"Pakistan Shift Could Curtail Drone Strikes"
"American officials reached a quiet understanding with Pakistan’s leader last month to intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists by pilotless aircraft launched in Pakistan, senior officials in both governments say. But the prospect of changes in Pakistan’s government has the Bush administration worried that the new operations could be curtailed.
Among other things, the new arrangements allowed an increase in the number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed Predator surveillance aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan — a far more aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.
But since opposition parties emerged victorious from the parliamentary election early this week, American officials are worried that the new, more permissive arrangement could be choked off in its infancy.
Awwwww, toooo bad!
We won't be murdering innocent people in there beds!!!
In the weeks before Monday’s election, a series of meetings among President Bush’s national security advisers resulted in a significant relaxation of the rules under which American forces could aim attacks at suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the tribal areas near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
The change, described by senior American and Pakistani officials who would not speak for attribution because of the classified nature of the program, allows American military commanders greater leeway to choose from what one official who took part in the debate called “a Chinese menu” of strike options.
Instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking, this shift allowed American operators to strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of Qaeda or Taliban leaders on the run, for instance, so long as the risk of civilian casualties is judged to be low...."
And HOW MANY INNOCENTS are worth getting "Al-CIA-Duh" leaders, readers?
Does this policy strike anyone else as obscene?
Say bin Laden and the "terrorists" decided to use the same rational.
How would we feel, readers?
Meanwhile, on the ground in Pakistan...
"Pakistani opposition parties to form governing coalition""by Laura King, Los Angeles Times | February 22, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - .... Emboldened by the opposition victory, Pakistani lawyers took to the streets in at least four major cities yesterday to raise new calls for the reinstatement of the fired judges. In the biggest street clashes since Monday's nationwide vote, police fired tear gas at protesting lawyers, some of whom burned effigies of Musharraf....
Those are LAWYERS, not "radical terrorists!"
In Islamabad, the capital, protesters hurled stones and tried to tear down a barbed-wire barricade blocking the way to the chief justice's home. Police fired tear-gas canisters, filling the air with choking clouds.
More demonstrations took place in the eastern city of Lahore and in the southwestern city of Quetta...."
Why so little attention to Pakistan's BEAT-DOWN of LAWYERS (and others), 'murkns?
How come our MSM sucks so bad?
