Pakistan allowing CIA to use airbase for drone strikes - No wonder they are joining the Taliban

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25074586-25837,00.html

Amanda Hodge | February 19, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE CIA is launching deadly attacks on Pakistani-based militants from within the country's borders with the co-operation of the civilian Government, which is trying to balance its commitments to its war-on-terror ally and stem a growing Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan has repeatedly denounced the US predator drone attacks on its soil, which have succeeded in eliminating more than half of al-Qa'ida's local commanders in the past six months, and has claimed the strikes have caused hundreds of civilian lives and triggered anti-American sentiment.

But reports in The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal yesterday suggested that Pakistan had been secretly co-operating in covert US operations by allowing the CIA to launch strikes from the remote Shamsi airfield, 50km from the Afghanistan border.

The Times cited as evidence the delivery of 2.8 million litres of aviation fuel to Shamsi last year, a $US3.2 million purchase that was logged on the Pentagon's fuel procurement agency website. The delivery coincided with a marked escalation in US drone attacks on militant strongholds in Pakistan's tribal areas.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Pakistan told the paper Shamsi was not the fuel's final destination. He also denied the US had any military bases in the country.

[Barack_America]

1. This FP embarrassment brought to you by Dianne Feinstein.

Let's all take a moment and thank DiFi for making the war in Afghanistan more difficult.

:applause:


:eyes: