjoyed to find the Euro press can match the Americans fair and square in this respect.
I would like to get an objective assesment of who they are before having an opinion.
I did notice that after all that "handwringing," they neither suggest what should be done to fix any perceived problem.
On the other hand they are no more entitled to classified information than my pet rat.
The writer has correctly noted that the Pakistanis play a double game.
We also are forced to play a double or triple game. We can't occupy the country, we are stretched far too thin for that.
In a sense, Iraq was relatively simple. The forces there can be counted on one's fingers. It may take both hands, but the forces there are countable.
In Afghanistan we did not attempt a Russian-style invasion, instead we inserted ourselves into the country and allied ourselves with various indigenous forces already existing there. In some ways this is what we finally did in Iraq as part of the so-called surge.
It could be that to be successful in Pakistan we must do something similar; identify forces whose aims are such that we can ally with them. Until now we've been trying to treat them like a real country, dealing with the various institutions of government, carefully respecting their sovereignty. We may have moved past that now. If the formal government can't help us in Waziristan, or actively betrays us in Waziristan, maybe we need to be forming our own relationships with Waziris as we did in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance. Find war-lords who for reasons of their own need an ally with connections, and offer to help them achieve their ambitions.
Will that annoy Islamabad? Of course. So we have to do the same thing there, which is to form our own relationships with the various component parts that make up the government. If the government doesn't really control the country, you have to deal with those who do. And if the ones who do control it are allied with the baddies, you have to identify forces in the country who could counter-balance them. And offer them your help.
India has a role to play in all this; they have their own intelligence sources. And they have consented to help us play "good-cop-bad-cop" in Pakistan from time to time, allowing us to be the kindly old cop who keeps the big Indian cop from threatening poor Pakistan.
Unless India is prepared to dismantle Pakistan and swallow it whole, I don't see much alternative to the present game other than to get very much better at it.
I’m convinced the Pakis are fully complicit in what’s happening near their Afghan border.
The screeching denunciations are a false front to keep the wackos happy.
And now after the Marriot bombing they’ll probably be helping us more than ever.
Hey! Missile strikes happen.
LOL!
Hey Orbat. Face it. Neither you nor I know as much about what is going on in Paki....