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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistan on track to being named terrorist state |
| 2008-12-07 |
| The United States is dusting off a long-discarded proposal to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. But with the Bush administration now in its final six weeks in office, a decision in this regard is being left to the incoming Obama government, sources said, contingent on corrective actions taken in the meantime by Islamabad to the satisfaction of India, US and other countries affected by Pakistan's toxic export of death. Welcome to DC, Zero. Now let's hear more of that that tough talk about invading Pakiland. The White House itself lost faith in the Pakistan Army's bonafides several months ago which led to Washington's decision to withdraw support to military ruler Pervez Musharraf and back a new civilian government, officials and congressional aides who spoke on background explained. The decision to dump Musharraf was taken at vice-president Dick Cheney recommendation, they added, because of evidence that Pakistan was continuing to help Taliban elements attacking Nato forces. Nice going away gift. Teach you to be careful what you wish for. On the other hand, anonymous sources laying it all at the evil Cheney's feet doesn't build credibility. Washington has little doubt that the terrorist attack on Mumbai was sponsored and planned with state support, US officials are saying privately. One things is certain; this was not a run-of-the mill LeT operation. "I think this event looks a lot more like a classical Special Forces or commando-style raid than it does like any terrorist attack we've seen before," David Kilcullen, a counter insurgency military analyst who served as an advisor to Gen. Davis Petraeus tells Fareed Zakaria in the upcoming edition of his program GPS, articulating what US officials are saying in private. "No al-Qaida-linked terrorist group and certainly never Lashkar-e-Taiba has mounted a maritime raid of this type or complexity." Lieutenant Colonel Chris Nash, who worked with the Afghan police, made a widely discussed slide presentation on his return to Washington, saying "ISI involved in direct support to many enemy operations ... classification prevents further discussion of this point." The support included "training, funding, [and] logistics," he added. But the most damning, and most recent, piece of evidence came after the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul when US intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack. The messages, US officials said later, indicated that the ISI officers involved in the bombings were not "renegades," or "stateless actors," and "their actions might have been authorized by superiors." Washington now believes that is also the case with Mumbai, which is why, notwithstanding a soft public stance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has conveyed to President Zardari what her predecessor Baker told Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan is on track to being declared a state sponsor of terrorism if it does not act. It was because of this long history of Pakistan's corrosive terrorist record that an outraged Rice dismissed Islamabad's request for evidence this time, saying, there is a "lot of information about what happened here, a lot of information... And so this isn't an issue of sharing evidence." |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #1 I've got this nasty itch on the back of my skull that says Mumbai was just a rehearsal for a larger raid "elsewhere". I would say the US was the logical target, and Obama's inauguration would be the planned event to disrupt. However, I don't believe it's JUST the US that's being targeted. We may see multiple, coordinated hits in several capitals around the globe. I do hope our intelligence services are on the ball. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-12-07 21:48 |