The hunt for the ULTIMATE October surprise is full steam ahead
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U.S. drones kill 23 in missile attack in Pakistan By Haji Mujtaba
Mon Sep 8, 2:52 PM ET
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Missiles fired by U.S. drones killed 23 people, mostly relatives of a Taliban commander close to Osama bin Laden, in a region of Pakistan near the Afghan border on Monday, witnesses and intelligence officials said.
The missiles targeted a sprawling complex comprising a house and a religious school, or madrasa, founded by veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani near Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal region.
Ten militants were killed in the strike.
"There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, the village which was hit.
Those killed included one of the several wives of Haqqani, his sister-in-law, a sister, two nieces, eight grandchildren and a male relative. A son-in-law of Haqqani was wounded.
A senior intelligence official said the militants killed were Pakistani and Afghan Taliban but locals said five of them were low-ranking al Qaeda operatives, including three Arabs.
Haqqani is a veteran of the U.S.-backed Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, and his extended family had been living in North Waziristan since then. Haqqani's links with bin Laden go back to the late 1980s.
Taliban sources say he is in ill-health and his son, Sirajuddin, has been leading the Haqqani group. An intelligence official said the militants killed belonged to this faction.
One of Haqqani's younger sons told Reuters his father and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan when the attack took place.
Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, were taken to hospital in Miranshah, doctors said.
Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said an incident had taken place and its cause was being ascertained.
CLOSE LINKS WITH ISI
Haqqani has had close links with Pakistani intelligence, notably the military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The New York Times reported in July that the U.S. CIA had given Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani evidence of the ISI's involvement with Haqqani, along with evidence of ISI connections to a suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed nearly 60 people on July 7.
Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is due to be sworn in on Tuesday, has vowed to defeat the Taliban and support the West's mission in Afghanistan.
But the U.S.-led campaigns against al Qaeda and the Taliban are hugely unpopular among Pakistanis and Zardari's coalition, which forced former army chief President Pervez Musharraf to resign last month, has to pay more heed to public opinion than Musharraf did.
U.S.-led forces have stepped up cross-border attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistani tribal areas.
Helicopter-borne commandos carried out a ground assault in South Waziristan last week, the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, killing 20 people, including women and children.
A day later, four Islamist militants were killed and five wounded in a suspected U.S. drone attack in North Waziristan.
Security officials said five people were killed in another drone attack on Friday, but the Pakistan military denied it.
The U.S. commando raid and repeated territorial violations aroused anger in Pakistan, prompting the government to partially block supply lines to Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan.
Rehman Malik, who advises the prime minister on Interior Ministry issues, said on Monday the road was unblocked after a few hours, and that it had only been shut for security reasons, contrary to comments by the defence minister that it was a response to the violations.
Separately, the army killed 10 militants in clashes in the northwestern Swat Valley on Sunday night, while police arrested a teenaged suicide bomber who had planned to attack army installations in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera.
Thirty people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the nearby city of Peshawar on Saturday.
Mon Sep 8, 2:52 PM ET
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Missiles fired by U.S. drones killed 23 people, mostly relatives of a Taliban commander close to Osama bin Laden, in a region of Pakistan near the Afghan border on Monday, witnesses and intelligence officials said.
The missiles targeted a sprawling complex comprising a house and a religious school, or madrasa, founded by veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani near Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal region.
Ten militants were killed in the strike.
"There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpakheil, the village which was hit.
Those killed included one of the several wives of Haqqani, his sister-in-law, a sister, two nieces, eight grandchildren and a male relative. A son-in-law of Haqqani was wounded.
A senior intelligence official said the militants killed were Pakistani and Afghan Taliban but locals said five of them were low-ranking al Qaeda operatives, including three Arabs.
Haqqani is a veteran of the U.S.-backed Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, and his extended family had been living in North Waziristan since then. Haqqani's links with bin Laden go back to the late 1980s.
Taliban sources say he is in ill-health and his son, Sirajuddin, has been leading the Haqqani group. An intelligence official said the militants killed belonged to this faction.
One of Haqqani's younger sons told Reuters his father and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan when the attack took place.
Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, were taken to hospital in Miranshah, doctors said.
Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said an incident had taken place and its cause was being ascertained.
CLOSE LINKS WITH ISI
Haqqani has had close links with Pakistani intelligence, notably the military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The New York Times reported in July that the U.S. CIA had given Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani evidence of the ISI's involvement with Haqqani, along with evidence of ISI connections to a suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed nearly 60 people on July 7.
Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is due to be sworn in on Tuesday, has vowed to defeat the Taliban and support the West's mission in Afghanistan.
But the U.S.-led campaigns against al Qaeda and the Taliban are hugely unpopular among Pakistanis and Zardari's coalition, which forced former army chief President Pervez Musharraf to resign last month, has to pay more heed to public opinion than Musharraf did.
U.S.-led forces have stepped up cross-border attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistani tribal areas.
Helicopter-borne commandos carried out a ground assault in South Waziristan last week, the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, killing 20 people, including women and children.
A day later, four Islamist militants were killed and five wounded in a suspected U.S. drone attack in North Waziristan.
Security officials said five people were killed in another drone attack on Friday, but the Pakistan military denied it.
The U.S. commando raid and repeated territorial violations aroused anger in Pakistan, prompting the government to partially block supply lines to Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan.
Rehman Malik, who advises the prime minister on Interior Ministry issues, said on Monday the road was unblocked after a few hours, and that it had only been shut for security reasons, contrary to comments by the defence minister that it was a response to the violations.
Separately, the army killed 10 militants in clashes in the northwestern Swat Valley on Sunday night, while police arrested a teenaged suicide bomber who had planned to attack army installations in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera.
Thirty people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the nearby city of Peshawar on Saturday.
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8 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush secretly approved U.S. military raids inside Pakistan against alleged terrorist targets, according to a former intelligence official with recent access to the Bush administration's debate about how to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban inside the lawless tribal border area.
The former official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity to describe the classified order.
A senior U.S. military official last week also confirmed that a special forces attack had taken place about a mile across Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the internal debate over the U.S. response to rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border includes discussion of classified intelligence.
The former official told The Associated Press that Bush signed an order over the summer giving new authority to U.S. special operations forces to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border. More recently, the administration secretly gave conventional ground troops new authority to pursue militants across the Afghan border into Pakistan, the former official said.
The "rules of engagement" have been loosened, allowing troops to conduct border attacks without being fired on first if they witness attacks coming from the region, the former official said. That would include artillery, rockets and mortar fire from the Pakistan side of the border.
The new authority allowed last week's unprecedented U.S.-led ground assault into the volatile region known as the tribal areas. The U.S. forces were apparently seeking specific Taliban or al-Qaida leaders. The senior U.S. military official said the assault targeted "individuals who were clearly associated with attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan."
The Sept. 4 raid left at least 15 people dead, and embarrassed Pakistan's new civilian-led government. Pakistani officials have also said U.S. forces were involved.
Bush's decision to endorse cross-border attacks from Afghanistan without alerting Islamabad leaves Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari with a major foreign policy challenge. He replaced Pervez Musharraf, who had been Washington's point man in Pakistan but resigned under pressure in August.
Zardari and other politicians have called the cross-border attacks unacceptable and a violation of their country's sovereignty. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful but media-shy army leader, took things a step further Wednesday, when he said Pakistan's territorial integrity would be "defended at all cost.'
"Reckless actions" which kill civilians "only help the militants and further fuel the militancy in the area," Kayani said, reflecting the views of many Pakistanis.
At the crux of the dispute are militant havens that have grown on Pakistan's side of the border at the same time that a resurgent Taliban has been increasing its attacks inside Afghanistan, leading Bush to commit Wednesday to sending more troops there. Washington wants Pakistan to do more to crack down on its side of the border.
"Until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. "Frankly, we are running out of time."
Pakistan says it is doing all it can.
Pakistan's inability or unwillingness to mount a counterinsurgency campaign inside the tribal area was discussed at a National Security Council meeting held this week, according to notes of the meeting provided to The Associated Press. The notes said Pakistan is still focused on fighting India and is "still denying the counterinsurgency problem."
Top U.S. and Pakistani military officials conducted a secret strategy session in August on an aircraft carrier off Pakistan to discuss the problem.
Senior White House officials this summer were debating whether to adopt a new, more aggressive military stance to attack the maturing al-Qaida safe haven adjacent to the Afghan border.
The old strategy — relying on Pakistan to keep a lid on the tribal areas — was meant to support strong ally Musharraf. The official said Musharraf's waning fortunes heavily influenced the debate in favor of stronger action.
The Pakistani government is not told about the targets in advance because of concerns that the Pakistani intelligence service and military are infiltrated by al-Qaida and Taliban supporters who would leak the information, the former official said.
The arrangement is deliberately ambiguous. While the Pakistan government is left in the dark, it also does not want the United States government announcing that operations were undertaken without Islamabad's approval.
"They said, don't rub our noses in it," the former official said. "It doesn't want to look like they are just letting the United States do whatever it wants."
At the same time, the former official said, the Pakistan government recognizes that its settled areas are increasingly targeted by terrorist and militant attacks emanating from the tribal region and its military is not equipped to counter the threat.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment on the matter Thursday but said the U.S., Pakistan and the rest of the world share an interest in cracking down on militants along the Pakistani-Afghan border.
"We have clear interests there. The Pakistanis have clear interests, obviously, in combatting the threat of violent extremism in their own country and how that affects others around them and others globally," he said.
HILARIOUS.
Or maybe it was just another way to bring up Osama Bin Laden's name on 9/11
http://www.reverbnation.com/brianzilm
oh i get it good friend...
i also understand the timing of it... they wanted to keep the boogey man alive and loose, but now that they have used that all up to firther their agenda and are about to exit stage left they actually try to find him so they can ride out in all their glory and hand the white house to another republican administration
it is so plain to see it isnt even funny
There is no handoff, the people vote on it. No matter who wins you only have voters to blame.
You're a good man my2hands
http://www.reverbnation.com/brianzilm