LAHORE: The US will continue to launch drone strikes against militant sanctuaries in Pakistan even if Islamabad keeps opposing them, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said.While Panetta declined to be more specific when asked about the unmanned vehicles because they “remain covert operations”, he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s ‘Conversations with Judy Woodruff’ airing this weekend, “The United States was attacked on 9/11, and we know who attacked us.”
“We know that al Qaeda was behind it,” Panetta said, adding, “And we are going to do everything we can, use whatever operations we have to, in order to make sure that we protect this country and make sure that that kind of attack never happens again.”
Told that sounded as if he meant drone attacks would continue, Panetta said, “The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.”
Panetta said in the interview that Afghanistan was on the path toward stability “so that US and coalition forces could withdraw”.
| Stability? He said that with a straight face? Boy howdy, he's good... |
“The Taliban is resilient,” Panetta said. “They’re going to be there. They’re going to continue to attack. We do have problems obviously with Afghanistan corruption. So I don’t think we ought to take anything for granted.”