Posted on 02/03/2010 5:21:37 PM PST by NormsRevenge
To many Pakistanis the most shocking aspect of the latest Taliban bombing was not the death toll, or the injuries inflicted on survivors, but the question that it raised: what was a team of American soldiers doing in a tense corner of North West Frontier province?
In a way, the attack tugged the veil from a multi-faceted military assistance programme that, while not secret, is rarely publicised – by either side.
President Obama's public aid to Pakistan is transparent: $1.5bn a year for the next five years, mainly to boost the civilian government. But behind the scenes the US is engaged in other ways. Over the past decade it has given over $12bn in cash directly to the military to subsidise the costs of fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida. The programme to train the Frontier Corps, which the killed soldiers were involved with, is estimated to be worth $400m more over several years.
Generously provisioned counter-narcotics programmes operate along the Afghan border, funding everything from wells to schools. In Islamabad military contractors – usually retired army personnel – are paid to advise the army, discreetly working out of suburban houses. All this is hugely sensitive. Public opinion in Pakistan is overwhelmingly hostile to American "interference".
Last year a media furore erupted over the role of the contractor Blackwater, which vocal right-wing commentators believed was part of a covert plot to steal the country's nuclear weapons.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
we should totally invade the Pak frontier and clean it out real good . To heck with their sensitivities , They will never get it done themselves.
I will be curious to see what our msm and the left does with the story. I myself support the action.
It’s rugged territory .. but so was Saipan and Suribachi.
The idiot politicians will get more killed in the long run as they pose and pause to calculate their next move. The enemy only has one mission. Our leaders don’t get that.
Well, 0bama was not lying when he said in the campaign that he’d send American troops there (which turns out, with or without Pakistani Government approval).
Obama actually said as a candidate he would invade Pakistan.
No one ever called him on it. He also said he was going to get OBL. But he didn’t do that.
>He also said he was going to get OBL. But he didn’t do that.
Well, neither did Bush.
And he had seven whole years to accomplish that.
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