Funniest Lad Mad Cover in Pakistan of the Day

Pakistani actress Veena Malik just appeared nude on the cover of FHM India sporting ink on her left arm saying "ISI".

This is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service which has been accused of supporting terrorists in South Asia, and they are not amused:

In this month’s issue of FHM India, an international men’s magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn’t wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, "ISI," for Pakistani’s secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The cover headline: "Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!"

Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: "India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo." And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan’s media and in its living rooms.

In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman’s body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI — something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan’s loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo’s location on Malik’s body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a "veritable arm" of the ISI.

………

Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India’s own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. "In India, you say, ‘The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,’ They blame all of their problems on ISI," says Sharma.

Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don’t laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. "The problem," he says, "is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?" Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. "We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony," he says.

………

But this isn’t just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the "ghairat brigade," or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan’s honor against enemies — perceived and imagined — the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad "without honor," or more aptly the "shameless brigade."

To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, "I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan’s problems are the result of someone else’s meddling."

I am sure that there are some deeper sociological points here, but this tempest in a teapot also amusing as hell.

I Really Don't Know What to Make of This

But if Sy Hersh's account of the killing of Osama bin Laden is even ¼ true, this is the biggest story that he's ever broken:^*

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

The cliff notes version of this, courtesy of The Stranger, is:

• Pakistani officials knew about the raid and even helped the US pull it off.
• There never was a firefight, neither in the yard outside the house nor once the SEALs got inside.
• The story of the courier whom the reportedly CIA traced, leading them to bin Laden, was a fabrication.
• The story of the courier dying in the firefight was a cover-up "because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him," a retired senior intelligence official told Hersh.
• The way the CIA actually found out where bin Laden was is that a "Pakistani walk-in" who wanted the $25 million reward came in and told the CIA about it.
• Osama bin Laden was not armed, contrary to reports that he had a machine gun and was killed in a firefight, and he was not killed with just one or two bullets but "obliterated."
• "Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen," that same retired senior intelligence official said.
• "Despite all the talk" about what the SEALs collected on-site, the retired official said there were "no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks."
• The story about bin Laden's sea burial may be a fabrication.
• The retired official told Hersh that bin Laden's "remains, including his head... were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains—or so the Seals claimed."
• Obama was going to wait until a week after bin Laden's death to announce it, and he was going to tell the American people that bin Laden had been killed by a drone, but after the SEALs had to blow up their malfunctioning helicopter on-site, attracting attention locally, everything changed.
• The story about the vaccination program carried out locally in an attempt to get bin Laden's DNA—a story that "led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying"—wasn't true.
• Retired official again: "It’s a great hoax."

(emphasis original)

The American press has been completely dismissive of Hersh's report, and, it's fair to say that the sourcing is not as solid as I would have liked.

Then again, when you look at the biggest supporter of the "Zero Dark Thirty" narrative, the CIA, we know that they are still lying about torture, that they still nave not come clean about spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and basically wrote the movie "Zero Dark Thirty".

I know that the movie version is false, at least as to whether torture worked, the Senate Intelligence Committee report proved that.

I'm not sure where the truth lies, and any dealing with the machinations of the "war on terror" in general, and the Pakistani state security apparatus in particular. is a bag full of cats.

At this point, I'll go with Charlie Pierce's:

What's clear is that, in the war on terror, or whatever it is in which we've been engaged since we handed the military policy over to the spooks and thrown international crisis diplomacy into the vast, deep underbrush of myth and legend generated by the conjuring spells of the intelligence world, that we willingly surrendered self-government to magic and spellcraft. And Osama bin Laden is still dead, and his body is still at the bottom of the sea. Maybe.

I'm not clear what the truth is, except (of course) for the fact that the CIA tortured, that it did not work, and that Langley lies about everything.

I is confuzzled.

^*And yes, I mean that statement. If is just ¼ true, this is the biggest story that Seymour f%$#ing Hersh has ever broken. Think about that for a moment.

Are the Recent Taliban Arrests Another ISI Black Op?

Kai Eide, the former special representative in Afghanistan is saying that the recent spate of arrests by Pakistani security forces was likely a deliberate effort to sabotage ongoing negotiations with the Taliban:

The UN's former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has strongly criticised Pakistan's recent arrest of high-ranking Taliban leaders.

Mr Eide told the BBC the arrests had completely stopped a channel of secret communications with the UN.

Pakistani officials insist the arrests were not an attempt to spoil talks.

I don't believe the denials.

The Pakistani state security apparatus is horrified at the thought of a government in Kabul that is at all friendly to India, and the people that they arrested were the ones who were involved in the negotiations, as Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist with an extensive background in the region notes:

While the Obama administration is watching the battlefield in Afghanistan, hoping for a quick weakening of the Taliban, regional powers are ratcheting up tensions in and outside that country. Pakistan and Iran in particular want to ensure that by the time the United States is ready to talk to the Taliban, the region's future will already be shaped by local powers, limiting Washington's options. Afghanistan's ethnic and sectarian divisions are being exacerbated in the process.

…………

Events are reminiscent of the 1990s, when the bloody Afghan civil war was fueled by an alignment of India, Iran and Russia, which backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

…………

Yet Pakistan's military clearly wants a role in shaping Afghanistan. Islamabad had given the Taliban leadership sanctuary since 2001, but in recent weeks the military has arrested several key Taliban leaders who went around the generals and the intelligence service and were using Saudi Arabia as an intermediary to talk to Kabul. Still left alone, however, are Taliban hard-liners who could promote Pakistan's security needs in future dialogues with Kabul.

On a visit to Islamabad last week, Karzai acknowledged that Pakistan has legitimate security concerns in Afghanistan but also demanded that those arrested Taliban members be extradited to Afghanistan. Privately, senior Afghan officials were incensed, claiming that Pakistan was "sabotaging and undermining" their efforts to talk to the Taliban.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani state security apparatus continues to prepare for a cataclysmic confrontation over Kashmir, which will never happen, because India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers, and this world view continues to make them unreliable allies in the region.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan

It appears that Imran Khan and his allies won the election by a sufficient margin that the military was unable to cheat to a victory.

Even while massive vote fraud and voter suppression was orchestrated by the ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) it was not able to overcome the massive number of voters who are sick of their crap:

………

Consider this: The leading opposition party, the populist PTI, led by legendary cricket star Imran Khan, was officially banned from the ballots by the courts. Its candidates were forced to run as independents instead. The candidates were prohibited from using the PTI’s party symbol – a cricket bat – on the ballot, a crucial marker in a country where some 40 percent of the population can’t read. Khan himself was jailed on bogus charges and ruled ineligible to run. Candidates who did file to run were abducted and tortured and pressured to withdraw. So were the new ones who then replaced them. Virtually the entire party leadership was imprisoned or exiled. Rallies were attacked and bombed; rank and file workers jailed and disappeared. Campaigning was basically impossible as candidates had to go into hiding.

On election day Thursday, polling locations were randomly changed and the internet and cell service was taken down. Western media described the race as over, a fait accompli for the military’s preferred candidate Nawaz Sharif. And yet.

And yet. Pakistani voters came out in such historic numbers that it caught the military off guard. The ISI — Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency — was prepared to steal a close election or nudge Sharif to his inevitable victory, but they were swamped by the tsunami they didn’t see coming. In a crucial mistake, they had allowed individual polling locations to release official vote tallies, which parties and TV broadcasters could then total up themselves.

According to those broadcasts, watched by millions of people, PTI (or “independent”) candidates had won 137 seats by official counts, well on their way to a majority (there are 342 seats in the National Assembly; 266 are filled by direct elections). There were another 24 seats where 90 percent of the vote was counted and PTI was ahead. It was a clear landslide.

Then the military moved in, shutting down the election commission website and halting the count. Military and police forces surged into polling locations. Fantastical numbers began to be announced, sometimes just reversing the totals so the winner became the loser. The military was clearly unprepared to steal such a resounding victory, and the obviousness of the fraud forced politicians in the UK and U.S., including even the State Department, to denounce it.

All of this puts the State Department in a difficult position. It’s widely known the U.S. is no fan of Imran Khan. The U.S. prefers to work directly with the Pakistan military as a check against China. Khan has long said he wants a better relationship with the U.S., yet we refuse to believe him – our preferred approach was to oust him, put in more pliant clients, and shrug as the military dismantled democracy in the runup to the election. (The U.S. denied playing a role in ousting him, but we very much did, as The Intercept reported.)

I'm only being slightly sarcastic when I say that the only thing worse for a country being a US adversary is being a US strategic partner. 

I don't know how this will sort out, but my prediction is that there will be a lot of bribery and violence directed against those candidates disfavored by the Pakistani military.

Just Who, and What, Is Raymond Davis

He's currently being investigated for a double murder in Lahore, Pakistan, and the US government is claiming that he has diplomatic immunity, and so must be released.

There are a number of peculiarities here. As constitutional lawyer
Scott Horton notes, the issuance of a diplomatic passport does not convey diplomatic immunity, the host country formally recognize and accept their diplomatic status.

Also, it's unclear if he was a diplomatic or a consular officer and if the latter, then the charge, double murder, would certainly not be covered by any immunity.

In fact, immunity might not apply in either case, since the Vienna convention does not apply to serious crimes, like, for example, murder.

Additionally, thanks Dave Lindorff of Eurasia review for this, it appears that Mr. Davis was not a consular or embassy employee, but rather the employee of a defunct security firm, Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, which makes his status even more suspicious.

Also, when caught, he had at least two guns in his car, a number of cell phones and batteries, and a telescope.

Linhoff also reports that the two Pakistanis were shot in the back, and that he has received reports that they were not just two guys on a motorbike, but in fact operatives of Pakistan's security service, the ISI.

Given the circumstances, and the fact that a heavily armed strike team in the SUV rushing from the US consulate to try to snatch him from police immediately following the incident, and running down and killing a person in the process, I would be inclined to believe that whatever he was doing there had nothing to do with diplomacy.

One interesting factoid in all of this is that his arrest has corresponded to an unusual lull in drone strikes, which would be consistent with his having a senior managerial role in those operations:

A mysterious halt to U.S Predator strikes on Pakistan after the Raymond Davis incident in Lahore has led to intense speculation the American "diplomat" was connected to the Drone program even as Washington and Islamabad are going eyeball-to-eyeball over his status.

Davis, 36, was apprehended by Pakistani police after he shot dead two Pakistanis on a busy Lahore thoroughfare on January 27, four days after the last drone U.S Drone strike in Pakistan. There has not been a single strike in the 25 days since then, making it the third-longest period of inactivity since the U.S ramped up the Predator program to take out terrorists infesting Pakistan's frontier regions, according to Long War Journal (LWJ), a blog that tracks U.S Predator attacks.

Speculation is now rife that Davis was somehow connected to the Predator program since he was reportedly carrying a GPS, telescope, camera and assorted equipment not usually associated with thoroughbred diplomats. Pakistani authorities have also accused him of unauthorized travels to the Frontier region and being in touch with extremist elements in Waziristan, which suggests he might have been coordinating the attacks with U.S moles in the region.

While Davis claimed that he shot the two Pakistanis in self-defense when they were trying to rob him, some reports have said they were ISI tails assigned to follow him because the Pakistani intelligence felt he had crossed certain unspecified "red lines." Those red lines may have involved discovering the Pakistani establishment's links with terrorists group, a pursuit which led to the death of Wall Street Journalist Danny Pearl.

I'm thinking that Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, is about as real as Brewster-Jennings was for Valerie Plame, and that he works for the CIA, some other TLA (three letter agency), or a contractor hired by some arm of the US government.

It would explain why heads have been exploding at Foggy Bottom (State), and probably Langley (CIA) as well, for the past few weeks.

Our Friends in Pakistan

Well, it looks like our friends in the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, helped plan the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

I believe that there is a serious need to reevaluate our relationship with Pakistan, and make it a bit more conditional.

OK, This is Very Weird

It appears that a group of Congressional aides, most of them working for Debbie Wasserman Schultz in some capacity, and all of them originally from Pakistan, have been under criminal investigation, and one of Wasserman Schultz's aides was arrested trying to catch a flight to Pakistan: (Background stories going back to February here and here)

Imran Awan, a House staffer at the center of a criminal investigation potentially affecting dozens of Democratic lawmakers, has been arrested on a bank fraud charge and is prevented from leaving the country while the charge is pending.

A senior House Democratic aide confirmed Awan was still employed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as of Tuesday morning. But David Damron, a spokesman for Wasserman Schultz, later said that Awan was fired on Tuesday.

Awan pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to one count of bank fraud during his arraignment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Awan is accused of attempting to defraud the Congressional Federal Credit Union by obtaining a $165,000 home equity loan for a rental property, which is against the credit union’s policies since it is not the owner’s primary residence. Those funds were then included as part of a wire transfer to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Awan was arrested Monday evening at Dulles International Airport in Virginia before boarding a flight to Lahore, Pakistan. His wife, Hina Alvi, had earlier left the country for Pakistan, along with their children. Federal agents do not believe Alvi has any intention of returning to the U.S., according to a court document.

………

Awan, a longtime IT staffer who worked for more than two dozen House Democrats, has been at the center of a criminal investigation on Capitol Hill for months related to procurement theft. Several of his family members, also IT staffers at the time, were implicated in the ongoing investigation.

………

Alvi, another House staff member involved in the Capitol Hill investigation, left the country with their three daughters, headed for Pakistan, in March, according to an affidavit filed in the Awan case. Alvi had “numerous pieces of luggage” and more than $12,000 in cash, FBI agent Brandon Merriman wrote in the affidavit.

(emphasis mine)

The stories of he investigation at Politico go back to early February, which means that, unlike the claims made by Mr. Awan's lawyer, any investigation almost certainly began under the Obama administration.

There are also allegations of equipment and data theft, and these people worked for Democratic members of Congress for years.

This is f%$#ing weird, and I'm wondering if this is organized crime or some sort of ISI operation gone pear shaped.

Because the Political Culture is That Dysfunctional

Matthew Yglesias wonders why we have to beg the government in Islamabad to take action against the Pakistani Taliban as opposed to their begging for help, when it is clear that they are an existential threat to their government.

First and foremost, I think that the level of threat is exaggerated, but more importantly, the political culture of Pakistan is amongst the most profoundly dysfunctional in the world.

It has much to do with its founding as a nation, which was not so much born in nationalism, but British colonial tactic.

Simply put, the British maintained control in many of their colonies, particularly in what is now India and Pakistan, was to encourage ethnic rivalries, and so as movements for autonomy, and later independence, grew in India, the British authorities encouraged Muslim leaders to agitate for a separate state, which they believed would make the independence less likely.

This was followed by the war over Kashmir in 1947-8, in which the British, particularly Mountbatten, continued to meddle in South Asian affairs.

When combined with the later wars, particularly the humiliation suffered in the Bangladeshi war of independence, it left the state security apparatus, particularly the ISI, focused on one goal: to win the next war against India, and secure all of Kashmir.

This is not going to happen. India and Pakistan both have something on the order of 50 combat militarized nuclear warheads, and as such a full out shooting war would result in horrific losses to India, and something very close to the complete elimination of the Pakistani state.

Even so, there remain elements in the military, and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, that remain exclusively focused on the prospect of a final apocalyptic battle with India.

As such, they support extreme Muslim fundamentalists on both sides of the border with Afghanistan, even though these are the same people who are a threat to the stability of the state, because they believe that the conflict with India is the primary focus of the state, and that by supporting these the Taliban, they can minimize India's influence in Afghanistan.

Personally, I think that it's nuts, and a does much harm to Pakistan, but that is what the mind set is.

The Problem is the ISI

So, the Taliban has exploded another car bomb in Kabul.

The target was, here is a shocker, the Indian embassy.

One of the elephants in the room in that part of the world is that the ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, like much of the military and intelligence establishment in that nation, viewed everything through the lens of an eventual all out war with India, and as such has aided, abetted, and directed the Taliban as a client organization.

I'm beginning to think that direct action against certain actors within the ISI might well be warranted...I'm suggesting snatch and grabs, not a Hellfire strike at their headquarters in Islamabad.

You Know that the ISI will be There

Pakistan is demanding consular access to Aafia Siddiqui, who is accused of trying to murder US personnel at an Afghan police station.

While it's clear that this is their right under international treaty, my guess is that at least one of the people sent to deal with her will be an agent of the ISI, the notorious Pakistani intelligence organization, which has been linked to support for al Queida and Taliban activities, most recently the bombing of an Indian mission in Pakistan.

They will want to ensure that she knows nothing, or will say nothing, regarding any ISI involvement in her activities.

Militants Cultivated By Pakistani ISI Now Out of Control

The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, has for some time cultivated networks of militants, with the idea of being to control them.

Well, it appears now that these militants are saying, "So long and thanks for all the fish."

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.

This was absolutely forseeable. It was a marriage of convenience on both sides.

In a very real way, it mirrors the US relationship with Pakistan....And the House of Saud....And the sh^%tty little oil monarchies all across the Gulf....etc.

Because They Would Rat Out Their ISI Handlers

Well, it appears that Pakistan is refusing to hand over suspects in the Mumbai bombing to India.

Given the level of tension between the two nuclear armed neighbors, there is only reason for this that I can see, that Pakistan knows that if they turn over these guys to India, there is a fairly good chance that some of them will finger their handlers at the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

CIA Starts Leaking Dirt on Pakistani ISI

Pakistan denies this, but we have reports that a CIA operative met with Pakistani and presented evidence of close links and support between al Queida and the people in the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Pakistan's state security apparatus is focused on a war with India, and when it's not focused on that, it's looking at reducing Indian influence in the area, so at allies with Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which provides sanctuary for al Queida.

These people are not reliable allies with regard to combatting al Queida, the Taliban, or terrorism in general as a result.

The Problem With Pakistan

Is that the entire country resembles the German Imperial Navy circa 1913. The Kaiser's naval officers would end each meal with the toast, "Der tag," meaning "The Day," referring to the day that a final epic confrontation with the British Grand Fleet.

Well, if we look at the problems with Pakistan, whether it's misappropriation of funds intended for anti-terror operations, or the support given by the Pakistani security service, the ISI, which continues to support the Taliban in order to ensure that the influence of India in Afghanistan is minimized.

It's why Pakistan is fundamentally unreliable as an ally in the war on terror. The Pakistani military, and to a lesser extant Pakistani civilian leadership is fixated on the prospect of war with India, even though, as both are nuclear powers, anything beyond fierce border clashes is unlikely.

Well, it looks like Bush and His Evil Minions^™ have decided to double down with the "War with India" dead enders who have been supporting the Taliban and preventing meaningful action against al Queida. They are proposing that $230 million in anti-terror aid, roughly 2/3 of all anti-terrorism funds, be transferred to upgrades of the Pakistani F-16 fleet.

These F-16s have no role in operations against the Taliban or against al Queida. They are purposed almost exclusively for use against India.

By releasing this money for upgrades, we are reinforcing bad behavior, and encouraging the Pakistani military to provide a safe haven to al Queida and for elements of the Pakistani security apparatus to act as the primary sponsor for the Taliban.

Pakistan’s ISI Still Giving Aid and Comfort to the Taliban

I'm not sure how to deal with a spy agency that is so focused on an eventual war with India that it allies itself to terrorists, short of some of those predator strikes should hit ISI HQ.

About 18 Years Too Late

Joe Biden has announced that he will be withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, roughly 19 years and 11 months since we invaded the small Asian nation nicknamed, "The Graveyard of Empires."

I think that "all " in the statement is likely narrowly defined, but he has specifically eschewed basing it on the conditions on the ground, which can be manufactured by both our own military, and Pakistan's ISI for their own benefit.

Assuming that this stands, and the soldiers are not relabeled as "Freedom Constables" ore some-such, this is good news:

President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that drew the United States into its longest war.

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has promised to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline — and said in a statement it would not continue to participate in “any conference” about Afghanistan’s future until all “foreign forces” have departed — it is not clear whether the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. The Taliban has conducted sputtering talks with the Afghan government, begun under the Trump deal, since last fall. It was also invited to an additional high-level inter-Afghan discussion in Turkey later this month.

Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that. There are also up to an additional 7,000 foreign forces in the coalition there, the majority of them NATO troops.

………

The goal is to move to “zero” troops by September, the senior administration official said. “This is not conditions-based. The president has judged that a conditions-based approach . . . is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever. He has reached the conclusion that the United States will complete its drawdown and will remove its forces from Afghanistan before September 11th.”

About damn time.

We lost, get over it, and get the f%$# out.