Here's a perfect example of state propaganda masquerading as news in the New York Times.
Hey, "Al-CIA-Duh" has been in Pakistan for YEARS now!!!!
Just keeping the FALKE THREAT and FEAR going, 'eh, Times?
"Pakistan Rebuffs Secret U.S. Plea for C.I.A. Buildup" by ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — The top two American intelligence officials traveled secretly to Pakistan early this month to press President Pervez Musharraf to allow the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups are all active, according to several officials who have been briefed on the visit.
But in the unannounced meetings on Jan. 9 with the two American officials — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director — Mr. Musharraf rebuffed proposals to expand any American combat presence in Pakistan, either through unilateral covert C.I.A. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.
Instead, Pakistan and the United States are discussing a series of other joint efforts, including increasing the number and scope of missions by armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways that the United States can speed information about people suspected of being militants to Pakistani security forces, officials said.
American and Pakistani officials have questioned each other in recent months about the quality and time lines of information that the United States has given to Pakistan to use in focusing on those extremists. American officials have complained that the Pakistanis are not seriously pursuing Al Qaeda in the region.
Telegraphing the fact that we will be in there soon, huh, readers?
Get your kids ready for a draft, folks!
Don't you get sick of hearing about "Al-CIA-Duh," 'murkn?
The Jan. 9 meetings, the first visit with Mr. Musharraf by senior administration officials since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, also included the new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director of Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj. American officials said the visit was prompted by an increasing sense of urgency at the highest levels of the United States government that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts to destabilize the Pakistani government.
The C.I.A. has fired missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Ayman al-Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda leader, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village.
Pakistani authorities, in interviews, say they have more than 100,000 troops operating in the region, including a sizable force conducting what they said was a major offensive in South Waziristan. But in the White House, the Pentagon and the C.I.A., frustrations remain high, and there is concern that Mr. Musharraf’s political problems will distract him from what the administration regards as its last chance to take aggressive action.
Despite the insistence of administration officials that the United States and Pakistan have a common goal in fighting Al Qaeda, Mr. Musharraf has made clear in public proclamations that it is far from his first priority. At the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Mr. Musharraf said several times that the 100,000 Pakistani troops that he said were now along the border were hunting for Taliban extremists and “miscreants,” but he also said there was no particular effort being put into the search for Qaeda fighters.
In Washington, however, the Bush administration has said that fighting terrorists, chiefly Al Qaeda, is the primary purpose of the $10 billion in American aid that has been sent to Pakistan, mostly for reimbursements for the cost of patrolling the tribal areas. President Bush has often praised Mr. Musharraf for fighting terrorism, pointing out that Al Qaeda has tried to kill the Pakistani leader. But White House officials were silent when Mr. Musharraf said this week that his efforts were focused on the Taliban, and that the main problem the United States faced was in Afghanistan, not Pakistan.
Accounts of the discussions between Mr. Musharraf and the intelligence officials were provided by American and Pakistani officials over the past two weeks after The New York Times inquired about the secret trip. While officials confirmed some details of the discussion, much remains unknown about the continuing dialogue between Islamabad and Washington.
Also see: Pakistan's Nukes and N.Y. Times Censorship
The trip by Mr. McConnell and General Hayden, a 14,000-mile over-and-back visit for one day of discussions, occurred just five days after senior administration officials debated new strategies for dealing with Pakistan. No decisions were made at that meeting of the National Security Council, which gathered all of Mr. Bush’s top national security officials but not the president.
In the ensuing three weeks, however, the debate appeared to be intensifying, as senior American officials said they believed that American forces — whether as combat troops or trainers — could enhance the efforts of Pakistan’s military in the mountainous and lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“The purpose of the mission,” a senior official said, “was to convince Musharraf that time is ticking away,” and that the increased attacks on Pakistan would ultimately undermine his effort to stay in office.
I guess that's why Pakistan's army called on him to resign while he was in Davos, huh?
So how many Middle Eastern countries can the U.S. occupy at one time, readers?
Other officials said that recent intelligence analysis indicated that Al Qaeda was now operating in the tribal areas with an impunity similar to the freedom that it had in Afghanistan before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
So what, another false-flagger is coming you piece of shit newspaper?
I am SO TIRED of the New York Times and its shit lies, readers!
The C.I.A. operatives in Afghanistan and the covert Special Operations forces there have made little secret of their desire to move into the tribal areas with or without Mr. Musharraf’s explicit approval. In the administration, there has been discussion of whether Mr. Bush should give orders to allow them more latitude. Mr. Musharraf has explicitly rejected that, and within days after Mr. McConnell and General Hayden’s departure, he told a Singapore newspaper that any unilateral action by the United States would be regarded as an invasion. In Davos, he dismissed the idea that Americans could be effective in the tribal areas.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States was willing to send combat troops to Pakistan to conduct joint operations against Al Qaeda and other militants if the Pakistani government asked for American help. Mr. Gates said that Pakistan had not requested American assistance, and that any American troops sent to Pakistan would likely be assigned solely to train Pakistani forces. The top American commander in the region, Adm. William J. Fallon, visited Pakistan last Tuesday to discuss counterterrorism issues with senior Pakistani officials, including General Kayani.
Looks to me like Musharaff is going to get dumped soon!
American and Pakistani spokesmen confirmed that the meetings between Mr. Musharraf and American intelligence officials took place, but they declined to offer any details. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in an interview that the meetings were about “improving coordination, discussing the war on terror, and filling the gaps between intelligence and operations,” but he declined to provide details.
Last Tuesday, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Lt. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, echoed some of those concerns, telling reporters that there were gaps in what the United States knew about the threat in the tribal areas. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there,” said General Dailey, who retired from the Army with extensive experience in military Special Operations. “Not on Al Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban.”
Yeah, we don't have much information of what's going on, even though the CIA CREATED and DIRECTS "Al-CIA-Duh!"
See why I swear at AmeriKa's MSM, readers?
Such shit lies shoveled at the American people, every fucking day!
In dealing with the American requests, Mr. Musharraf is conducting a delicate balancing act. American officials contend that now, more than ever, he recognizes the need to step up the battle against extremists who are seeking to topple his government. But he also believes that if American forces are discovered operating in Pakistan, the backlash will be more than he can control, especially because the Taliban and Al Qaeda are trying to cast him as a pawn of Washington.
As if he isn't!!!
And when he is not, readers, that's when Washington gets rid of him!
Frikkin' NYT!
One result appears to be a compromise: Mr. Musharraf is willing, they say, to accept training, equipment, and technical help, but has insisted that no Americans get involved in ground operations.
Pakistani officials insist they are taking the militant threat seriously and have completed major operations in the Swat Valley to drive out extremists. In the past few days, about 1,000 Pakistan Army troops and Frontier Corps paramilitary forces have also begun a three-pronged attack against the South Waziristan stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda who is the main suspect in the assassination of Ms. Bhutto."
And what about those operations, anyway?
How many innocents is the butcher Musharaff's army slaughtering in our name?
Times, hello?
'Lo?
(sound of crickets chirping)
Times?
(sound of crickets chirping)
Here is more that they added inside.
Must be getting ready to invade the provinces, huh?
"Ex-Pakistani Official Says Policy on Taliban Is Failing" by JANE PERLEZ
SHERPAO, Pakistan — In the walled courtyard of the modest whitewashed mosque, a suicide bomber worked his way into in the middle of a packed congregation and unleashed his explosives during prayers last month, killing 53 villagers and wounding 143 others.
The target of the attack, the former interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao (pronounced Share-POW), whose ancestral village sits at the foothills of the tribal region where the Taliban and their partners in Al Qaeda roam largely unfettered, was left unscathed.
But the second attack in eight months on Mr. Sherpao, 64, who was until recently his nation’s most senior law enforcement official, left him more frustrated and more outspoken about the failure of the government to respond aggressively to the rapidly spreading Taliban insurgency that is seeking to destabilize Pakistan.
The weakness of the Pakistani police and the army response to determined and religiously motivated Taliban fighters was allowing the insurgency to get stronger day by day, he said.
“The police are scared,” Mr. Sherpao said. “They don’t want to get involved.” The Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that could help in tracking down leads on suicide bombers, was “too stressed, fighting all over,” he said. The Pakistan Army has forces in the tribal areas where the militants have built their sanctuaries but the soldiers have remained in their headquarters. “They are not moving around,” he said. “That’s their strategy.”
Last Sunday, another attack near his village illustrated the gravity of the quickly deteriorating situation, compounded by the fact that the militants were able to get away with their attacks unpunished, he said.
Mr. Sherpao said he was awakened by a telephone caller who said that a senior official of the Intelligence Bureau, one of Pakistan’s most powerful intelligence agencies, had just been assassinated as he walked to the mosque in his village near Charsadda, where Mr. Sherpao had been the target of a suicide bomber last April.
“The Taliban came in two vehicles,” Mr. Sherpao said. “They said to the intelligence officer, ‘Are you so and so?’ When he said ‘Yes,’ they shot him dead.”
The failure to investigate aggressively, Mr. Sherpao said, had emboldened the insurgents who interpret the government’s inaction as an inability to or an unwillingness to investigate.
A report released this month by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a nongovernmental research center based in Lahore, said suicide bombings in Pakistan had soared to 60 last year from 6 in 2006.
A document from the Interior Ministry last July warned the government of President Pervez Musharraf that the Taliban were spreading so fast that “swift and decisive action,” was needed to prevent the insurgency from engulfing the rest of the country.
Six months later, the picture was “very bleak,” Mr. Sherpao said. “It has increased, with no checks anywhere,” he said of the insurgency.
The recommendations in the Interior Ministry document for pushing back the militants — including enhancing local law enforcement and mobilizing public opinion — had not been followed, he said.
Mr. Sherpao, who comes from the Pashtun ethnic group that dominates the North-West Frontier Province and is the same ethnic group of the Taliban he wants to defeat, appeared depressed and uncertain that the government could prevail.
In the North-West Frontier Province, there was a risk of “total Talibanization,” he said.
Military and police actions were not the only factors necessary to turn around the situation, he said, adding that moderate political forces need to join hands.
“You need focused efforts and a clear perception of what you want to do,” he said. “Unless you involve the political parties, civil society, religious leaders, this is not going to make any headway.”
The Taliban, he said, were able to outmaneuver the government because they were well financed, were skilled at propaganda, and were even paying political candidates opposed to them in the tribal areas to keep them from participating in elections.
This grim assessment by Mr. Sherpao, who is one of Pakistan’s best-known politicians, comes as senior officials in Washington have said they are increasingly concerned about the growing efforts by the Taliban and Al Qaeda to destabilize the government.
The Bush administration has discussed in recent weeks sending more military trainers to assist the Pakistan Army in counterinsurgency tactics. The administration is also debating whether to strengthen covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The leader of United States Central Command, Adm. William J. Fallon, met the new chief of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, during a visit to Islamabad last week to discuss proposals by the administration.
In most cases, Mr. Sherpao said, the police have had a boilerplate approach to solving the suicide bombings. They have blamed them on Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of a new association of Taliban militia in the tribal areas, who has been cited by Washington as having links to Al Qaeda, and left it at that, Mr. Sherpao said. “Not one suicide bombing has been resolved,” he said. “They just link it to Baitullah Mehsud, and that’s all.”
The director of the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said last week that he believed terror networks directed by Mr. Mehsud were responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader and former prime minister of Pakistan.
In a measure of the fast moving strength of the jihadists, Mr. Sherpao said the militants’ bases were no longer confined to North and South Waziristan, two districts inside the tribal area that have long been considered training grounds for suicide bombers.
The militants were now spread across the entire tribal region, including the district of Mohmand, which abuts the village of Sherpao and is close to Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, he said.
Three months ago, Mohmand was free of the Taliban, Mr. Sherpao said. Now, he said, the district was being used as a base to strike at the area around his village, and the bigger town of Charsadda where Mr. Sherpao survived a suicide bomb attack at a political rally last April.
In Swat, a scenic area outside of the tribal areas to the north, the Pakistan Army has been fighting the Taliban the last several months. The insurgents had displayed tactical skill, Mr. Sherpao said, by refusing to fight as a group, and instead had blended into the civilian population.
In an interview in the family compound, Mr. Sherpao’s son, Sikander, 31, who is a member of the provincial assembly of the North-West Frontier Province, said the Taliban had expanded easily in the Mohmand district adjacent to their village because there were was no resistance from the authorities there. The Taliban then proceeded to give the local population a sense of quick justice that was denied them by the weak government.
“About four months ago, the Taliban said they were going to arrest the thieves and the gamblers in Mohmand,” said Sikander Sherpao, who holds a business degree from Drake University in Des Moines, and was injured in the suicide attack at the mosque. “When you let them do that, the Taliban feel they have a free hand.”
At the same time, he said, the Taliban had attracted local criminals into their ranks. “I know a lot of car thieves who are now Taliban emirs,” he said.
The Taliban were financing their activities with profits from the duty-free car trade with Afghanistan, and by raiding trailers carrying supplies by road for the United States military in Afghanistan, he said.
Taliban warlords could soon dominate as the North-West Frontier Province disintegrated into chaos, Sikander Sherpao said. “Doomsday scenarios are being discussed, especially the way things have gone in the last three to four months,” he said."
I'm so sick of the damn lies, especially when this is next to the same article:
"Nuclear Arsenal Remains Secure, General Asserts" by SALMAN MASOOD
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A top Pakistani official on Saturday dismissed concerns over the safety and security of the country’s nuclear weapons, and said security alertness around its nuclear program had increased since the recent escalation of political turmoil and militant violence in the country.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was later widely identified as retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who is in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
General Kidwai ruled out any possibility that Islamic extremists sympathetic to Taliban and Al Qaeda could gain control of a nuclear weapon.
“We are conscious of this threat,” he said. “As the military, we should be prepared for worst contingencies.” However, an attack by Islamic extremists on Pakistan’s nuclear installations was a practical impossibility, he said, and if such an attack took place, “it will be pre-empted through intelligence or we will be able to minimize the damage.”
In a rare background briefing to representatives of foreign news media, General Kidwai said that “the state of alertness has gone up, most certainly.” But he insisted that “there is no conceivable political situation in which the nuclear assets can fall into the wrong hands.”
He said the government was confident in a command-and-control system it has had in place since 2000.
“The security mechanism in place is functioning efficiently and we are capable of thwarting all types of threats whether these be inside, outside or a combination,” he said.
Concerns over Pakistan’s nuclear program have increased recently as Islamic militants have increased their attacks on Pakistan’s military and officials of its powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Last year, there was an unprecedented increase in the number of suicide attacks, according to the Interior Ministry."
I'm so tired of the MSM lies, readers.
Pakistan is what got me to wipe out the prior blog.
After a week of reporting the government rejected negotiations during the Red Mosque crisis, the MSM reported on the seventh day that the government tried to negotiate!
This was about a year after I started the blog, and I couldn't take the Zionist lyong anymore.
Still can't, which is why I pulled these off the web.
I NEVER purchase the New York Times at the newsstand anymore -- something I did consistently and faithfully for decades, readers.
They've finally lost me, because I hate being shoveled shit lies!
Today is more evidence of their agenda-pushing bullshit.
Guess we will be sending troops to Pakistan soon.
