According to my sources there on the ground, th eTaliban and their allies have quickly consolidated their hold on Buner, having easily beaten back a government force of 250 Frontier Constabulary officers sent to push them out of the district.
From what I'm hearing, the Taliban has taken advantage of the retreat to move into
Mansehra and Haripur. These two regions are literally the outskirts of Islamabad, the Pakistani capitol and Rawalpindi, the main garrison city and military home of the Pakistani Army.
One thing I'm noticing is that the Pakistani government is using the Frontier Constabulary and The Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary force under the command of Pakistan's Interior Ministry,rather than the regular army, which so far has been sitting on the sideines while the Taliban has been destroying troops that were basically designed as a kind of border patrol.
This is not normal behavior for an army watching an invasion creep towards its capitol. Either they are too demoralized to fight after the losses they suffered in Swat, they simply have no interest in preserving the Zardari government or they are simply victims of inertia, rather like the Iranian military in the days when the Ayatolah Khomeni was taking over.
I think it's likely a combination of all three factors, and I don't see the Pakistani Army stopping the Taliban,m who would never have comitted to an offensive if they weren't sure they had a good chance to win.
I only hope Obama isn't stupid enough to send US troops in...we'd be far better off just doing a military strike on Pakistan's nukes and military facilities and getting out, I think.
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It's worse than I feared. After the ceding of Swat I thought perhaps September for the assault on Islamabad.
I guess Barry is looking at Taliban trading cards to determine who he should bow down to first.
In order to send in troops, we would have to have the troops to send in. Bluntly, we don't. In order to take out the nuke facilities, we would have to know where they are. Given past failures by American intellegence and the fact that nothing seems to have been done to rectify this, I think it is very unlikely that we have enough knowledge of where the military facilities or the nukes are for a strike on these facilities to have any chance of succeeding. Given this, a strike on these facilities would likely fail and the facilities and the nukes would remain intact.
It seems our best option at this point is getting out without a strike that is unlikely to succeed any way. From that point, those troops can be redeployed to defensible positions along the US borders.
If someone could convince me that we have accurate enough intellegence on the location of nukes or the military facilities to be able to take them out with a military strike, I might alter my opinion on what our best option is. As stated previously, given past failures by US intellegence, my confidence in these people is NOT inspired.
While I have the utmost respect for the US military, their abilities are strictly limited. An undersized force has been stretched to its limit in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the "Global War on Terrorism." It is precariously close to the breaking point. As such, they would be hard pressed to carry out the strike successfully even if they had good intellegence on where the targets are. Again, if someone can provide reliable information as to why I'm wrong, my opinions may be altered.
"I guess Barry is looking at Taliban trading cards to determine who hes should bow to first." I sincerely hope and pray not. I pray he has more dignity than this. Unfortunately his intellegence or his dignity to date does NOT inspire my confidence. I pray it does not come to bowing before the Taliban.
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