So has the US been bombing Pakistan ?!??

[TexasLawyer]

Did I miss this? With growing Taliban recruitment in Pakistan, will missile strikes against Pakistanis continue? Yikes!


Saturday, April 29, 2006

‘My popularity has gone down’

Talibanism spilling over into settled areas: Musharraf

Daily Times Monitor

ISLAMABAD: General Pervez Musharraf, facing a surge of anti-American sentiment, yesterday warned that covert US air strikes against Al Qaeda inside Pakistan were an infringement of national sovereignty.

<snip>

The Guardian said that the Bijaur strike by American forces underlined tensions in the anti-terror alliance between Pakistan and the US, which has also been strained by Washington’s nuclear deal with India, its insistence on democratic reforms, and alleged American meddling in the sprawling south-western province of Baluchistan. “The strike was an infringement of our sovereignty and I condemned it,” said Gen Musharraf.

The Guardian noted that Pakistan also faces criticism from the US and Afghanistan for not doing enough to flush extremists from its tribal areas. Mr Bush said he had come to Islamabad “to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice”.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\04\29\story_29-4-2006_pg1_1

******************

http://www.cgpi.org/pages/latest/060119-Condemn_US_Missile_attack_on_Pakistan.aspx

The US missile attacks in Bijaur are a blatant violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan.
An attack on any nation and people in South Asia is an attack on all!

Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 19th January, 2006

At least 18 people are reported to have been killed when American spy planes launched pre-dawn missile attacks in Bijaur in Pakistan, on January 13, 2006. The missile attacks were launched for a second time in 10 days in an area which is part of the Waziristan Tribal Agency, bordering Afghanistan. All political organizations and masses of people in Pakistan have roundly condemned these attacks. The Communist Ghadar Party of India extends full and unconditional support to the just struggle of the people in Pakistan against the blatant violation of their sovereignty by the United States.

<snip>

[spuddonna]

1. Hmm, I wonder how many countries we're 'covertly bombing'...

And that in itself seems an oxymoron - like a 'quiet explosion'...

Have you checked to see if this is up at any other news outlet?

ETA: I'd love to know if this is common news overseas and our MSM is not pushing the info...

ETAA: I just did a search on google news for "covert US air strikes against Al Qaeda inside Pakistan" and it shows many hits in India, Pakistan, and a few in the UK...

[euroexpat]

8. Many more to come...

Hideous Kinky: Moral Nullity as Normality in Pentagon Plans

Imagine growing up in a family where every day, father raped daughter, mother tortured son, brother abused brother, sister stole from sister, and the whole family murdered neighbors, friends and passing strangers. Imagine the underlying assumptions about life that you would adopt without question in such an atmosphere, how normal the most hideous depravity would seem. If some outsider chanced to ask you about your family's latest activities, you would spew out perversions as calmly and unthinkingly as a man giving directions to the post office.

This state of unwitting confession to monstrous crime has been the default mode of the American Establishment for many years now. Government officials routinely detail policies that in a healthy atmosphere would shake the nation to its core, stand out like a gaping wound, a rank betrayal of every hope, ideal and sacrifice of generations past. Yet in the degraded sensibility of these times, such confessions go unnoticed, their evil unrecognized – or even lauded as savvy ploys or noble endeavors. Inured to moral horror by half a century of outrages committed by the "National Security" complex, the Establishment – along with the media and vast swathes of the population – can no longer discern the poison in the air they breathe. It just seems normal.

And so it was again this week when the Washington Post outlined the Pentagon's plan to put dirty war – by death squad, by snatch squad, by secret armies, subversion, torture and terrorism– at the very heart of America's military philosophy. Not defense against declared enemies, not deterrence of potential foes, but conducting "continuous" covert military operations in countries "where the United States is not at war" is now the Pentagon's "highest priority," according to the new "campaign plan for the global war on terror" issued by Donald Rumsfeld.

What’s more, the plan makes it clear that Rumsfeld, far from being politically vulnerable – as portrayed in the ludicrous kabuki of the Establishment media – has in fact been exalted above every other institution and official of the U.S. government, with the exception of the twin tyrants in the White House, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The Pentagon warlord has been given carte blanche to send the 53,000 secret soldiers of the Special Operations Command into any nation he pleases, to undertake any mission he pleases, without Congressional approval, legal restraint, or the authority of the target nation's U.S. ambassador. Thus America's diplomats, the ostensible representatives of the nation abroad, have been reduced to mere frontmen, pathetic beards for black ops savaging the laws, sovereignty and citizens of their hosts.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=615&Itemid=1

[TexasLawyer]

9. WOW, Euroexpat

that is truly disturbing. Thanks for posting that, and welcome to DU.

[TexasLawyer]

12. A scary paragraph from your article

With Congress not involved, it makes me wonder how all this is being financed. Is this why Afghanistan is now a narco-state? Is this why Tom DeLay's friend's plane was caught in Mexico with 5.5 tons of cocaine in it? If they're truly going after the "glory days" of Bush Reagan-- then it would be no great surprise if we were also doing the Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms trades again.

Also, do these guys ever think about blow-back?


The "campaign plan" is the culmination and codification of an ad hoc array of progams and powers that Bush has doled out to Rumsfeld over the years, including a series of executive orders signed after the 2004 election that essentially turned the world into a "global free-fire zone" for the Pentagon’s secret armies and proxy foreign militias, as a top Pentagon official told Seymour Hersh. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," another Bush insider said. Yet another courtier compared it to the glory days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." The overriding ethos of the plan is, like its progenitors Bush and Rumsfeld, brutally simple: "The rules are 'Grab whom you must. Do what you want,'" an intelligence official explained to Hersh.


http://www.madcowprod.com/

[MADem]

2. Those strikes inside Pakistan were bought and paid for

Pervez needs to check his fat wallet....

He knew what he was getting into, when he took the cash from the Monkey.

[daveskilt]

3. at least we have tasty indian mangoes to show for it

[TexasLawyer]

4. LOL!!!

By very great coincidence, I was eating a mango just as you posted that!!! DU-style harmonic convergence.

[TexasLawyer]

5. I posted this in LBN

It sounds like the Taliban is SERIOUSLY regrouping in Pakistan. It seems to foreshadow more US missile strikes against Pakistan.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

‘Registering with Taliban can save your neck’

By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: A person can escape being executed by the Taliban through registering for “jihad in Afghanistan” at the militant’s recruiting office in South Waziristan, a senior tribal elder told Daily Times on Friday.

“You have to register yourself if you want to live. It does make a difference when you are enrolled with the Taliban,” said the elder, in Peshawar to attend Wednesday’s jirga with President Pervez Musharraf. He spoke on condition of anonymity to escape reprisals from the Taliban as well as the political administration.

The Taliban think of anyone not with them as against them, so the safest course is to register with them and stay silent, he said. “Registration makes the militants believe you are with them,” said the elder. Military movement is restricted and a weekly convoy brings reinforcement to Wana where elders take a huge risk by visiting the administration, said the elder. “We even fear that the militants might have bugged our phones.”

He added that the government’s peace deal with former militants in late 2004 strengthened the Taliban in South Waziristan. “The Taliban have opened recruiting offices in Wana, Makeen and Barwend areas and are influential because they are providing residents the relief that the political administration denies,” he said. He added that clerics were replacing chieftains in all committees and the government “appears to be happy with changing situation” in South Waziristan.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\04\29\story_29-4-2006_pg1_4

[mikelewis]

10. "The Taliban think of anyone not with them as against them"....

Boy, does that sound familiar or what?

[Igel]

6. There have been a few strikes.

Most seem to make the news quickly--any blame that can be assigned to the Zionist Crusader pig-dogs of imperialistic and satanic monkey war quickly gets assigned--so there have probably only been a few.

And if you have a Vietnam carpet-bombing image in your mind, junk it. The image, that is. They've usually been a single missile or a small number from a chopper--not high-altitude bombing.

The CP of India ranting is just that. There's little support for the communists up in the NWFP in Pakistan, but lots of anti-American rabble to rouse at home.

On the other hand, the Taliban will create more of a problem for Pakistan in the coming year or two. It's a question of dignity and honor. You claim the world, and don't get it, it's an insult. You have the little bit you do manage to conquer and oppress taken away from you, it's a mortal insult. To make Allah happy, you have to go and sacrifice some victims ... I'm sorry, did I type that? ... to make Allah happy you have to go and re-establish proper Islam and show yourself the best of nations.

[TexasLawyer]

7. Some more info-- there's probably a LOT we're not hearing about

Pakistani Taliban take control of unruly tribal belt

· Militia inflicts major blow on 'war on terror'
· Music and films banned as Islamic court takes over

Declan Walsh in Peshawar
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

A powerful new militia dubbed "the Pakistani Taliban" has effectively seized control of swaths of the country's northern tribal areas in recent months, triggering alarm in Islamabad and marking a big setback in America's "war on terror".

<snip>

Foreign reporters are banned from the area and most local journalists have fled. One, Hayatullah Khan, 32, was abducted in December and is still missing. The US is impatient to catch more senior al-Qaida figures. Unmanned Predator drones, now armed with Hellfire missiles, sweep over the tribal areas on surveillance missions so often that villagers now recognise their engine noise.

In January American forces destroyed a house in Bajaur tribal agency where it thought al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was hiding. Thirteen villagers were killed. The US has carried out several strikes, said a well-placed diplomat, but it has let Pakistan claim responsibility.

Such attacks have won the militants much support. "These are not the proper Taliban," said the refugee Mr Khan. "They are the common people who have revolted against the government and targeted killings by Americans." The Taliban presence in northern Pakistan also concerns Britain, which is deploying more than 3,300 troops in the southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,1735600,00.html

[TexasLawyer]

11. US bombs Pakistan: an act of reckless imperialism

So, the press did cover this-- the press in New Zealand, that is. And alternative NZ press, at that.


US bombs Pakistan: an act of reckless imperialism
Tuesday, 17 January 2006
US bombing in northern Pakistan: an act of imperialist recklessness

By James Cogan

16 January 2006

The US air strike carried out on January 13 on the isolated village of Damadola, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, was as reckless as it was criminal. At least 18 civilians were killed, including five women and five children, further inflaming already high political and social tensions inside Pakistan.

Under international law, the strike was an act of war. The Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf has collaborated with the US takeover of Afghanistan and its broader international aggression, but it has never formally granted the US military the right to cross the border and carry out operations on Pakistani soil or airspace. It is unclear whether the Pakistani government and military had pre-knowledge of the attack. But in the face of public outrage it has been compelled to issue a protest to the US ambassador and deplore the bombing of Damadola as “highly condemnable”.

Not only was the attack a violation of Pakistani national sovereignty, the intended target—the senior Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—was not even in the village. Haroon Rashid, the local member of the Pakistani National Assembly, told Afghan Islamic Press: “I know all the 18 people who were killed. There was neither al-Zawahiri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area.” A Pakistani military intelligence officer told Al Jazeerah: “Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on false information.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0601/S00188.htm