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However, he was also quick to clarify that the Pakistani government has been “extraordinarily helpful” -- except, of course, when forewarning al-Qaeda of US strikes. Friend and Ally Update:
"Every major terror threat involves Pakistan: CIA," by Anwar Iqbal for the Dawn, November 15 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
WASHINGTON, Nov 14: CIA director Michael Hayden has warned that every major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan.In a speech to the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Mr Hayden also claimed that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was hiding in Fata.
“Let me be very clear. Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas,” Mr Hayden told the Washington-based think-tank.
The CIA director, however, acknowledged that Bin Laden was isolated from the day-to-day operations of Al Qaeda, although the organisation was still the greatest threat to the US.
“If there is a major strike on this country (the US), it will bear the fingerprints of Al Qaeda,” he warned.[...]
After depicting Pakistan as the hub of all major terrorist activities in the world, the CIA chief also conceded that Pakistan faced a complex situation.
“While the problem looks easy from thousands of miles away, it’s extremely difficult up close because of the tribal issues,” he said.
The CIA chief said he believed the Pakistani government had been “extraordinarily helpful” in responding to this challenge. Their plan, which they started to implement in 2006, to slowly expand their reach over the Fata would have been wise and far-reaching were it not for the extreme urgency of the threat, he added.
“We’ve killed and captured more top Al Qaeda operatives with the support of the Pakistani security forces than anywhere else in the world. What remains unclear is what the end game is,” he added.
According to him, Al Qaeda was chased out of Yemen in the 1990s only to reconstitute in Afghanistan. It was run out of Afghanistan in 2001, only to disperse, setting up a rump headquarters in Pakistan and declare Iraq the “central front” of its effort.
“Where, then, does it stop? Or is this simply a case of perpetual penalty kicks?” he asked...
Posted by Raymond at November 15, 2008 10:38 PM
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For "[E]very major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan"
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Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 15, 2008 11:07 PM
http://s296.photobucket.com/albums/mm169/getosama/?action=view¤t=0819081109.jpg
Posted by: getosama at November 15, 2008 11:17 PM
It would be comforting if one had the feeling that Michael Hayden, and Admiral McConnell, and all those who work with them, or will replace them, would focus for a moment not on this or that ever-changing "central front" but on the ideology of Islam, and came to grasp the not-very-difficult notion that the ideology of Islam is not peaceful, does not inculcate the idea of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, but is based rather, on one central and simple notion: that the main, and permanent, and most significant division of humanity is that between Muslims and non-Muslims, Believers and Infidels. And the former, those Believers, are taught that they are in a state of permanent war -- though not necesarily open warfare -- with Infidels, and that they have a duty, those Believers, to participate in the "struggle" or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, everywhere in the world.
Were this to be clearly grasped -- and it cannot be grasped except through taking the time to study a bit, for it cannot be outsourced to underlings, who will provide the usual three-page "Executive Summary" (with bullets, bien entendu), but must be studied, and then thought about, and then studied some more, and then connected to the actual history, over 1350 years, of Muslim conquest, and attempted conquest, of non-Muslim lands and peoples, and of the subjugation of the latter as, at best, dhimmis). All of this may seem like a tall order, but it really isn't. It would save so much fantastically expensive and wasted effort, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, everywhere. It would alert those who have the responsibility of instructing and protecting us as to the permanent nature of this war, and would further alert them as to the main instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest -- which have little to do with what happens in the lands that are already Muslim, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but a great deal to do with those countries under greatest threat from Jihad, and aside from Israel and India (and neither threat, in those cases, will be diminished by the surrender of further territory by either -- giving up either the "West Bank" or Indian-controlled Kashmir will merely whet, not sate, Muslim appetites, and feed, all over the world, Muslim triumphalism -- but to understand that, you have first to study the doctrine, and the practice, of Islam), those countries are those of Western Europe, the historic heart of the West.
Can those in Washington who are accustomed to thinking of military means alone in that ill-named "war on terror" possibly begin to bethink themselves, stop long enough from their frantic and hectic immersion in the day-to-day, and stand back, and stop, and begin to read, to study, to burn the midnight oil, so as begin to understand the broader picture, to connect all dots, to see things with a wide enough vision, and under the aspect not of eternity, but of a very long period to come (one that has no end point, but can be managed indefinitely, if the Muslim world has its sources of power -- the trillions that come from an accident of geology, and the millions of Muslims heedlessly, negligently, allowed to settle deep behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines -- diminished or undone).
Posted by: Hugh at November 15, 2008 11:19 PM
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm169/getosama/0101081053.jpg
Posted by: getosama at November 15, 2008 11:22 PM
Didn't the Pak's just receive another 7.6 billion jiziyah?
That should fix it, NOT!
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at November 15, 2008 11:38 PM
What about the Egyptian muslim brotherhood, or the saudi wahabbis and their money, or what about... the KORAN! THAT IS THE PROBLEM! AND THAT IS WHERE IT IS ALL COMING FROM!
GET A CLUE HAYDEN.
ok, now that I am done screaming - I doubt that they will get a clue anytime soon. Instead our government falls into the category of 'useful idiots' to the muslims.
Posted by: R_not at November 15, 2008 11:58 PM
That smooth man, Husain Haqqani, is now trying to sweet-talk the new Administration into another $15 billion. Does it occur to no one to ask Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. and Kuwait and Qatar and all the other "staunch allies" in the "war on terror" to show that support, since they are rolling, collectively, in several trillion surplus dollars, to start paying for Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Now that the Americans have spent more than $2 trilion on Iraq alone, and have been shelling out money to Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, and of course the "Palestinian" "Authority," shouldn't they be asked to fund the next round and the next?
Why is that simply not even being discussed? Why is it impossible? Could it be because the Muslim states are not on our side, and are content to see the Americans be bled dry by the endless needs -- that will never go away, because inshallah-fatalism that has its source in Islam will guarantee economic paralysis, guarantee that aid from Western Infidels will not possibly create modern economies, or do away with huge corruption, or prevent those outraged by such corruption (made possible by the very sums given by Weseterners) to find the obvious vehicle for their fury in a renewed and more fanatical commitment to Islam. Without the aid, no corruption. Without the corruption, no rage among the populace at the obvious unfairness. Without the rage among the populace at the obvious unfairness, no return to supporting such groups, once despised, as the Taliban. Can't this simple lesson be learneed? Opponents of misrule in Muslim lands will always, in the end, turn to Islam. If that "turn to Islam" did not have dangerous consequences for Infidels, if it were merely something like a Good-Government slate, one might be able to endure it. But it isn't, and it can't be. A return to Islam means a return to the whole thing, and that minds increased hostility toward Infidels. So in the end, that Infidel aid to any government of any Muslim country will guarantee a rise in anti-Infidel sentiment.
But if the aid comes from other Muslim countries, then if there is resentment of how that aid is (inevitably) parcelled out, or used and misused, will at the very least not contribute to anti-American or other anti-Infidel sentiment. That's another reason why such aid ought to be coming, at this point, entirely from Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich sheikdoms. They had no compunction about supplying economic (and diplomatic) support to the Taliban in Afghanistan. They ought now to support, if they really are "against al-Qaeda," give aid to Paksitan.
It will be a test of the rich Arabs, and the commitment that we keep (wrongly) attributing to them. If they fail that test, and if Paksitan dissolves as different groups and tribes within that country war among themselves, that will weaken the Camp of Islam. And eventually it will damage, far more than it harms Infidels, others in that camp. So be it.
Those who have been strung along for decades by a succession of generals and zamindars now see Pakistan for what it is, and because the people of Pakistan have only Islam, and like the Arabs have no other identity that works against Islam -- unlike, say, the Iranians or the Berbers or the Kurds -- their hearts and minds cannot be won, even if the occasional smiling Husain Haqqani and other plausible anglophones (assorted Ispahani girls and other Western-educated children of zamindars) will lead the unwary in Washington to think otherwise.
Posted by: Hugh
at November 16, 2008 12:09 AM
Go look at the UK. All crime seems to lead to Pakistan via Mecca.
Heroin. Prostitution. Gun crime.
Meanwhile your average Brit is more bothered about football or how he's gonna pay for his next pint.
Welcome to Europe.
Posted by: leon at November 16, 2008 12:47 AM
Posted by Hugh.
“Were this to be clearly grasped -- and it cannot be grasped except through taking the time to study a bit, for it cannot be outsourced to underlings, who will provide the usual three-page "Executive Summary" (with bullets, bien entendu), but must be studied, and then thought about, and then studied some more, and then connected to the actual history, over 1350 years, of Muslim conquest, and attempted conquest, of non-Muslim lands and peoples, and of the subjugation of the latter as, at best, dhimmis).”
It cannot and will not be done properly until hot wars involving Muslims and Infidels begin to rage on at least four continents. That will be in another generation or two.
Thanks to the David Irvingesque Bernard Lewis, who denies that Turkey ever conducted genocides against Armenians or Greeks, almost three generations of university students have learned about Islam from his teachings.
According to Lewis, the various atrocities and practiced against Jews under the Ottoman Empire was not the fault of Islam, the Koran, the Hadith or the Sinna. According to him it these massacres were inspired by the anti Semitic writings of the supposedly “Christian” west in the nineteenth century and earlier.
Lewis felt obliged to do this in order to continue his exclusive access to the bureaucratic detritus of the Ottoman Empire which was granted to him in the early 1950s by his “secular” Turkish government friends.
His rewards were great. Accolades showered upon him by his Turkish friends and his early “historical” works translated into Turkish and Arabic.
Now, the situation is even worse, what with a cohort of academics like Esposito and Karen Armstrong who indoctrinate their students with sanitised and false histories about Islam and being invited to misinform and mislead superficially educated government officials, like George Bush, about Islam.
at November 16, 2008 1:07 AM
Could it be because of all the madrassas the are educating their youth in? If only the had separation of church and state.
It pains me to allow religious schools in our country. It would be fine if they all taught religious tolerance and forgiveness and all. But I fear it is just a matter of time before we have an explosion of madrassas in our society teaching the evils of Islam! Could give a new meaning to having another baby boom.
at November 16, 2008 1:08 AM
As to Bernard Lewis, I don't think it accurate, or wise, to compare him to David Irving. He has not denied the mass killings of Armenians. Indeed, in his earlier works he was much more explicit in characterizing those mass killiings as genocidal. Where he changed his mind, it was not in denying those killings, but in what word would most accurately describe them. It is doubtful that he was prompted by a desire to retain access to Ottoman archives. His archival research, and his books on Turkey, were certainly done, and he had gone on to haute vulgarisation (very haute, until recently with "The Middle East: The Last 2000 Years"). But he never quite got beyond those who were so kind to him personally, who made much of him, even lionized him, and eventually, as one sees in his disturbingly complacent recounting of bons mots appreciated -- as only eager-to-please Arabs could -- at a gathering in Amman (where Prince Hassan, brother of the late King Hussein, has been his plummy-voiced host), he was too-susceptible not only to a very special kind of flattery (the kind that can be offered by those who, as native speakers of the languages you, as a foreigner, have mastered, are thus the only ones capable of appreciating your linguistic and trans-cultural feats) but also decided it best not to come down hard on Muslims or on Islam.
He did not, as Professor Goitein did, come to challenge his own earlier views. And he still gives no signs of wishing to explain several "mistakes" such as his enthusiasm for the Oslo Accords, and his similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the entire Iraq venture, which he now claims was "badly executed" but appears still unwilling to publicly discuss what was overlooked in that whole dismal affair: the fact of Islam, and the need to end up with a result that weakens the Camp of Islam, and that cannot be done if the desired goals, as stated by the Bush Administration, were ever to be achieved. Fortunately, they are impossible of achievement. Unfortunately, it has taken four quite unnecesary years, and will take another year or two, to finally understand that.
There is more on Lewis here: http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005052.php
at November 16, 2008 1:20 AM
"every major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan.",,,fine,,Obama will invade pakistan,he says,,and i'm jiggy with that,,but of course we know he was just smoke blowin,,
Posted by: Gorgon Zola at November 16, 2008 2:57 AM
"He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, 'Dust to dust,' some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he told the others, 'I'll be waiting for you in heaven---with a gun.'"
Posted by: Gorgon Zola at November 16, 2008 3:23 AM
why does America,Hugh, have a convoy supply lifeline running 400 miles through pakistan which is regularly robbed?
Posted by: Gorgon Zola at November 16, 2008 3:30 AM
Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance there cannot be a conection with terrorism. Those nice Muslims keep assuring us of this 'fact'. The media and the government will not allow 2+2 to equal 4. Fantasy today rules in all areas even finance where it seems from the government that you can spend you way out of debt by borrowing more!
Posted by: James at November 16, 2008 3:44 AM
Hugh,, why are we supplying our troops in afghanistan through a paki convoy corridor?
Posted by: Gorgon Zola at November 16, 2008 3:45 AM
Taliban now has starlight scopes and kevlar and uv detection instruments highway robbed from convoys through pakistan WTF
Posted by: Gorgon Zola at November 16, 2008 4:02 AM
"aid from Western Infidels will not possibly create modern economies"
Of course not. That's not the idea. First of all its a matter of bleeding the stoopid infidels to death and besides; aren't the sons of Allah entitled to the jiziyah?
It works for them, beautifully. But it doesn't work for us.
And that nobody, nobody either left or right, whether in Europe or the US or in Asia, stands up and calls this gigantic extortion racket by its proper name is infuriating.
What does it take to make them listen?
A major terrorist attack?
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at November 16, 2008 5:46 AM
It was only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978, that Pakistan's border areas with Afghanistan became known to the rest of the World. Till then, these 'troubled' areas were perhaps only known for their exotic carpets and 'chappal kebabs'. The Pathans were also known as the most hospitable people of the planet.
Afghanistan was till then, more of a tourist destination for most foreigners, and one saw hordes of american hippies flocking there for drugs.
In the years of the 'cold war, United States saw a unique opportunity to break up the Soviet Union. And to that quest created, armed and financed 'Mujahideen' to fight their proxy war with the Soviets.
With Pakistan as the 'front line state' with US being the real combatant, it was one war that CIA won for the USA.
George Bush, when he became the President did not even know if there was a country named PAKISTAN !
The seeds of the present conflict were sown by USA and we in Pakistan have now become the centre of terrorism.
ONLY IF WE HAD SENSE ENOUGH TO STAY AWAY FROM Afghanistan's liberation. But again, it was during the rule of a military dictator - Zia ul Haq who fell to the charms and money of the USA.
at November 16, 2008 7:20 AM
The seeds of the present conflict were sown by USA and we in Pakistan have now become the centre of terrorism.
Irshad Piracha,
So what are you doing about it? Why aren't you going after the terrorists? Don't you want to live in peace in Pakistan? Why are you still tribal?
Why was one of the architects of 9/11 living in Karachi? Pakis knew who he was. You should have pointed him out immediately. It took a while to find him. Why?
What about Osama? He's hard to miss.
The US didn't go into any of your mosques and tell you to kill infidels. It didn't even tell you to kill Russians.
The seeds of the current conflict were sown by the man you worship - mohammed. Got it?
YOU WORSHIP A TERRORIST!
at November 16, 2008 7:36 AM
Irshad Piracha,
http://islam-watch.org/Sami/Islamic-Terrorists-doing-what-Muhammad-did.htm
For your reading pleasure.
Posted by: PMK at November 16, 2008 8:21 AM
Isn't this what me and almost all JW bloggers been saying over the past five plus years here and on many other sites?
Rest assured our tax dollar is wasted more than I thought.
Posted by: MusHuntCowboy at November 16, 2008 10:09 AM
every major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan
including the demographic threat
STOP GIVING THEM MONEY
STOP GIVING THEM MONEY
STOP GIVING THEM MONEY
Clear enough yet?
at November 16, 2008 10:49 AM
I'm Peruvian and there used to be an important pakistani community in our Southern border (Tacna) they even built a mosque; nevertheless, most of them left as soon as business (used cars imports) declined. I'm worried what the future will bring if Islam continues to settle in America (both Latin and North)
Posted by: Schwyndfst at November 16, 2008 1:57 PM
Borg, I agree. STOP GIVING THEM MONEY!!!
It's so simple. I'm not naive enough to think that they won't get money elsewhere, but let's not make it easy for them by throwing ours at them.
This government seems to think that throwing money around solves problems. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that it doesn't.
at November 16, 2008 2:42 PM
I agree with Irshad Pirasha about the origine or the initial massive military help and empowerement of Islamic extremists Talibans : In fact the country who did that is infortunatly USA. Please read about cold ware with russia at that time t know more. Sur Pakistani citizens and secular opposition leaders were sacrified -by USA - to Talibans in the purpose to defeat RRussia. And it worked. Russia was defeated. But if USA did at time help secular fighters instead of helping those who are fighting in the name of Allah and Mohammed and not in the name of freedom, Russia would be defeated any way (as it was actually weak), BUT usa wouldn't have now to fight against islamists worldwide for several years and it is going to worsen. Also, Pakistani people wouldn't find them self in the current dangerouse situation, almost prisonners of Talibans. As it is almost impossible to deafeat them permanently.
Irshad Pirasha is passibly one of millions of muslims victimes of the current fondamentalisation of the world by Islamists. Because been muslim deosnt make you automatically Islamists.
An even who knows...Irshad Pirasha didnt specify his is muslm? As there are many Pakistanis and other countries muslims born who are actually Ex-muslims living in Europe. And they have the right to be so, and not to be considered as muslims , against their whill by westerners. What is often the caase.
In an other hand I agree with those who said that the true nature of Islam as expansionist and suprematist religion is not known by those who are supposed to fight against the Islamisation of the world. And should study the Koran, Hadiths etc...who demand the killing of unbelievers, Ex-muslims (apostats), the beatin g of the wives, the amputaion of the robbers, the stoning of the raped teen or woman (and the adultaries) the rape and opression homosexuals and prostitute etc...and some westerners jsut give it this week the name of the "religion of tolerance".
The prouve of such huge ignorance is that recently the king of Saudi Arabia ( where the amputation of robbers etc..is very commun) was invited to teach tolerance to westerners trough a conference about interfaithe and the understanding the tolerance of Islam...almost comic! But actually its very sad.
By Johanna Adams
Posted by: Johanna.Adams at November 16, 2008 5:10 PM
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