Malaysian PM: "Flight 370 Crashed With No Survivors" ( And What They're Not Telling You)

 

Today, Malaya's Prime Minister Najib Razak announced in a press conference today that said that he was briefed by Britain's Air Accident Investigations Branch on data from Inmarsat, the satellite company that provided data used in the search for the missing plane. It showed that Flight 370's last position was in the Indian Ocean, due west of Perth, Australia.

"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites,'' Mr. Najib said. "It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

A text from the airline to the victim's families put it this way: “We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board have survived.”

Given the fuel capacity, the chances are that they're correct, although as yet no wreckage or debris has been found. And, as Prime Minister Razak himself said, there are still numerous questions about what happened.

The one thing that's clear is how little we know, but that's largely because we're looking not at the facts we know for sure and how they might fit together.

I recently received an e-mail from one of my sources that, combined with a few other known facts, gives us a fairly plausible line of inquiry to follow.

That this was an attempted hijacking of some sort is pretty obvious by now. As I wrote previously, For a modern airliner to simply disappear like this is almost unheard of, because of the modern tracking technology involved. Aside from the routine radar and satellite tracking, every airliner contains a flight recorder and a transponder which emit electronic signals, as well as an emergency location beacon, a highly durable electronic signaling device to enable an airliner to be quickly located if something unexpected occurs.

Apparently, the transponder which identifies the flight and provides heading and altitude data was deliberately switched off shortly after that last known last radio contact with the jet, when co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid said "all right, good night," to air traffic controllers.

This is totally against procedure. Someone did it for a reason, and that person had to have been in the cockpit at that exact time, which means it was either co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid, the pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or an unknown third party.

Not only that, but later on, someone in the cockpit turned off the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS). This system sends out electronic pings to satellites and continued to do so after Flight 370 disappeared from the air traffic controller's radar. That's how we know the plane changed course and headed west. If it wasn't turned off, it would have continued to send out signals no matter where the plane was - in the air or on the ground. The last contact came from Thai military radar at 2:15 AM local time.

There are also other signals, from the radar altimeter and weather radar. These could also have been disabled, but a prudent pilot wouldn't have done so, first because they came in handy in certain situations and second because while they send out signals, they're difficult to distinguish from other planes if Flight 370 was on established commercial flight paths. Think of a bunch of cars on the highway at night. They all have their headlights on, but it's hard to pick out an individual auto on a highway, as opposed to one car on a small street at night. There's also the fact that various governments might not want to necessarily reveal any signals they got from these sources because it could reveal their electronic intel collection methods.

My friend Sara Noble over at the Independent Sentinel has a piece worth reading that draws on a story from the UK Independent that the plane slipped under Pakistani radar and is sitting somewhere under Taliban control, covered by radar-absorbent camouflage netting. It could be, although a 777-200 requires a runway length of 3,300 to 5,000 feet or so (1,000 to 1,500 meters) at least to land under most conditions. That's between over half a mile and almost a mile in length, and a decent landing field that covert might have been hard to find but not impossible - unless the Taliban either had help or we're not talking about the Taliban at all. Or even a landing, since as I originally thought, Flight 370 succumbed to a 'work accident' and crashed en route to wherever it was headed.

So let's take this to the next step. Who might have wanted to hijack this particular Boeing 777-200? And why?

While the use of Flight 370 as a terrorist weapon is certainly possible, 9/11 showed that it was just as easy to hijack a plane filled with highly combustible jet fuel, smash it into something and cause a great deal of damage and death. So I rate the motive of hijacking the plane for use as a flying bomb unlikely. Moreover, if the plane did land and is being converted into a terrorist weapon, it might not make it to target since every military in the region is watching for it and the minute it surfaces it will likely attract something like a HellFire missile fairly quickly.

So let's look further at what other reason there might have been to hijack Flight 370,and who might have been involved.

We know that this plane was originally bound for China and was loaded with Chinese nationals.We also know that the pilot (and possibly the co-pilot) were fanatic devotees of Anwar Ibrahim, a hard line Islamist with major ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and who was endorsed when he ran for prime minister in Malaysia by none other than Brotherhood leader Sheikh Youseff Qaradawi. Ibrahim lost the election and was later jailed for 5 years for sodomizing one of his aides (homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia) which infuriated his supporters.

I've already said why I believe  hijacking Flight 370 for use as a 'flying bomb' is unlikely. The only way that could have happened is with Pakistan's connivance (the idea of a Boeing 777-200 'slipping under Pakistani radar' is ridiculous), which is certainly possible if somewhat unlikely. But if the plane wasn't hijacked for use as a terrorist bomb, what was the motive for doing it?

Again, remember that Flight 370's passengers were primarily Chinese.

Most of you will be unaware of the low level jihad being waged in Western China by the Uighers, Chinese Muslims who  seek to establish a sharia state  and who have committed a number of terrorist attacks against Han Chinese nationals.

Given the Islamist orientation of the pilot and co-pilot, I feel fairly certain that the idea here was to fly to Pakistan and ransom the plane and the passengers to China for cash, either to support the Uigher jihad or other Islamist causes. The ransom demanded could easily have been in the tens of millions.

What ultimately happened to Flight 370? Pure speculation on my part, but when the truth comes out if it ever does, I think we'll find that one of these scenarios occurred:

(A) The plane was unable to land as planned and crashed where the authorities are saying it did or somewhere else,either from lack of fuel or from a 'work accident' in midair.

(B) The plane landed successfully, the ransom demands were submitted and the Chinese refused to deal. So the plane was destroyed and the passengers killed, either on the ground or in the air.

(C) The announcement of the crash was a hoax designed to take the spotlight off this story, because ransom negotiations are continuing.

If scenarios B or C are the way things went down, the motivation of the authorities to simply treat this as a mysterious crash and move on are obvious.

My thanks to the Warlord for providing a needed missing piece here.

The Religion Of Peace Strikes Again - 80 Killed As Church In Pakistan Is Bombed

All Saints Church in the old quarter of Pehawar, Pakistan was hit by two suicide bombers Sunday morning. The historic church was ripped apart by two bombers carrying 6 kilos of explosives each.

The Jandullah group, a faction of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack

Around 600 people had attended services and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside the building when two explosions ripped through the crowd. 80 were killed including 34 women and 7 children, and scores of people were injured.The explosions were set off by two homicide bombers carrying 6 kilos of explosives each, packed with ball bearings as shrapnel.

The dead were placed in coffins and moved to nearby St. John’s Church, the oldest church in the city. Dozens of grieving relatives gathered, ironically, in the church playground to mourn their dead.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack on the church, saying "terrorists have no religion and targeting innocent people is against the teachings of Islam".

Sharif said such cruel acts of terrorism "reflect the brutality and inhumane mindset of the terrorists".

Unfortunately, the Taliban disagrees with Sharif. They're Muslims, and this was done in the name of Islam as far as their concerned, just like every other attack on Christians. Or Hindus, for that matter. Just ask the people of Mumbai, who were hit by 'authorized' terrorists from Lashkar e Taiba armed and trained by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service.

The odd thing is that the current Pakistani government has been pretty outspoken about wanting peace with the Taliban,  and those offers have remained on the table in spite of repeated attacks on Pakistan's Christians.

It makes you wonder how sincere those condemnations are.

Mass Jailbreak As Taliban Storms Prison

Over 250 Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners were freed when the Taliban launched a military-style assault on Pakistan's Central Prison in Dera Ismail Khan, including several of what Pakistani security referred to as 'high level prisoners', including six people scheduled for execution.

Central Prison is supposedly one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the country.

According to one of the surviving guards, the Taliban attack force blew up the main gate and then targeted the guards with RPG and mortar fire.Gunmen blew up the power lines to the prison and detonated bombs to breach the outer walls. At least 12 people were killed, including five policemen and four Shi'ite Muslim prisoners whose throats were slit by the Sunni Taliban attackers. The attack was extremely well planned...out of an estimated population of 5,000 prisoners, the Taliban knew exactly where of the prisoners they wanted to free were incarcerated.

My sources tell me this was almost certainly an inside job. Only about 70 of the 200 prison guards who were supposed to be on duty were present that night, and most of them simply ran away without returning fire. Some of the inmates were were also reportedly provided with cellphones by the guards, and were likely in touch with the Taliban.

Also, if mortars were used, inside information and good recon would have been necessary to get the range and coordinates. And the location of the prison, in the Pashtun areas that border Afghanistan ensured that the Taliban likely had local support for the attack as well.

There was a similar mass jailbreak in the northern town of Bannu about a year ago which was carried out with inside help from the prison guards.In fact, thus latest attack was reportedly led by Taliban commander Adnan Rashid, who was busted out of jail in the Bannu attack.

Pakistan Insults Obama, U.S. With Iran Pact

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari were in the mood to celebrate when they met earlier this month in the Iranian border town of Chabahar.

The occasion was the start of construction of a gas pipeline between Iran and Pakistan designed to carry gas from Iran's Fars field to Pakistan and ultimately beyond.

It's also a way for Iran obtain badly needed hard currency and to to evade and ignore international sanctions on its illegal nuclear program.

For Zardari, known in Pakistan as 'Mr. Ten Percent' becomes of his kleptocrat ways, the benefits are two fold. With an election coming up in September, he can take credit for doing something about Pakistan's energy shortage and high prices. And second, it's a way of appealing to the huge amount of anti-western and anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.

The assassination of Osama bin-Laden and the drone strikes favored by the Obama Administration with their civilian collateral damage have turned what was a bad relationship to begin with into open abhorrence.

Not only did the bin-Laden hit provide blatant public proof of what everyone knew anyway, that Pakistan was a major aider and abetter of Islamist terrorism. It showed up the Zardari regime as being unable to keep America out of its sovereign territory.


Our state Department issued the usual pro forma rhetoric warning about consequences.Spokesperson Victoria Nuland went on record saying, "If this deal is finalized for a proposed Iran-Pakistan pipeline, it would raise serious concerns under our Iran Sanctions Act. We've made that absolutely clear to our Pakistani counterparts."

Zardari and the Pakistanis could care less. And they can afford to. Over 75% of the supplies for our troops in Afghanistan come through the Pakistani port of Karachi and overland by truck via the Torkhum Pass.After the bin -Laden assassination the Pakistanis were livid and shut down the roads for several months. We responded by waiving terrorism restrictions that are clearly stated in U.S. law to gift them an extra $2 billion in baksheesh to get the road open again.


It's worth remembering that Zardari is only in power because we made it happen, as part of the Bush Administration's fetish for Muslim Democracy.

Originally, we were bribing former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government to keep the path to Afghanistan open, which was behind his famous remark that "without Pakistan this is no war on terror."

Moreover, once he was bought, Musharraf stayed bought, although he got a bit fractious from time to time. He kept things reasonably together, turned a blind eye when we needed him to and more importantly, kept the supplies flowing to Afghanistan. Things have gotten so far out of hand under Zardari that we can't even depend on our lifeline to Afghanistan staying open.

Musharraf trusted Bush and Condi Rice to keep their end of the bargain.His reward was to have former Secretary of State Rice force the corrupt Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari on Musharraf as 'co-rulers' to 'give him more popular support'.

The end result was that Musharraf was undermined, Bhutto was assassinated by Pakistan's Islamists as they always said she would be the minute she returned to Pakistan, and Zardari was elected with a large sympathy vote.

Zardari and his government have made no secret of their disdain for America since...simply shocking how littel $7.5 billion a year buys us these days.

China To Modernize And Upgrade Pakistan's Reactors, Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

This is the most important news story you'll read today.


China has reached an agreement with Pakistan to construct a third nuclear reactor located at Chashma and to modernize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including development of a new warhead for Pakistan’s missile arsenal.

According to U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials, the secret agreement for the Chashma 3 reactor was signed in Beijing during the visit by a delegation from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission from Feb. 15 to 18.

The agreement calls for the state-run China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) to construct a 1,000-megawatt power plant at Chashma, located in the northern province of Punjab, where two earlier Chinese reactors were built.

China’s government last month issued an internal notice to officials within its nuclear establishment and to regional political leaders urging care to avoid any leaks of information about the nuclear sale that Beijing expects will be controversial, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The reactor deal had been in the works for several years and prompted high-level U.S. government efforts to block the sale because of concerns it will boost Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.

The CNNC is China’s main nuclear weapons producer and has been linked in the past to Pakistan’s nuclear arms program by U.S. intelligence agencies. CNNC sold thousands of ring magnets to Pakistan during the 1990s that were used in centrifuges that produced highly enriched uranium for weapons.

According to the Obama Administration, China's actions violate an international accord against proliferation.

In 2004, China joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a voluntary association that seeks international cooperation in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. China agreed at the time not to not to sell additional reactors to Pakistan beyond the two reactors it sold Pakistan earlier, and member states pledge not to sell any nuclear materials to any state not a a member of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA).

Pakistan not only isn't a member, it has a shameful history of aiding and abetting illegal proliferation.

It was AQ Khan who not only created Pakistan's nuclear weapons but set up what amounted to an illegal supermarket in nuclear weapons technology for some of the world's worst actors. Among Khan's customers were Iran, Libya and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the Pakistanis also acted as brokers for North Korean missile technology.

For the Chinese to provide up to date nuclear hardware for this unstable Muslim nation is incredibly dangerous, short sighted and foolish. Some of that nuclear technology could find its way to the jihadis Pakistan collaborates with like Lashkar e Tiaba or the Taliban and end up sparking a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

And it might not stop there. Have the Chinese forgotten they have their own Muslim insurgency to deal with in Western China with the Uighers - just over the China Pakistan border?

It will be interesting to see what, if anything the Obama Administration does about this.

Clinton Waives Terrorism Restrictions On Aid To Give Pakistan $2 Billion

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed congress today that she is bypassing legal restrictions that would have blocked some $2 billion in U.S. economic and military aid to Pakistan.

Disbursing the funds, she said in an official notice, is “important to the national security interests of the United States.”

Clinton informed Congress that she was waiving provisions of the 2009 Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act and the State Department’s 2012 budget requiring that she certify that Islamabad has met certain conditions before some $2 billion in economic, military and counter-terrorism assistance can be disbursed.

Pakistan was required to have made progress in “ceasing support, including by any elements within the Pakistani military or its intelligence agency, to extremist groups,” especially those that have attacked U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

Islamabad also was required to have made progress toward stopping al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and allied Pakistani extremists “from operating in the territory of Pakistan” and staging attacks in neighboring countries. It also must move toward shutting down “terrorist” bases in the tribal areas and other parts of its country.

For the first time, the Obama Administration refused to certify that Pakistan had met these requirements hence the need for Mrs. Clinton to issue a formal waiver. Pakistan has always gotten certified before by the Obama Administration, ludicrous in view of what is going on there with its aiding and abetting of our enemies. The failure to certify must mean things are falling apart so bad that even this administration can't see covering for Pakistan any more.Far easier to just issue the waiver and see to it that the jihadis get their jirzyah.

Because that's what this is, monetary tribute. We need Pakistan's help in trying to get the Taliban to come to a peace agreement with us so we can bug out. And we need to grease palms to make sure Pakistan allows supplies for our troops in Afghanistan to land at the port of Karachi and then get trucked into Afghanistan via the Torkhum pass.

After Osama bin-Laden was assassinated, part of the fallout was that the enraged Pakistanis refused to let supplies go through their territory anymore. A number of trucks already waiting at the border were destroyed by the Taliban with lots of casualties and a huge loss of material.

It was only a few months ago that the Pakistani government again allowed shipments to go through.

We'll likely keep buying them off until we leave. Or grow a spine.

SecDef Panneta: Closure By Pakistan Of Supply Lines Costs U.S $100 M Per Month

Regular members of Joshua's Army might remember my mentioning the huge cost of the Osama bin-Laden assassination, not to mention that it might just have been a major strategic error. Fresh evidence of how costly President Obama's decision ( actually, Special Ops commander Admiral McRaven's decision that the president took credit for) actually has been surfaced yesterday.

Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta told Congress yesterday that the Pakistani closure of the land routes into Afghanistan via the Torkhum Pass in response to the bin-Laden hit is costing the U.S. $100 million per month as more costly alternate routes need to be utilized.

The U.S. attempted to talk the Pakistanis into opening the routes again, and their response was to jack up what the 'transit fees' per truck to the point where our negotiators just left.

Bin-Laden was taken out in May of 2011, so if you do the math we're talking about a billion dollars in extra costs so far..not to mention all the other costs involved in the raid, the priceless stealth technology from the downed helicopter the Pakistanis showed to Iran, Russia and China, and the still to be reckoned cost of relocating al-Qaeda from AfPak to the Arab world.

That's quite a price tag to assassinate one inactive, semi-retired terrorist we didn't even bother to bring back home and interrogate.

Pakistani Who Helped Locate Bin-Laden Gets 30 Years For Treason - After Being Outed By SecDef Panetta

A Pakistani physician who helped the CIA locate Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan has been sentenced to over 30 years in prison for treason.

Dr. Shakeel Afridi was arrested three weeks after US Navy Seal Team Six assassinated bin-Laden at his hideaway in Abbottabad, only 30 miles from Islamabad.

Dr Afridi was not present in court on Wednesday nor was he represented by a lawyer:

“He has been sentenced for 33 years on treason charges and has been moved to Peshawar central jail after the verdict was announced by the local court,” said Mohammad Siddiq, spokesman for the administrative head of Khyber, where the case was heard.

Dr. Afridi set up Dr Afridi set up a hepatitis vaccination campaign in March last year, according to residents of Abbottabad.

The CIA had seen an al-Qaeda courier enter bin-Laden's compound there, they weren't sure that bin-Laden was actually present. Dr.Afridi's role was to attempt to obtain a DNA sample from a tall figure the CIA knew was inside because of satellite imagery.

Although he wasn't able to get a blood sample, Dr.Afridi was able to secure a telephone number for Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s trusted courier, enabling the CIA to confirm his identity.

What evidence did the Pakistanis have against Dr. Afridi? Simple. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta outed him (on 'Sixty Minutes', no less) and gave the Pakistanis an open and shut case:



I seem to recall the Angry Left going absolutely berserk over someone allegedly outing Valerie Plame. I guarantee you that won't happen to Leon Panetta.

More to the point,imagine you're a CIA agent trying to recruit assets in a foreign country. How successful do you think you're going to be after potential informants see the Secretary of Defense performing on national TV and shooting his mouth off like this?

If we were actually in a declared war, this would be treason, by definition.

Afghanistan - 'You Knew I was A Snake When You Picked Me Up'

There has been a great deal of anger expressed by average Americans over the riots in Afghanistan over the burning of Qu'rans - paid for by American taxpayers, I might add - that Taliban prisoners used to send messages to each other. The Afghan's reaction has been typical...hysterical rage expressed in violence towards people who had nothing to do with the matter at hand except that they were infidels and ferenghi.

At least four American soldiers have been killed, two of them American officers murdered inside the Interior Ministry building in a highly secured area, possibly by an Afghan security officer and two other American soldiers were shot to death by a member of the Afghan Army at a base in eastern Afghanistan. A number of others, both military and civilian UN and NATO personnel have been injured. An even larger death toll was avoided when an Afghan cook at Bagram Air Force base was caught attempting to poison food scheduled to be served to American personnel at the base.

After a successful car bombing in front of Jalalabad airport that killed nine and injured nineteen Afghan civilians and law enforcement officers and four NATO soldiers (Jalalabad is used exclusively by NATO forces and the military) NATO Commander General John Allen ordered all NATO military and civilian personnel to leave the Interior ministry and a number of other strategic locations in Kabul and go into what amounts to virtual lockdown.

General Allen is obviously aware that the chief danger comes from our Afghan 'allies' . He issued orders for Americans to stay clear of their Afghan counterparts until 'tensions die down'.

Both General Allen and of course, President Barack Hussein Obama promptly issued what amounted to groveling apologies to President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan people for the Q'uran burnings. As I or anyone else familiar with the kind of mindset we're dealing with could have told them, the apologies only made matters worse and caused the violence to spike.

The feelings of many Americans are pretty much captured in the Michael Ramirez cartoon above. Charles Krauthammer, Andrew McCarthy and others were quick to point out that Hamid Karzai never apologized for the murder of our troops...any more than he apologized for the murder of eight UN aid workers last April, who were butchered when a crazed mob overran a base in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif after an American pastor from a small church in Florida deliberately burned a copy of the Q'uran. At least two of them were decapitated, and the only worker in the office who lived survived because he managed to convince the mob he was a Muslim.

General David Petraeus, who was then the NATO commander if Afghanistan and NATO Ambassador Mark Sedwill issued a particularly servile statement after that atrocity, apologizing humbly and condemning any disrespect for what they termed 'the Holy Q'uran'.

Karzai did not apologize or condemn the murders then or now for a very good reason. In his culture, apologizing is almost never done, because it's considered a sign of weakness and dishonor. In fact, that's true of Islam in general, especially when kuffars, non-believers are concerned. That should give you some insight into how Karzai, most Afghans and indeed a lot of Muslims feel about our representatives, our military commanders, and of course, our commander-in-chief at this point.

Another attitude not overly present in Muslim societies is that of gratitude, particularly when it comes to foreigners and infidels. Those of you whom were watching closely may have noticed a singular lack of it when our forces left Iraq.

After freeing the Shi'ite majority from the murderous Saddam Hussein, putting them in control of the country, saving their oil fields after Saddam set them on fire, seeing to it they had their first free elections and spending 4,000 precious lives and over a trillion dollars to rebuild their country,not a single Iraqi dignitary bothered to attend the final ceremony where our flag was lowered and we officially turned over all authority to the Iraqis, and Iraq's leader Maliki made a fairly harsh speech on Iraqi television that wasn't reported here on how happy the Iraqis were to finally rid themselves of foreign 'occupation' and see the back of us.

Some noted at the time the lack of a ticker tape parade in New York or a national celebration to welcome home the American troops returning from Iraq. Yet, the occasion was not without its public celebrations. A picture of one of them can be seen below, as hundreds of Shi'ites in Falluja celebrate our final withdrawal. And it wasn't just in Falluja.


That picture literally is worth a thousand words. Or more accurately, a trillion dollars and over 4,000 lives.

The home made Israeli flag in the picture is no accident. As our warriors who were there will tell you, many Iraqis, especially in Baghdad habitually referred colloquially to American troops as 'the Jews' as in 'you can't get there that way - the Jews have a roadblock there.'

Of course, there are no Jews in Iraq any more, but the Americans were seen in exactly that way by the majority of Iraqis, as despised infidels and farenghi albeit rich, gullible and powerful ones. They put up with us for a while to get what they wanted out of us, but eventually it was always going to be a case of `thank you very much for your time and money, infidels..now leave, so we can bond with our Shi'ite jihadi brothers in Iran.' I caught a fair amount of flak when I wrote that over five years ago, but the way the wind was blowing was obvious to anyone looking honestly at the situation. When the Iraqi leader you're propping up with your military hangs out with your worst enemy in the region and smiles and nods when you're referred to as 'unwanted guests' the message is fairly easy to read.



Most Iraqis have no understanding of freedom or democracy as we see it, nor do they wish to. What they understand is the strong horse, power and retribution, as Iraq's Christians and Sunnis have already found out. While there are always individual exceptions, by and large expecting gratitude or even friendship from such people is a particularly forlorn hope.As with most things, the Q'uran is the final authority on that*.

The same holds true in Afghanistan.Unless they happened to be female, most of the Afghans, and particularly the Pashtuns who form the majority of the population were perfectly at home living in the barbaric 7th century Islamo-Disneyland the Taliban created there. The rides weren't much to brag about, but it was theirs, it was what Allah told them they should have and it suited them. And they never asked us to come in and change it for them.

After 9/11, we found out that the Taliban were sheltering Osama bin-Laden, and President Bush gave Mullah Omar an ultimatum to turn him over to us or else. Since bi-Laden was a guest of the Taliban and under their protection for Mullah Omar to do that would have violated pashtunwalli, an ancient code of conduct in Afghanistan that predates Islam. Not only that,but regardless of whom he was to us, to the Taliban, Osama bin-Laden was a war hero because of his combat record against the Russians.

Either President Bush knew very well that they were never going to turn him over to us, or he operated out of ignorance. In the end it really doesn't matter.

It was far easier to go after the subcontractors of jihad rather than the leaders, enablers and funders of it, which after all would have meant being honest about what and whom we were fighting rather than calling it a 'war on terror'. So President Bush made the brilliant decision to send an army and billions of dollars worth of equipment into a landlocked country surrounded by hostile territory.His successor President Obama made the even more brilliant decision to double down and send more even more troops and equipment there to back up his genuinely clueless campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan being 'the good war' where President Bush 'took his eye off the ball'. You can only truly appreciate how ironic this was if you look at how Senator Obama, like many members of his party did his very best to sabotage our military effort both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The American people were sold on Afghanistan because they were told that it was necessary to prevent it from becoming a failed state and a haven for terrorist attacks.And they were told that also meant we had to engage in an expensive adventure in nation building, just as we did in Iraq.

How utterly that failed in both places on all accounts can be seen by what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan since. Osama bin-Laden simply moved from Afghanistan to another failed state right next door - another Muslim 'ally' of ours - with their full knowledge and assistance and hunkered down comfortably in the nice villa they provided for him next door to the country's military academy.

There's no sense in being frustrated by any of this. Directing our anger at the Iraqis, Malii, Hamid Karzai or the Afghans is is senseless, and changes nothing. That is simply whom these people are. And if we thought we were going to change them, we were kidding ourselves.

You can take a rattlesnake into your home as a pet, feed it, and treat with kindness and decency, and it's still a rattler who at some point is going to revert to its basic nature and sink its fangs into you. You knew that when you picked it up...or you should have.

Afghanistan as a strategic objective in the war we actually ought to be fighting is worth about as much as the urine a few Marines sprinkled over some Taliban corpses a few weeks ago.

And I don't say that lightly, since I like to think think I have a better idea than average about some of the amazing things our warriors have accomplished there and what it cost. The fault is not with them, but with politicians who are more concerned with appeasing the Muslim world than with victory over our enemies and who handcuffed them at every turn with unworkable strategies and rules of engagement that would have had their grandfathers who won WWII shaking their heads in disbelief.

Iraq, had it been properly handled was at least an opportunity. If we had put it under military governorship for several years as we did with Japan and Germany, used Iraq's oil to pay for the occupation, helped our Kurdish allies put together an independent Kurdistan and used the Persh Merga to double our troop strength there overnight, and had we fought the war there ruthlessly the way it should have been fought, Iraq might truly have emerged as a US ally and a democracy.

Afghanistan was never an opportunity for that at all. It was a diversion. At one point, when the Afghans still respected us as warriors, we could have perhaps made an arrangement with the Pashtun chiefs to safeguard some of our interests for a retainer, just as we paid off the Sunni chiefs in Iraq who were part of the Awakening. The British kept the Afghans quiet for almost a century using exactly those methods, and only had to send troops into what was largely a futile conflict once Parliament cut the subsidies. Such an arrangement is no longer possible, nor perhaps even desirable and it's time we realized that there's nothing we're going to attain there using the current tactics we seem wedded to that's worth a single dollar or a drop of American blood.


*See surahs 4:101, 5:51, 9:12 and 9:27 among many others for further details

"I Got Bin Laden" - And Why Obama's Big Boast Might Have Been A Huge Mistake

"..Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. That’s what change is."

So said President Obama at a recent fundraiser, the same one where he also claimed that Republicans threaten the "very core of what this country stands for."

Let's ignore his attacking the GOP's patriotism and focus on that first statement, because President Obama keeps coming back to it as a great foreign policy achievement of his. Was it?

Osama bin Laden certainly deserved death if any one did. But foreign policy is based on strategic goals, not on simply meting out justice to those who've murdered Americans. If President Obama's chief concern was punishing people who've murdered Americans, we wouldn't be aiding the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or the Hezbollah-controlled government of Lebanon and Iran would be a smoking crater right now, with the mullahs, President Ahmadinejad and a lot of other members of that government turned into halal crisps.

Since President Obama is touting this as a great foreign policy accomplishment of his and is using it to raise money, let's simply take a cold hard look at it in the light of what it actually accomplished from that perspective.

At the time he was assassinated, Osama bin Laden was essentially living quietly as a guest of the Pakistani government in Abbottobad. His health was not the best, so a great deal of the actual operational command was in the hands of his subordinate, Egyptian-born former Muslim Brotherhood leader Ayman Zawahiri.

As President Obama has pointed out, al-Qaeda has been weakened severely and marginalized, thanks to bin Laden's miscalculation in making Iraq a central front of jihad and suffering massive losses of men and material. That happened, ironically, because of military strategies like the surge Senator Obama did his very best to criticize and sabotage before he entered the White House.

At the time of bin Laden's death, Al-Qaeda had become more of a brand name, a proselytizing force over the internet and an inspiration to young jihadis rather than an actual source of many attacks.

We used a painstakingly created network of Pakistani informers and intel sources to nail down bin-Laden's whereabouts and plan the operation that assassinated him. We then sent the valiant men of Navy Seal Team Six into Pakistan via helicopter, broke into bin-Laden's compound, shot him down, removed his body, gave him a proper Islamic funeral ( which involves cursing Christians and Jews, if the usual text was used) and threw his body into the sea.

So we accomplished an act of retribution. Let's examine the results and see if they were worth it.

The Pakistanis were predictably livid at being exposed, again, as a major aider and abetter of Islamic fascism and terrorism. Their honor/shame mentality kicked in and rather than express regret that they had been caught sheltering a mass murderer, they went into hysterics about the violation of their sovereignty. They arrested every member of the Pakistani network they could get their hands on that helped the US find and assassinate bin-Laden and charged them with treason, which will likely end in a number of executions. Aside from our network in Pakistan being burnt, this assured that we're going to have great difficulty with intel from that country in the future.

The Pakistanis also closed the land route they control into Afghanistan through the Torkum Pass for several days. This route transports 75% of the supplies going into Afghanistan for our troops, who now simply had to make do without needed supplies for a few days. Also, because the stopped supply trucks were sitting ducks, the Taliban manged to destroy several of them.

Even more costly, we lost one of our helicopters in the bin-Laden operation, a Blackhawk. Now, these normally cost about $20 million or so, but this one cost a great deal more, because it had been highly modified with top secret stealth technology that brought its cost up to more like $60 million. Even worse, the SEAL's were unable to completely destroy it, and the angry Pakistanis gleefully gave it to the Chinese to examine at their leisure. The potential loss of technology is in the millions, not to mention our relationship with Pakistan, which has worsened considerably and is unlikely to recover for some time if at all.

But the worse is yet to come.

When we take a look at exactly why Osama bin-Laden was ratted out after all this time, some interesting intel surfaces. As I've mentioned on these pages before, we know that there was a substantial disagreement between Osama and his chief lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri, prior to Osama's death. Bin laden was relatively comfortable in Abbotobad and wanted to keep al-Qaeda anchored in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Zawahiri, looking at developments in his native Egypt and elsewhere like the 'Arab Spring' , the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Obama's already announced retreat from the region was pushing to relocate al-Qaeda back to the Middle East and the roiling Arab world.

So now that Osama's dead (and according to my sources, there are pretty solid indications he was deliberately fingered) Zawahiri, a former Muslim Brotherhood member has taken over and we see increased al-Qaeda presence in both the Egyptian Sinai and Libya, as well as in Iraq where the Maliki government's marginalization of the Sunnis has given al-Qaeda new life.

Moreover, should Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist governments take over in Egypt and Libya as seems likely, Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda and its affiliates like Takfir-wal Higra can count on a haven to train and recruit, with Libya's oil wealth and Egypt's population and rabid Islamism to draw on.

So let's reiterate, shall we? The chief foreign policy triumph President Obama continually boasts about consists of taking out a largely defanged terrorist. It cost us millions of dollars, inflamed an already unfriendly but unfortunately necessary relationship between the US and Pakistan, burnt our intel network in that country, gave the Chinese and probably the Russians and Iranians a good look at American state of the art stealth technology that cost additional millions to develop, and helped relocate al-Qaeda to the heart of the Middle East after we had largely driven them out.

'Foreign policy achievement' or a fiasco being used for political effect? You be the judge.

Pakistan Shuts Supply Routes Into Afghanistan After NATO Air Attack

Pakistan has given the US an ultimatum to vacate an air base used for drone attacks and shut off the supply routes for NATO forces in Afghanistan in retaliation for what it claims was an unprovoked air attack on Pakistani troops that reportedly killed as many as 28 soldiers.

NATO sources claim that a joint US-Afghan force operating in the Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack and that they responded and called in air cover. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Pakistani forces have fired on US troops near the border.

The Pakistanis have a different story:

"NATO helicopters and fighter aircraft carried out unprovoked firing on two Pakistani Army border posts in Mohmand Agency as a result of which 24 troops embraced shahadat [martyrdom] and 13 were injured," the statement said. "Pakistani troops effectively responded immediately in self defence to NATO / ISAF's aggression with all available weapons."

The Pakistanis are actually claiming that the 40 soldiers stationed at the two outposts were all asleep at the time of the attack.

The Pakistanis immediately ordered the Torkhum Pass closed, thus cutting off about 70% of the supplies en route to our forces in Afghanistan. This has happened several times in the past, with the last occasion happening last year when the Pakistanis closed the Pass for ten days after two Pakistani frontier police were killed under murky circumstances. This, of course, makes the stranded supply trucks sitting ducks for the Taliban.

In addition, the Pakistani government gave the US an ultimatum to vacate Shamsi Air Base in Afghanistan within 15 days. Shamsi is a NATO logistics base and as a key part of the CIA's Predator and Reaper drone strikes campaign in North and South Waziristan, which has become the 'safe' zone for our enemies just over the Afghan border. The Pakistanis are upset because we stopped informing them in advance of upcoming strikes once we discovered they were tipping off our enemies in advance as to when the strikes were coming so they could get safely out of harm's way.

Our commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen predictably responded with the usual apologetic tone, saying, "This incident has my highest personal attention and my commitment to thoroughly investigate it to determine the facts.

"My most sincere and personal heartfelt condolences go out to the families and loved ones of any members of Pakistan Security Forces who may have been killed or injured."

OK, so what likely happened?

Given the absurd Rules of Engagement that would have made their grandfathers who fought WWII shake their heads in disbelief, I doubt our forces fired on the Pakistanis first, especially since the Pakistani troops were in border outposts the Americans undoubtedly knew about rather than shadowy figures scuttling across the ground.

There are two probable scenarios, and one possible one.

It's been well known for a long time that our 'allies' have been in bed with our enemies for quite some time, since a peaceful Afghanistan is not in Pakistan's interest. The border terrain there is rugged, and people like the Haqqani Network and the Taliban operate out of the border areas with impunity since the Pakistanis certainly don't stop them and in a number a cases actually assist them, as they did with the Haqqani Network's raid on Kabul a few months back. It's quite possible that a group of jihadis fired on the American-Afghan force from an area close enough to the border outposts ( with or without the knowledge of the troops stationed there) to convince the US troops that they were being fired on by the Pakistanis, especially since it's happened before.

It's also not much of a stretch that the Pakistanis indeed simply fired on the US forces.

The third, possible scenario is that the Pakistani government actually set this up knowing they would take a few casualties in order to whip up support in the streets for the government and perhaps drain a bit more baksheesh out of the US. Devious, but again, not out of the realm of possibility.

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Pakistan: 'Keep Accusing Us Of Harboring Terrorists And We'll Stop Pretending We're Your Friends'

U.S. relations with our 'ally' Pakistan took another ratchet downwards when Pakistan's foreign minister accused the U.S. of using Pakistan as a scapegoat after American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen testified before Congress and accused Pakistan's ISI agency of supporting the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network in planning and executing last week’s 22-hour assault on the US Embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers a few days earlier:

The Haqqanis are "veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency [ISI]," he said in opening remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding that it had provided the Haqqanis with support to conduct the Kabul attacks:


"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted the truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Mullen said of the recent attack on a base in Wardak that wounded 77 U.S. soldiers. "We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations."

Mullen said Pakistan's government has chosen to "use violent extremism as an instrument of policy," which jeopardizes its relationship with the United States and its role as a player in the region.

Speaking of its support for the Haqqani Network, Mullen said, "they may believe that by using these proxies they are hedging their bets, or redressing what they feel is an imbalance of regional power. But, in reality, they have already lost that bet."

He added that by "exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being."

Panetta said that in recent high-profile meetings with Pakistani officials, U.S. officials have conveyed "a very clear message to them and to others that they must take steps to prevent the safe haven that the Haqqanis are using.

"We simply cannot allow these kinds of terrorists to be able to go into Afghanistan, attack our forces, and then return to Pakistan for safe haven and not face any kind of pressure from the Pakistanis for that to stop."

Panetta called the existence of safe havens "not tolerable" and "unacceptable," and said continued U.S. pressure on Pakistan's leaders was the only way they would get that message. "The only way to deal with the Pakistanis, " he said, "is to keep giving them a clear message of where the lines are. "

The Pakistanis, of course, had their own things to say about where the lines are.Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik baldly denied Mullen's accusations about ISI involvement with the Haqqani Network, and warned the U.S. that Pakistan would not allow a U.S. attack over the border aimed at the Haqqanis,who are apparently a protected species in Pock-kee-stawn.

“The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never,” Mr. Malik said in an interview with Reuters. “Our government is already cooperating with the U.S. — but they also must respect our sovereignty.”

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar likewise warned the U.S. not to cross what she called 'red lines' and not to use Pakistan as a scapegoat. ”If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat,” she said, speaking to the American Government.

Khar spoke these lines with such conviction and inherent dishonesty that I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out she was related to Hillary Clinton somewhere along the line.

The Pakistanis have been nurturing, arming and training the Haqqani Network and other Islamist groups for years. In fact,things are so symbiotic that the Pakistani military and the Haqqani fighters both forces major bases practically next door to each other in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The ISI has a similar relationship with Islamist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and several others of that ilk.

Pakistan sees the Haqqanis in particular as an instrument of policy to attack India and protect their interests in Afghanistan, especially since they know that President Obama has a set-in-stone date for bugging out. He's going to want to campaign as the guy who killed bin-Laden and brought the troops home from those 'illegal' Bush wars.

The fact that Pakistan is a rogue basket case of a nation that actively supports terrorism (the Mumbai Attacks and the British 7/7 bombings are just two examples) and engages in a nice sideline of illegal nuclear proliferation to people like Iran and North Korea is also not exactly unknown to the United States. This isn't new information. That's exactly why we couldn't trust the Pakistanis with our knowledge that Osama bin-Laden had been hiding out in fancy digs with right to the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbotobad for six years, why Pakistan arrested five Pakistani informants who helped the CIA find out where Osama bin-Laden was hiding out and imprisoned them on charges of espionage and why almost every time we've let them know drone attacks are imminent the terrorists have safely moved away and we end up bombing an empty building.

We've essentially turned a blind eye towards Pakistan's treachery and enabled it because we need to bribe them. Around 75% of the supplies needed for our war in landlocked Afghanistan comes through the Pakistani port of Karachi and travels overland via the Torkhum Pass, which is why we've been paying Pakistan off to the tune of billions per year. And while we've finally begun the process of paying baksheesh to five countries instead of one to lessen the impact of our deteriorating relations withPakistan, it isn't nearly complete yet and will likely not have that much of an impact since our leaving Afghanistan is fairly imminent. So we'll do nothing now.

As for Pakistan, it's going to remain the same violent, corrupt Islamist hell hole it always was, with the added attraction of a civil war between various Islamist groups as the army splits apart into factions, with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal as the grand prize for the winner. You see, when Pakistan's powers-that-be got into in bed with various terrorist groups like the Haqqanis and Lashkar-e-Taiba, they thought they were going to be using them. Instead, they've made them strong enough that the Army isn't going to be either unified enough or powerful enough to take them on.

Our whole toxic relationship with Pakistan started because of our involvement in Afghanistan. Under the Bush Doctrine, we would have been more than justified in hitting Pakistan as well, and in terms of our war aims we likely would have been better off.

In the beginning it more or less worked because we had in Pervez Musharraf a dictator who at least stayed bought. Condi Rice, arguably one of the most inept Secretaries of State since William Jennings Bryan torched that arrangement by insisting that Musharraf allow the klepotocrat Bhuttos back in to the country as 'partners, to show more democracy', and the rest is history.

But as I've said before, it would be a nice touch if, as we left AfPak we took out Pakistan's nuclear facilities and perhaps kidnapped their rogue nuclear scientist AQ Kahn and took him to a nice, isolated interrogation room to find out exactly what he sold and to whom.

Of course, nothing remotely like that is going to happen under this president.

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Sec. Clinton Blasts House Bill With Aid Requirements for Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, 'Palestinians'

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is livid over a proposed House bill out of committee that would impose strict new requirements on U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yemen, and the Palestinian Authority.

Th Secretary of State wrote In an angry letter she wrote to members of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Clinton claimed the bill “would be debilitating to my efforts to carry out a considered foreign policy and diplomacy, and to use foreign assistance strategically to that end.”

Mrs. Clinton actually threatened to lobby the president to veto the bill if it's passed.

So, what are these horrific restrictions she's so upset about?

For example, as one condition to continue to get the billions in baksheesh they receive from us, the Pakistanis would need to prove that they are assisting in an US investigation on who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), said in her opening statement Wednesday that the measure would send a clear message to the country in which Osama bin Laden hid for years without detection.

Pakistan, she said, is “on notice that it is no longer business as usual and that they will be held to account if they continue to refuse to cooperate with our efforts to eliminate the nuclear black market, destroy the remaining elements of Osama Bin Laden’s network, and vigorously pursue our counter-terrorism objectives.”

“I think the prospect of a cutoff of assistance will get their attention and that the games being played with our security will finally stop,” she added.

Lebanon will not receive any US aid if a Hezbollah member occupies a top government or policy post (they dominate the cabinet).The 'Palestinian Authority' must terminate incitement against Israel in the media and in the schools, cooperate with Israel on security matters,attain statehood via negotiations with Israel rather than an end run to the UN. And the 'Palestinian' Authority must not allow members of Hamas, a recognized terrorist group, to be part of its government directly or indirectly. In other words, in order to get the $510 million of our tax dollars President Obama has set aside for them, The 'Palestinian Authority' must simply abide by the agreements it signed, the Oslo Accords and the Road Map.

The Egyptians would be required to keep the peace with Israel and the other provisions of the Camp David Accords, while Yemen would have to be be free of human rights abuses. And the flow of US foreign aid to all of these countries could only continue if the Obama administration was able to certify that no members of terrorist organizations groups or their sympathizers were serving in their governments. The countries also have to meet certain anti-corruption standards.

The Republican in the House said the bill would serve U.S. national interests while scaling back overall spending. “In this difficult geopolitical and economic climate, the American people deserve a policy that is based on American principles, looks out for American interests, and wisely invests American dollars,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations, said Wednesday. In other words, foreign aid ought to be reserved for our friends, or at countries that serve our interests, not our enemies. What a concept, eh?

Both Granger and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Nita Lowey (D-NY)favored attaching strings to aid for Pakistan and the other Middle Eastern countries named.

Brad Goehner, a spokesman for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House committee, told the Post that the letter was “disappointing, particularly given the current debt crisis, that the Obama administration is fighting to keep sending taxpayer money to foreign organizations and governments that undermine U.S. interests.”

I have to admit, I can't imagine why Mr. Goehner would be disappointed at this late date after watching this president and his team operate for over two-and-a-half years.

It's worth taking a look at how this has played out in real life so far.

Both Lebanon and the 'Palestinian' Authority have received billions in US military aid, going back to the Bush Administration. Lebanon's went to the Shi'ite dominated army which is now fully integrated with Hezbollah, while a lot of the shiny new equipment the US equipped Mahmoud Abbas' forces with ended up in the hands of Hamas after Fatah was chased out of Gaza.

Just this May, the United States along with Qatar and the World Bank pledged to give billions of dollars in aid that we don't really have to Egypt and Tunisia in order to keep the two countries economies afloat.

As part of the measures, Obama promised of $1 billion in debt relief to Egypt, and offered an additional $1 billion in loans.

Those pledges were unfortunately given before anyone really knew what was going to happen in either country. In Egypt, the situation is extremely unsettled and the likely rulers when it all sorts itself out will be the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt becomes President Obama's Iran. And the money they're being given isn't going to change the fact that Egypt has a population of 80 million people it has no ability to feed.

As for Tunisia, it has a much better chance of economic recovery, but the political sitution doesn't auger well for it being a democracy. In fact, in new ‘democratic’ Tunisia, one of the first acts of the Commission of Political Reform was to pass laws ensuring that all ties to Israel will be severed permanently. Tunisia's tiny Jewish community, one of the few left in the Arab world, are already in the process of leaving.

The bill will likely pass the House, but probably not the Democrat majority senate without some moderation, and even then President Obama is not likely to sign it. But I have to applaud Congress for finally at least trying to draw the line at funding hostile countries with money we can ill afford unless they agree to perform in accordance to our national interest.

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Major Terrorist Attack In Mumbai; Twenty Dead, Hundreds Injured

Mumbai, India was hit by three bombs in crowded downtown districts today. The explosions were times so as to go off almost simultaneously, and placed to inflict maximum casualties.

This is the worst attack on Mumbai since the November 2008 attacks done with Pakistani complicity in the city's heart that killed 166 people.

The blasts occurred around 6:45 PM Local Time when people were involved in the rush hour commuting traffic and preliminary investigations indicate that a car and a motorbike were used in the coordinated attacks, which involved IED's. That would lead me to believe that local Muslim groups were involved, with covert backing from the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan and India are scheduled to enter talks to try and normalize relations, later this month, so if the Pakistani government was involved directly like last time, it will be with a decent amount of deniability.Both Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the attacks in a statement.

The bombings occurred in crowded commercial districts in central Mumbai.

The first device was planted at Khau Gali in south Mumbai's Zaveri Bazaar. The second blast, planted under an umbrella, (it's the the monsoon season in Mumbai and the weather was rainy) at the Opera House, near Charni Road. The third bomb was placed on an electric pole at a bus stand in Dadar area. The first two bombs went off within one minute of each other, with the third one exploding less than ten minutes later.

The biggest blast was the one that occurred near the old Opera House district, now a major diamond and jewellery trading center.This area was the scene of numerous casualties in the 2008 attacks.

One of my local correspondents writes me the explosions were clearly audible all over the city, that there were blood and body parts lying in the streets amid broken glass and wreckage, and that he expects the death toll to end up being higher than it is now. He also told me that communications were disrupted in Mumbai because phone lines were jammed, so he was unable to inform his family that he was all right, or hear from them. That sort of not knowing remains one of the real tortures in these situations.

Several other Indian cities - Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore were also put on high alert. Noticeably, they all have significant Muslim populations.

President Obama issued a statement saying:

"I strongly condemn the outrageous attacks in Mumbai, and my thoughts and prayers are with the wounded and those who have lost loved ones. The U.S. government continues to monitor the situation, including the safety and security of our citizens. India is a close friend and partner of the United States. The American people will stand with the Indian people in times of trial, and we will offer support to India’s efforts to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. During my trip to Mumbai, I saw firsthand the strength and resilience of the Indian people and I have no doubt that India will overcome these deplorable terrorist attacks."

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Pakistan Threatens To End Fighting Against Taliban If Their Aid Is Cut

The Pakistanis are a tad upset over the withholding of some of their accustomed baksheesh from America, and in response, they're threatening to withdraw their troops from the Afghan border who are supposedly fighting the Taliban and other Islamist groups.

"If at all things become difficult, we will just get all our forces back," Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said in an interview with the Express 24/7 television. "If Americans refuse to give us money, then okay," he said. "I think the next step is that the government or the armed forces will be moving from the border areas. We cannot afford to keep military out in the mountains for such a long period."

The army of course runs these things, not the defense minister. So Mukhtar is actually speaking for the Pakistani Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (the infamous ISI), Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

An army spokesman underlined this in a separate interview by saying that if the US didn't fork over, they could rely on China, who they referred to as their "all-weather friend".

Since Pakistan has no oil or gas, China's only interest in Pakistan is as a counterbalance to India and a possible outlet to the Indian Ocean. Since China has its own Muslim problem to deal with in the Uigher insurgency, I doubt the relationship is worth $ 2 billion to them, at least not long term.

The idea that we're actually buying anything with the $2 billion in aid we give Pakistan aside from the ability to ship supplies to Afghanistan is a sick joke. As Congressman Duncan D. Hunter, a former U.S. Marine Captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2007 revealed after a fact finding trip to Afghanistan, the Pakistanis are allowing safe havens for our enemies on their soil and refusing to take them out or allow us to. And as my regular readers know, the Pakistanis have even been caught tipping our enemies off to upcoming raids.

More Islamist attacks have originated out of Pakistan than ever came out of any other Muslim nation except Iran and perhaps Syria. It's about time we ceased the rhetoric about Pakistan being an ally and faced up to what they really are - a failed Islamist state that aids and abets terrorism and is essentially a hostile entity. We should terminate with prejudice all aid and relations with them as soon as practicable. And if I were calling the shots, I'd finish up with a pre-emptive strike on their nuclear facilities as a final kiss goodbye when the last American leaves AfPak.

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Ditching Our 'Ally' Pakistan

Since the bin-Laden killing, relations between the US and Pakistan have plummeted.And the US government isn't telling you the half of it, as Pakistan's complicity with our enemies continues to surface.

The Pakistani government, after turning over to the Chinese the wreckage of a US helicopter used in the bin-Laden raid equipped with advanced stealth technology arrested five Pakistani informants who helped the CIA find out where Osama bin-Laden was hiding out. In spite of US requests for their release, they're still imprisoned under charges of espionage.

The recent raid on the Intercontinental Hotel in Afghanistan was carried out by members of the ISI backed Haqqani network, and the Pakistanis recently ordered the US to vacate a base in Pakistan used for drone attacks. To add to the mix, the CIA discovered beyond a shadow of a doubt that elements of the Pakistani military and ISI intelligence service were routinely tipping off jihadis about upcoming raids on factories used to manufacture armaments to be used against our forces in Afghanistan.

In response to this the US is finally taking steps it should have taken years ago. First of all, the US Congress is deferring and in some cases, canceling about $800 million in military aid out of the roughly $2 billion we annually give in baksheesh to Pakistan.

The second thing is fairly risky, but has needed doing for some time. The US is drastically shifting its logistic routes to Afghanistan from Pakistan to countries in Central Asia and is negotiating an agreement to withdraw over that route.

As I've mentioned here before, over 75% of the supplies for our forces in Afghanistan come via the Pakistani port of Karachi and then come overland to Afghanistan via the Torkhum pass. In 2009, it was 90%. The goal is to change that significantly by the year's end and avoid Pakistan as much as possible:



This isn't going to save any money. It merely means we'll be paying five countries or so baksheesh instead of one, and using an increased amount of more expensive air and water transport as opposed to overland and it's up to 3,000 miles longer. Essentially, this is the old Silk Road route through Central Asia, a long used commericial corridor. The hope is that our new 'partners' will be a lot less duplicitous and reliable and that at least the money we give them won't be actively used to fund and arm our enemies. Hopefully we can get to the point where we aren't giving Pakistan a dime.

The one huge drawback in all this is quite obvious if you look at a map. These countries all have significant relationships with Russia and China and are thus subject to pressure at what might be very inopportune times.

Imagine, just to look at a worst case scenario, that our forces are withdrawing and suddenly one or more of our highways out of Central Asia were cut off. Not good.

In a scenario like that, our warriors might well have to do a fighting withdrawal though Pakistan to get to Karachi.

In any event, our enabling of the basket case of a country called Pakistan seems to be coming to an end.

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Pakistanis Tip Off U.S. Enemies - Again

I can't imagine why items like this would surprise anyone at this point.

Apparently the CIA decided to carry out a little experiment. The CIA had discovered location of two 'factories' in Waziristan used to make bombs and IEDs to be used against American forces in Afghanistan. To avoid any problems with the Pakistanis they informed them of the location of the bomb factories and then monitored the area with satellite and unmanned drones to see what would happen.

Within a day or so after the Pakistanis received the intel, the CIA watched the jihadis leave taking all their weapons explosives and tools with them. Only when the goodies and the terrorists were safely removed did the Pakistani military visit each site...where they of course found nothing.

The Pakistanis, of course, are saying the tip must have come from tribal leaders, because they claim they're unable to enter these parts of Waziristan without telling them in advance. But if that's true, and the area isn't actually under Pakistani control, why would Pakistan be so upset if a drone with a couple of Hellfire missiles turns these weapons factories churning out armaments to be used against our troops into halal rubble and barbecue?

The truth of the matter is that there are significant elements in both the Pakistani military and it's ISI intelligence service that regard the jihadis as allies and the US as their enemy. And that applies to the populace of this basket case of a country as well.

It's significant that at least two of the sites in question were reportedly run by the Haqqani network, which is part of the Taliban, closely allied with al-Qaida, actively involved in killing U.S. troops and civilians in Afghanistan..and supported financially and logistically by the ISI.

Pakistan is a corrupt rogue state that funds, trains and acts as a haven for Islamist terrorists, and far more terrorist attacks have originated out of the country and its nationals than ever originated out of Afghanistan. Even worse, Pakistan's illegal nuclear program has been responsible for outlaw nuclear proliferation to countries like Iran.

Every dollar in aid we give Pakistan enables this kind of behavior, but as long as we have a huge army in Afghanistan that depends on getting 75% of its supplies through Pakistani controlled territory, we're going to keep bribing them to keep that lifeline open.

It's ridiculous to expect our warriors to fight the jihadis in AfPak with one hand while we're financing them and their allies with the other.

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Pakistan Arrests CIA Informants Who Assisted In Bin-Laden Raid

Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency has arrested a number of Pakistanis who acted as CIA informants in the bin-Laden raid.

Five informants are being held, including a Pakistani Army major who reportedly copied and forwarded the license plate numbers of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on CIA instructions in the weeks before the raid.

Leon E. Panetta is said to have raised the issue of the jailed informants on his trip to to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers. If he did, they apparently paid no attention. The arrests are obviously meant as a warning to other informants thinking about cooperating with the US.

The Pakistanis are in an uproar over Osama bin-Laden being discovered by the US living in comfort in a specially built secure compound within walking distance of Pakistan's military academy, and they are expressing their anger of the US raid that killed him by refusing to cooperate in US anti-terrorism activities, being unwilling to carry out surveillance operations for the C.I.A, granting visas for American intelligence officers to operate in Pakistan, and threatening to put greater restrictions on the unmanned drone flights over Pakistani air space, a major component in the war against the Taliban.

The Pakistanis are caught between their support for groups like the Taliban and Lashkar-e--Taiba and the Haqqani network and their desire to keep the billions in baksheesh we pay them coming in, the bribe we pay Pakistan keep the supplies coming to landlocked Afghanistan.

At this point, it appears that a tipping point has been reached, and the current regime is having difficulty balancing the two agendas. If Pakistan cuts off the supply route to Afghanistan via Karachi and the Torkhum Pass, there will be no way to keep the NATO forces there adequately supplied.

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Pakistan And NATO Forces Exchange Fire

Yet another confrontation with our 'ally' Pakistan...

In what's being described as an 'incident' at Admi Kot Post in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, Pakistani ground troops opened fire on two NATO helicopters that they claim crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan early this morning, according to a Pakistani Army statement. There was a brief firefight afterwards between NATO forces and Pakistani troops, and according to the Pakistanis two of their soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

This is an area that basically has been ceded to the Taliban and the tribes that Pakistan only marginally controls. It's a stronghold in particular of the Haqqani network, a jihadi group supported by Pakistan's notorius ISI intelligence service. Haqqani fighters regularly cross into Afghanistan to attack our troops.

This is not the first time that NATO and Pakistani forces have exchanged fire. Eight months ago, a similar incident left two Pakistani soldiers dead.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani is en route to China, obviously sending a message to the Obama Administration that they have other options.

Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee flew to Pakistan over the weekend to try and smooth over things in the wake of the fall out over the Osama bin-Laden killing. Based ontoday's events, he didn't make much progress.

Bottom line is that we can't trust the Pakistanis, and they certainly don't trust us.

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