Tainted Saints

Senior US 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 the city of Quetta — a city with some 850,000 people, according to a report Monday.

The Obama Administration is eyeing Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta in an effort to decapitate the Taliban, according to the LA Times. But the prospect of launching a major attack in a highly populous city has struck some officials as unwise, officials who apparently leaked news of the program to a major US newspaper.

Pakistani officials have also warned that the fallout would be severe.

“We are not a banana republic,” the Times quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying. If the United States follows through, the official said, “this might be the end of the road.” [more...]

[Is it wrong that every time I see Obama's face now, I want to claw his eyes out?--Ed.]

WASHINGTON — By using his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Thursday to justify expanding the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama won over some Republican critics at home, even as he preached messages of multilateralism, diplomacy and civil disobedience that resonate in anti-war circles around the world.

In a 36-minute speech in Oslo, Obama defended last week’s announcement that he’ll send 30,000 to 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He discouraged other nations’ “reflexive suspicion of America,” recalling how Europe survived thanks to U.S. intervention in World War II. He spoke of “just war.”

The president even invoked one of the favorite qualifiers of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose legacy he campaigned against last year. Obama said, “Evil does exist in the world.”

…Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives and an ever-possible presidential candidate, said on WNYC radio that Obama’s speech was “actually very good.”

Gingrich said “having a liberal president who goes to Oslo on behalf of a peace prize and reminds the committee that they would not be free, they wouldn’t be able to have a peace prize, without having force. … I thought in some ways it’s a very historic speech.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered similar praise through his spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier: “As President Reagan said, Republicans believe in peace through strength, and we were pleased that today President Obama addressed and defended our mission in Afghanistan, where success is the only option.” [more...]

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.[more...]

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead. [more...]

  A car bomb has exploded in a crowded market in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least 87 people and wounding about 200, officials have said.A huge blaze erupted after the explosion on Wednesday, which came just hours after Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, arrived in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, for talks with government officials…

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber attacked a suspected nuclear-weapons site Friday in Pakistan, raising fears about the security of the nuclear arsenal, while two other terrorist blasts made it another bloody day in the country’s struggle against extremism.

Increasingly daring and sophisticated attacks by terrorists allied with al Qaida on some of Pakistan’s most sensitive and best-protected installations have led to warnings that extremists could damage a nuclear facility or seize nuclear material…

…While the farce plays out in Kabul, in neighbouring Pakistan the situation has become more deadly. The Zardari government (effectively run by the US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson) has ordered the Pakistan Army to wipe out the Taliban in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.

This, too, will fail. More innocents will die, more refugees will be created adding to the two million ‘internally displaced persons’ already living in camps. The result will be a bitter legacy, fuelling hatred and revenge attacks in the region and, ominously, creating further tensions inside the Pakistan Army…

Tariq Ali is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. (Wikipedia)

…The latest bomb attacks come at a time when Pakistani troops are engaged in an offensive against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan province.

Pakistan has witnessed a string of attacks this month, resulting in the deaths of more than 170 people…