Posted on 03/31/2009 5:34:05 AM PDT by Freedom of Speech Wins
Obama to propose 2.8 billion dollars military aid for Pakistan
Lahore, Mar. 31 : President Barack Obama has planned to propose 2.8 billion dollars in aid for the Pakistani military to intensify the US-led war on terror along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The military aid would be in addition to the civilian aid--1.5 billion dollars a year for five years.
According to Fox News, the military aid will be dedicated exclusively to "equipping, training, and building infrastructure directly related to counterinsurgency operations."
The channel quoted General David Petraeus, as telling that the plan will be called the "Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund".
Official sources revealed that the US has charted out the plan in such a way that none of the aid would be spent in a way that would give Pakistan a greater capacity to attack another country, such as India.
US Commanders would have total control over how the money is spent, they said.
The aid would be distributed over the span of five years, with the first 400 million dollars added to the fiscal year 2009 supplemental request for war fighting.
Another 700 million dollars would be in the fiscal 2010 base budget. Then 575 million dollars would be spent each year from fiscal 2011 through 2013.
On Friday, Obama had described Pakistan's FATA region as "the most dangerous place in the world.
Can any politicians stand up to stop the giving of money to Pakistan.
How about our country keeps the money rather than give it to a country that doesn't like us very much.
McCain said that he wouldn't give taxpayer dollars to countries that don't like us very much if he was elected and drew huge applause with the idea at the Republican National Convention.
Now here we have Obama throwing 2.8 billion dollars to the enemy while our economy is suffering and has possibly never fully recovered from the attacks of 9-11.
How come they are using the title War on Terror here to try to get the money there when they just officially scrapped the term changing it to Global Contingency Operation?
Also they said that US troops wouldn't be entering Pakistan recently. So how will they oversee this money with no U.S. presence and really make sure that it goes to the right causes?
No aid to Pakistan, time for some good politicians to take a stand!
They don't deserve our money.
March 28, 2009 12:50pm
THE US has evidence parts of Pakistan's ISI military intelligence agency provide support to the Taliban or al Qaeda, senior U.S. military officers said.
Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said the agency must end such activities.
The officers made their remarks as the United States unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which promises more aid for Pakistan but seeks increased cooperation in the fight against al Qaeda and Taliban militants in return.
Mullen noted Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service had links to militants on both its western border with Afghanistan and its eastern border with India.
"Fundamentally, the strategic approach with the ISI must change and their support ... for militants, actually on both borders, has to fundamentally shift," he told CNN television's "Situation Room" program.
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Asked if there were still elements within the ISI who sympathized with or supported al Qaeda and the Taliban, Mullen said: "There are certainly indications that that's the case."
Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants are widely suspected, it is rare for senior U.S. officials to talk publicly about them, for fear of damaging possible cooperation with Pakistani authorities.
The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported on Wednesday that the Taliban's widening campaign in southern Afghanistan was made possible in part by direct support from ISI operatives.
A senior U.S. intelligence official, asked on Friday to describe the problem of ISI information-sharing with militants, said, "too big, too often."
He said Pakistan had in the past failed to act on "actionable intelligence" that could lead to a strike against militants.
U.S. FUNDING IN 1980S
Petraeus, speaking on PBS television's Newshour program, noted some militant groups had been established by the ISI, with U.S. funding, with the aim of helping drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"Those links were very strong and some of them, I think, unquestionably ... do remain, to this day. It is much more difficult to tell at what level those links are still established," he said. Petraeus said there were some cases "in the fairly recent past" in which the ISI appeared to have warned militants that their location had been discovered.
"It's a topic that is of enormous importance, because if there are links and if those continue and if it undermines the (anti-militant) operations, obviously that would be very damaging to the kind of trust that we need to build," he said.
Petraeus' headquarters is responsible for U.S. military operations in a volatile swath of the world which stretches from the Middle East into Central and South Asia.
The intelligence official said the United States and Pakistan viewed militant groups differently, and that Pakistan focused on those it saw as the biggest threats to itself, which meant it overlooked some groups with a higher U.S. priority.
"Our intelligence shows that these groups also threaten them, so we are asking them to be a little bit more enlightened, to rethink their security calculus in a way that we think is consistent with ours," he said.
Cut ties with al-Qaida, LeT and Taliban: US tells ISI 29 Mar 2009, 2128 hrs IST, PTI
WASHINGTON: The United States on Sunday asked the ISI to sever all its ties with extremist's groups including al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which it called an "existential threat" to Pakistan itself.
ISI, which is having undeniable links with these terrorist groups, has been warned by the Obama Administration, which is more explicitly reflected in the new Af-Pak policy announced by US President Barack Obama on Friday, to set its house in order as soon as possible.
"What we need to do is try and help the Pakistanis understand these groups are now an existential threat to them and we will be there as a steadfast ally for Pakistan," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Fox News today in an interview in which he clearly said that the ISI needs to cut its ties with extremists.
"They can count on us and they don't need that hedge," Gates said as he cited ISI's links specifically to the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani militant network and to the forces of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.
It has been told in clear words, that cutting all ties with extremist elements means not only the Taliban and al Qaida related to Afghanistan or western Pakistan, but also those elements like LeT in Kashmir, as the US establishment has now realised and come to the conclusion that all these groups are linked together.
It should be seen as helping the US-led international community in fighting the war against terror and not providing any direct or indirect logistic or other support to these extremists' organisations, ISI has been told by the US.
Richard Holbrooke, the Special US Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said he along with the Central Command (CENTCOM) Chief General David Petraeus, sat down with the ISI chief (Lt Gen Shuja Pasha) when he was here recently and talked directly in all clear terms with him in this regard.
"It's a topic that is of enormous importance, because if there are links (between ISI and extremist elements) and if those continue and if it undermines the operations, obviously that would be very damaging to the kind of trust that we need to build," Petraeus told the PBS news in another interview.
"ISI really established some of these organizations -- with our money, by the way, back in the days of the Mujahedin fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So those links were very strong. And some of them, I think, unquestionably do remember - or do remain to this day.
"It is much more difficult to tell at what level those links are still established, whether some of the contact is the contact of intelligence with sources or it is, indeed, warning. There are some cases, I think, that are indisputable in the past, and the fairly recent past, in which that appears to have taken place," he said.
Sarcasm off.
Like we really haven't told Pakistan to cut off these ties before.
Or in other news:
0’bama found the way to channel some mo’money to Taliban.
Yep, and each billion as big a slap at the world’s largest democracy as every billion to Hamas is to the Middle East’s only democracy.
Watch for Talibanskys joining the "counterinsurgency" and then taking off rearmed back to Taliban mama.
This guy really does think he is going to be the leader of the whole world. Sadly to say once his citizenship is found out, he’ll be nothing more than bin Laden.....and hated just as much. Wake up America, we have to save what is left of our country.
Just because the “O” asks for it, doesn’t mean he has to have it! I just can’t believe the tidal wave of money leaving our country!
No, that would be New Orleans.
The List, ping
We have to be nuts to give them that money.
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