REALLY ?? No....Afghan President Karzai says that talking peace with a group of godless bastards who murder women & children is useless....Well it's about time you figured that out chucklehead. The rest of the world figured that out about a decade or more ago.
The Taliban, al-Qaida and Taliban-allied Haqqani network are not interested in peace talks, only continued domination of the Afghan people and terrorizing the rest of the civilized world. These criminals are only interested in control of the drug money, world-wide terror and killing anyone who opposes them.
The more we try to appease them, the more innocents will die. We just captured one of their key leaders and killed another one in Yemen.....I say we need to keep it up. No peace talks, just find the bastards and take them out. The sooner the better.
Afghan president says talks with Taliban useless
AP – 10/01/11
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai says trying to talk peace with insurgents is futile and that neighboring Pakistan — not the Taliban — needs to be the other party in the peace talks.
The president's remarks came on a video recording that his office released on Saturday.
Karzai has been pushing for years to reconcile with the Taliban.
He says that effort is no longer viable since a suicide bomber claiming to be a peace emissary from the Taliban killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani at his home on Sept. 20. Rabbani was leading Karzai's effort to broker peace with the Taliban.
Karzai says the only way forward is for Afghanistan to negotiate with Pakistan.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO captured a senior leader of the al-Qaida- and Taliban-allied Haqqani network active inside Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday, describing it as a "significant milestone" in disrupting the terror group's operations.
NATO said Haji Mali Khan was seized Tuesday during an operation in eastern Paktia province's Jani Khel district, which borders Pakistan. It was the most significant capture of a Haqqani leader in Afghanistan, and could dent the group's ability to operate along the porous border with Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.
Shortly after NATO's announcement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid denied in a message to Afghan media that Khan had been arrested but provided no evidence that he was free.
NATO described Khan as an uncle of Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani, two of the son's of the network's aging leader Jalaludin Haqqani. However, in a recent report on the Haqqani's by the Institute for the Study of War, Khan appears as a brother in-law to Jalaludin Haqqani.
The Pakistan-based Haqqani network is affiliated with both the Taliban and al-Qaida and has been described as the top security threat in Afghanistan. The group has been blamed for hundreds of attacks, including a 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last month.
Last week, U.S. officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of assisting the Haqqanis in attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan — the most serious allegation yet of Pakistani duplicity in the 10-year war.
The United States and other members of the international community have in the past blamed Pakistan for allowing the Taliban, and the Haqqanis in particular, to retain safe havens in the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border — particularly in North Waziristan.
"He was one of the highest ranking members of the Haqqani network and a revered elder of the Haqqani clan," NATO said of Khan, adding that he "worked directly under Siraj Haqqani, and managed bases and had oversight of operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Khan also moved forces from Pakistan to Afghanistan to conduct terrorist activity, NATO said. "Jalaluddin Haqqani consistently placed Mali Khan in positions of high importance."
NATO also said that Khan had in the past year established a militant camp in Paktia and "coordinated the transfer of money for insurgents operations, and facilitated the acquisition of supplies."
During the operation Tuesday, Khan surrendered without resistance and NATO forces also arrested his deputy and bodyguard, along with a number of other insurgents, the alliance said.
"The Haqqani network and its safe havens remain a top priority for Afghan and coalition forces," NATO concluded.
The NATO statement said security forces have conducted more than 500 operations so far in 2011 in an effort to disrupt the Haqqani network leadership, resulting in the deaths of 20 operatives and the capture of nearly 300 insurgent leaders and 1,300 suspected Haqqani insurgents
The " Whacky Pakis" have been playing a shell game/three-card-monty with us for years...It is only recently that we have decided to call them out in public. What happens when the day comes were the fools in charge in Pakistan can no longer control the "rabid dogs" they allow to live there and the terrorists get their hands on a few Nukes ? You want to talk about a real shite-storm.....
I have been and remain convinced that we need to keep up all due pressure on these feckless idjits as they are in league with terrorist and expose themselves and others to a large threat because of their stupidity...As long as they feel they can act out w/o consequence, we'll keep sending in the drones to eliminate the threats we can identify.
Pakistan Is the Enemy
We know that Pakistan's intelligence service is aiding terrorists. What are we going to do about it?
By Christopher Hitchens - Salon
Monday, Sept. 26, 2011
In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Lt. Milo Minderbinder transforms the mess accounts of the American airbase under his care into a "syndicate" under whose terms all servicemen are potential stakeholders. But this prince of entrepreneurs and middlemen eventually becomes overexposed, especially after some incautious forays into Egyptian cotton futures, and is forced to resort to some amoral subterfuges. The climactic one of these is his plan to arrange for himself to bomb the American base at Pianosa (for cost plus 6 percent, if my memory serves) with the contract going to the highest bidder. It's only at this point that he is deemed to have gone a shade too far.
In his electrifying testimony before Congress last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has openly admitted to becoming the victim of a syndicate scheme that makes Minderbinder's betrayal look like the action of a small-time operative. In return for subventions of millions of American dollars, it now turns out, the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency (the ISI) can "outsource" the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and several other NATO and Afghan targets, to a related crime family known as the Haqqani network. Coming, as it does, on the heels of the disclosure about the official hospitality afforded to Osama Bin Laden, this reveals the Pakistani military-intelligence elite as the most adroit double-dealing profiteer from terrorism in the entire region.
Annoyed even so by the loss of "deniability" that Mullen's testimony entails, the Pakistani officer class has resorted to pretending that its direct relationships with al-Qaida and the Haqqani syndicate do not exist, and that in any case any action or protest resulting would constitute a violation of its much-vaunted "sovereignty." Both of these claims are paper-thin, or worse. If we employ Bertrand Russell's argument of "evidence against interest," for example, we can find absolutely no motive for Mullen— flanked as he was by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta—to have been making such an allegation falsely. To the contrary, they had every reason to wish to avoid the conclusion they have been forced to draw. It makes utter and abject nonsense of the long-standing official claim that Washington's collusion with the ISI has been conducted in good faith and directed for a common cause. It shows American prestige and resources being used, not to diminish the power of "rogue" elements in the Pakistani system, but to enhance and empower them. It makes us look like fools and suckers, which is what we have become, unable to defend even our own troops, let alone civilian staff and facilities, from deadly assaults not just from the back but—flagrantly, unashamedly—from the front.
As for Pakistan's arrogant and insufferable riposte, to the effect that this is all part of its tender concept of its own "internal affairs," it barely adds insult to injury. On Sept. 12 , 2001, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1368, condemning the attacks on American soil and asserting the universal right of self-defense. The terms of the resolution explicitly state that those found to be "supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held equally accountable." This unambiguous language, which secured the votes of Muslim countries like Bangladesh and Tunisia as well as those of the five permanent members of the Security Council and many other nations, deserves to get more repeated exposure than it has been receiving. Pakistan's provision of a military safe-house for the leader of al-Qaida is as comprehensive a breach of the spirit and letter of Resolution 1368 as could be imagined. Meanwhile the Haqqani gang, operating in open collaboration with the Taliban of Mullah Omar as well as other insanitary forces, easily meets the definition of an organization that helps sponsor and succor the original perpetrators.
Mullen's evidence, then, is one of those revelations that appears to necessitate action. Either the Pakistanis must permit an unobstructed run at the Haqqani bases that are used for the subversion of Pakistan as well as the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan, or they must at the very least lose their claim on the U.S. Treasury. At the most, they must take the risk of being identified as allies and patrons of those who deliberately murder coalition forces as well as Afghan and Pakistani civilians. This indictment would easily stretch to cover another gross violation of international law and diplomatic immunity, in that the ISI was also found culpable in the destruction of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July 2008.
There was a time, when he was a presidential candidate, that Barack Obama was "clear" (as he so much likes to put it) about the way in which Pakistani actions might have real consequences for Pakistan. In early debates with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, he expressed a willingness to undertake some version of hot pursuit, if necessary into lawless regions of Pakistan, in order to deter and punish cross-border aggression. The raid on Bin Laden's home in Abbottabad, conducted in May under the radar of Bin Laden's overt protectors, gave expression to this determination. So what will President Obama do, now that the Pakistani political leadership has openly declared its whole state to be lawless, and outside the jurisdiction of U.N. resolutions, and available as a base for terrorist operations against our Afghan and Indian friends?
In this context, the murder last week of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan warlord-president who headed the country's so-called "High Peace Council," may not necessarily be the "blow" to any "peace process" that truly merits the phrase. We allow ourselves to forget that many Afghans are deeply suspicious of a negotiation that refers to the Taliban—in President Hamid Karzai's euphemistic words—as lost or alienated "brothers." In this skeptical camp belong many of the Hazara and Tajik populations, many independent women's groups, and some unsuccessful contestants, such as Abdullah Abdullah, of the scandalously bought and rigged elections of a few months ago.
These people see no reason why Pakistan's vicious proxies should be allowed, by surreptitious back channels, to gain what they have so far failed to get on the battlefield. But they do not feel that the United States is sympathetic to them, and they naturally wince when they see our embrace of their enemies. That is why the overdue decision to call these enemies by their right names is so potentially significant, and will, one hopes, soon be followed by a complete breach with those we have been so humiliatingly subsidizing to sabotage us.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays.
REALLY ?? No....Afghan President Karzai says that talking peace with a group of godless bastards who murder women & children is useless....Well it's about time you figured that out chucklehead. The rest of the world figured that out about a decade or more ago.
