NSA
U.S. Navy $176+ Million Unmanned Drone Crashed in Maryland Swamp (tags)
One would think for $176+ million we could get a drone that would fly without crashing into a Maryland swamp? Amazing how when Republican politicians grouse about the deficit they forget to mention how much those unmanned drones cost and how poorly they function. Then there's that 17% civilian casualites that just keeps pissing off occupied people enough for them to give up their families and their lives to become terrorists. Sounds like a cycle for perpetual warfare at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers for the sole benefit of the military-industrial complex..
WikiLeaks cables fuel hostility to US role in Pakistan (tags)
"Indeed, another cable cites a discussion between US Vice President Joe Biden and Zardari in early 2009 in which the Pakistani president expressed his concern that the “ISI director and [Gen. Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani will take me out.” The US government apparently knew more than it was sharing with Zardari. Another cable describes a conversation held during the same period in which General Kayani told Ambassador Patterson that he “might, however reluctantly,” move to force Zardari from office. Many of the cables expose Washington and Islamabad as partners in carrying out bloody crimes and deception against the Pakistani people. As the US has stepped up its military operations in the region, dubbing its intervention the “Afpak war,” the Zardari government has attempted to assuage popular anger by posing as an opponent of US violations of Pakistani sovereignty."
New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal (tags)
"“The free-wheeling access to US covert military and intelligence operatives, both officials and private contractors, is another destabilising factor that we seem to be unable or unwilling to check. And now there are the NATO incursions into our territory and targeting of even our military personnel, which shows how servile a state we are living in at present. [10] As the war in Afghanistan, the largest and longest in the world, proceeds with record casualties among civilians and combatants alike on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, plans are afoot to further expand the war into Pakistan and to threaten Iran as well. Comparisons to Washington’s war in Indochina have been mentioned. [11] But Pakistan with its 180 million people and nuclear weapons is not Cambodia and Iran with its population of over 70 million is not Laos."
Obama, McCain urged to unite against terrorism (tags)
In spite of reports in The Washington Post and Pakistan's DAWN newspaper that Pakistani troops fired at a U.S. helicopter that was raiding an Al Qaeda safehouse in Southern Waziristan, the defence establishments in the two countries denied the incident. Realpolitick and business interests of the military-industrial complex seems to be blocking a sound U.S. policy on defanging Pakistan's military.
Pak used anti-terror aid against India: Report (tags)
New York, December 24:Billions of dollars in American aid given to the Pervez Musharraf regime for anti-terrorism efforts have been wasted and much of it was diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India rather than fight al-Qaeda and Taliban, US officials have said.
US steps up plans for military intervention in Pakistan (tags)
In the midst of public statements of support for “democracy” in Pakistan and the recent visit to Islamabad by the American envoy John Negroponte, Washington is quietly preparing for a stepped-up military intervention in the crisis-ridden country. According to the New York Times Monday, plans have been drawn up by the US military’s Special Operations Command for deploying Special Forces troops in Pakistan’s frontier regions for the purpose of training indigenous militias to combat forces aligned with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Citing unnamed military officials, the newspaper reports that the proposal would “expand the presence of military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists.”