Current news.
Basically states that the war in Afghanistan is merely the prelude
CIA Directs and Funds Terrorism In Pakistan
CIA’s Afghan Kill Teams Expand U.S. War in Pakistan
By Spencer Ackerman
September 21, 2010 “Wired”
from. CIA's Afghan Kill Teams Expand U.S. War in Pakistan [Updated] | WIRED
excerpt.
Let there be no doubt that the U.S. is at war in Pakistan. It’s not just the drone strikes. According to insider journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, the CIA manages a large and lethal band of Afghan fighters to infiltrate into Pakistan and attack al-Qaeda’s bases. What could possibly go wrong?
Woodward’s not-yet-available Obama’s Wars, excerpted today in the Washington Post
see article here, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092106706.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010092106707
and the New York Times,
see article here. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/asia/22policy.html?_r=3
unveils a CIA initiative called the Counterterrorist Pursuit Teams, a posse of anti-Taliban and al-Qaeda locals who don’t respect the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The teams are practically brigade-sized: a “paramilitary army” of 3000 Afghans, said to be “elite, well-trained” and capable of quietly crossing over in the Pakistani extremist safe havens where U.S. troops aren’t allowed to operate. The CIA directs and funds the teams.
Administration officials didn’t just confirm the existence of the teams — they bragged about them. “This is one of the best Afghan fighting forces and it’s made major contributions to stability and security,” says one U.S. official who would only talk on condition of anonymity — and who wouldn’t elaborate.
The teams are an implicit concession of a paradox at the heart of the Afghanistan war: the enemies upon which the war is predicated, al-Qaeda and its top allies, aren’t in Afghanistan anymore. The drones — flown by both the CIA and the U.S. military — are one answer to their safe havens in Pakistan. (Two more drone strikes hit Pakistani tribal areas on Tuesday, bringing the total this year to at least 71.) Another is to launch the occasional commando raid across the Afghan border or rely on Special Forces, operating under the guise of training the Pakistani military, to engage in some dangerous extracurricular activity. Still another is to outsource “snatch and grab” operations against al-Qaeda to private security firms like Blackwater.
and this from Washington Post.
excerpt.
CIA drones killed U.S. citizens in Pakistan, book says
CIA drones killed “many Westerners, including some U.S. passport holders” in Pakistan’s tribal area during the George W. Bush administration, the new book by Bob Woodward says.
Woodward,a longtime Washington Post journalist, writes in “Obama’s Wars” that then-CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden disclosed the killings to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari during a meeting in New York on Nov. 12, 2008. Hayden was succeeded by Leon J. Panetta in 2009.
Hayden and his deputy, Stephen Kappes, had gone to meet with Zardari, elected only two months earlier, to gauge his reaction to the drone strikes, which were generating widespread protests in Pakistan.
According to Woodward’s unattributed account of the meeting, Zardari said, “Kill the seniors. Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”
article continues.
of course not, why worry?
article/s continue, lengthy
Zan
