Obama May Launch Drone Attacks on Major Pakistani City

[IndianaGreen]

Meanwhile, on the AfPak war front, this is what is about to happen boys and girls.


Quetta, Pakistan at night

Published on Monday, December 14, 2009 by the Los Angeles Times

Obama May Launch Drone Attacks on Major Pakistani City

U.S. officials seek to push CIA drone strikes into the major city of Quetta to try to pressure Pakistan into pursuing Taliban leaders based there\

by Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes

Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.

The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington's relationship with Islamabad.

The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta -- or at least threatening to do so -- is crucial to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.

"If we don't do this -- at least have a real discussion of it -- Pakistan might not think we are serious," said a senior U.S. official involved in war planning. "What the Pakistanis have to do is tell the Taliban that there is too much pressure from the U.S.; we can't allow you to have sanctuary inside Pakistan anymore."

But others, including high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials, have been more skeptical of employing drone attacks in a place that Pakistanis see as part of their country's core. Pakistani officials have warned that the fallout would be severe.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/14-12

[LakeSamish706]

1. Why not just Nuke Pakistan as a whole and be done with it? Crap, what the hell is

this all about anyway?

[CrunchMaster]

12. It's about blowing up patsies in poor countries in an attempt to jump start western economies

If you were to nuke Pakistan or kill off Bin Laden, then there wouldn't be any reason left to keep dumping billions and billions of dollars into the dirt in Iraq and Afghanistan. How are the Pentagon and Defense Contractors going to leech off billions of dollars if we kill all the bad guys and shut off the spigots??? Can't have that.

"The move comes as top House-Senate lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on a $626 billion Pentagon spending bill that Democratic leaders hope to clear for Obama's signature by Friday."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/14/national/w143259S63.DTL

If they wanted to stop the wars western governments would expose and lockup the real masterminds behind 9/11... the people behind 9/11 are Saudi and Pakistani intelligence in alliance with sympathizers in western intelligence going back to their Nazi and Muslim Brotherhood intelligence ties in World War II. Arab intelligence sent the patsies to the west. Then likeminded Americans, Germans, Swiss, Austrians, Brits working in intelligence created the "ratlines" to allow patsies to train in their respective countries and then attack America so they could all pump dollars into their failing economies by getting a new war in the middle east. THAT is what this is all about. Ritual sacrifice of patsies and poor people to start wars and keep the economies of the involved countries from collapsing.

The "smoking gun" is pretty obvious. Like a pink elephant in the living room. The terrorist pasties were watched, monitored, followed, and led around the U.S.A., Germany and UK by government provocateurs for many, many years. The U.S., German, UK government did nothing to stop them. Kept passing the terrorists around from country to country until these patsies blew buildings up and stirred up the hornet's nest enough to get a war going in the middle east.

The evidence is all out there. People just need to demand that something be done about it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=274634&mesg_id=274634

[dkf]

2. I thought we were doing this at the bidding of the Pakistanis?

No?

[14thColony]

13. More like with the reluctant acquiescence of the Pakistanis

As long as the operations were confined to the "Wild West" of the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas, the Pakistani government could tolerate it and exercise plausible deniability that they had been consulted or indeed even knew beforehand about drone attacks. But operating over a major city like Quetta, which is not in the "we're-not-sure-we-even-really-control-it" frontier areas, is a whole different deal. The Pak gov won't be abel to still claim that they haven't agreed to it, since the obvious question would be "then why haven't PAF fighters intercepted and shot down every one of these drones?"

[lib2DaBone]

3. Indeed... the fallout could be severe.....

..as Pakistan has nuclear weapons. They may not care for the idea of the USA bombing their civilians.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. "new front in the clandestine war"

Not too clandestine anymore if this happens.

[kenny blankenship]

5. Are they TRYING to produce a failed state scenario in Pakistan?

Seriously.

[lib2DaBone]

7. Yes... they want to break up Afpakistan into 3 or 4 smaller countries..

.. and then install Karzai-type leaders sympathetic to the oil companies.

According to Stratfor.com...the goal is to block China and Russia from gaining an economic corridor through the oil and gas rich area.

[14thColony]

14. Yes...

A continuation of The Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire during the 1800s.

This sequel just includes a few new characters, but the plot's more or less the same.

[Ghost Dog]

18. Absolutely so,

I'm afraid.

[katty]

20. I have heard this from my journo friends covering this area for yrs

[IndianaGreen]

8. Our entire AfPak policy is FUBAR, as FUBAR as LBJ's Vietnam policy

and it will be just as disastrous for us.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Bombing Quetta? (The Nation)

Bombing Quetta?

posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 12/14/2009 @ 1:34pm

If Afghanistan is Vietnam, and the Taliban is the Viet Cong, then, according to the analogy, Pakistan is North Vietnam. The really odd thing about that extended analogy is that, in the case of Vietnam, North Vietnam's ally was the USSR. But Pakistan's ally is, well, the United States.

Which points up the utter absurdity of the contemplated drone attacks into the Taliban's refuge in Quetta, Pakistan.

For years, since the early 1990s at least, Pakistan has been the chief sponsor of the Taliban. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, only three countries recognized its rule: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. After 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan with its token force -- in alliance with the India-backed Northern Alliance -- Pakistan pretended to stop supporting the Taliban, but its military command and its intelligence service, the ISI, continued to provide not-so-covert support. Despite the eight year US war next door, Pakistan has refused to halt its support for the Taliban, and it has allowed the Taliban leadership to operate freely from safe havens inside Pakistan, from Karachi to the tribal areas in Pakistan's northwest to, especially, the teeming urban center of Quetta, in the Baluchistan area of southwest Pakistan.

For weeks now, the United States has been telegraphing its intention to bombard Quetta in order to strike at Mullah Omar, the one-eyed pirate who leads the Taliban, and his confreres.

<snip>

But an attack on Quetta, and on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is something else entirely -- and not just because bombing Quetta would probably result in mass civilian casualties.

Why? Because the core of Pakistan's military elite sees the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset. The Taliban is Pakistan's ace-in-the-hole against India's burgeoning influence in Afghanistan, and they're not likely to give it up without a fight. By taking on the Taliban's shura in Quetta, the United States is in effect making the war in Afghanistan a war against both the Taliban and the Pakistani military.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/506118/bombing_quetta

[PurityOfEssence]

9. It just gets better and better, doesn't it?

I could believe just about anything these days.

[tomm2thumbs]

10. the military corporate machine wants to start World War III - no question

these are die-hard nut cases who think they can provoke a huge mideast war and pocket some profits all along the way

[winyanstaz]

17. yup...they really really really want that oil pipleline to go through...

Even if they have to start world war 111 to do so and kill millions of people.
Someone put these assholes doing this into some straight jackets.

[burning rain]

11. They give us the green light in private, while blasting the US for domestic PR.

It's old hat in the relations of less-wealthy nations with the US. That SOB Richard Nixon alluded to that sort of sly arrangement in his account of Filipino-American relations in his book Leaders, where he relates a conversation with Ramon Magsaysay about an unnamed major Filipino politician who condemns US actions publicly while being an utmost loyal ally behind the scenes.

[Blue Owl]

15. Hey it might or might not work

Let's throw a few billion at it and see what sticks.

We have money to burn for killing halfway around the globe, but nothing for heathcare in our country.

Sigh.

[winyanstaz]

16. A new war...wow...how many wars are we supposed to pay for now???

I have lost track. Aren't we also making noises about nuking Iran?
This is so frikkin insane now...sheesh..wake up people!

[katty]

19. o lord-THIS is the revised strategy?! bombing Quetta?!

[Politicalboi]

21. This is bullshit

Till somebody can tell me how someone other than a high official can tell the Pentagon to "Stand Down" on 9/11 and let it get attacked 30 or 40 minutes after the second plane hit the tower, I don't believe in Al CIAda or the Taliban. Isn't the Pentagon a military base?????? They are the Department of DEFENSE after all. But lets not point fingers at anyone. There's no one to blame here, according to the 9/11 Commisssion.
But we are told 19 "terrorist" in a cave were able to hold command while the Pentagon had it's pants down. Way too many first times in history for me.