US President-elect Barack Obama’s adviser on South Asian affairs alleges that those who carried out last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai had links to Pakistani intelligence agencies.IT IS GOOD THAT AT LEAST ONE ADVISOR REALIZES WHO THE ENEMY IS AND WHAT THEY WANT.
“If there’s anything that is a 64 million dollar question today,” it is finding out the “extent of its (Lashkar-e-Tayyaba) current ties to the Pakistani intelligence service,” said Bruce Riedel at a discussion hosted by Brookings Institution on “Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: A Challenge for India and the World”.
In an interview to CNN earlier this week, President Asif Ali Zardari said the attacks were executed by “non-state actors” and rejected the suggestion that Pakistani intelligence agencies were involved.
But Mr Riedel, a former CIA official and now a member of Mr Obama’s policy working group on national security, said it’s difficult to believe the Pakistani government’s assertions “given the size of its (LeT) activities in Pakistan”.
He said the Mumbai terror plot was carried out by “professionals, who were trained by professionals who were given a professional plan.” The attacks “were not a plot by amateurs or by a pick-up group”, he added.
Mr Riedel also backed claims by other US officials that global terrorist networks like Al Qaeda were also involved in the attacks.
“The evidence is already pretty clear that this attack had links to the global jihad and that those involved in it were going after the targets of the global jihad,” he said.
I HOPE OBAMA DOESN'T THROW HIM UNDER THE BUS...
FYI....
ReplyDeleteFrom one of Reidel's September articles:
...There is no unilateral American solution to the problem of these sanctuaries in Pakistan. We cannot hope to invade and occupy all of Pakistan to cleanse it of the Taliban and al-Qaeda since Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. We just simply cannot occupy the entire country. We need to get the Pakistanis to work with us.
And that means the next administration, whether he is McCain or Obama, has got to reverse the distrust and the lack of faith in America that has accumulated, not just during President Bush's administration—though he hasn't helped—but over decades now. That can be done, I think, if we work with the civilian government, show them we want democracy in Pakistan, if we increase our assistance to Pakistan, especially in economic areas as Sen. Joseph Biden and Sen. Richard Lugar have proposed. We should also be sensitive to some of Pakistan's diplomatic needs. Pakistan, for example, would like the Durand Line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to be accepted as a real international border by Afghanistan. It never has. No Afghan government has ever accepted this border. We have some leverage in Afghanistan now with the Kabul government. And we ought to think about whether we should use that leverage to make this border line drawn by the foreign secretary of British India in 1893 into a real border. That would be in Pakistan's interest and I think in the long term it's in everyone's interest....
More at the above link, including some information on Kashmir:
There's another place where I feel creative American diplomacy could be helpful. We ought to try to encourage a long-term settlement between India and Pakistan of the Kashmir dispute, based again on the principle that the existing line of control ought to become an international border with some special status reserved for Kashmiris. We can't expect Pakistan to behave like a normal state, unless it has normal borders....
well - nobody's perfect.
ReplyDeletebut he get that ww4 is against global jihad.
i agree that pakistan in a complex situation.
As far as Reidel is concerned, India is the new Israel.
ReplyDeleteFuck Pakistan. Fuck the Muslims claim to Kashmir. Don't cede territory to Muslims. Ever.