That’s right: the man who recently promised to attack the U.S. is closely connected to Pakistan’s ISI unit, which was present at a recent meeting between Pakistani and U.S. officials dedicated to getting more money from the Obama administration — you know, to “fight terrorism.”
“Mehsud has pals in high places,” from the Daily Times, April 6 :
LAHORE: Baitullah Mehsud, the brazen Taliban chief based in Waziristan, has been able to escape several attempts to kill and capture him because he has friends in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, according to a Newsweek report.
An “increasingly-emboldened” Mehsud has claimed credit for several attacks in Pakistan and also threatening to attack the US. “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” he told the Associated Press last week.
An unnamed Pakistani official told Newsweek that senior US officials had even shared with their counterparts in Islamabad “some intelligence indicating that renegade ISI elements helped Mehsud’s group train for the December 2007 assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto”.[…]
“Baitullah is very much mixed up in Afghanistan and with Al Qaeda,” said one Afghan Taliban commander, adding that Mehsud was capable of shipping foreign fighters into Afghanistan “and even [farther] west”. Washington does not take the threats seriously, according to the Newsweek, but also does not rule out Mehsud could be cooperating with Al Qaeda.