VOA News has reported that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while speaking to Pakistani journalists in Lahore on October 29,  said it is hard to believe that Pakistani authorities do not know where al Qaeda leaders are hiding. Clinton said it is also difficult to believe the Pakistani government could not "get" the terrorists if it wanted to.

“Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002,” Bloomberg News quoted Clinton’s statement to a group of editors in the eastern Pakistani city. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to. Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”

Clinton engaged in question-and-answer session with students at the Government College of Lahore, where she told the students that inaction by their government would result in ceding territory to terrorists.

"If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice," she told the students, expressing her belief that it would be a bad choice.

During her dialogue, Clinton used the analogy of terrorists taking over the northwestern United States to the ongoing situation in Pakistan, saying it would be unthinkable for the U.S. government to decide, "Let them have Washington [state]" first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from major U.S. population and centers and seats of governmental power.

VOA noted that Clinton announced several new foreign aid packages during her trip — including $103 million dollars for improving law enforcement and border security, $56 million for Pakistanis displaced by the army's ongoing anti-Taliban offensives and $45 million for expanding higher education. However, those amounts pale in comparison to the $1.5 billion per year, five-year Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 which President Obama signed into law on October 15. As we noted in our October 28 article, “Deadly Blast Rocks Peshawar After Clinton Arrives in Pakistan,” Clinton lamented during her October 27 in-flight new conference held en route to Pakistan that “opposition [had been] expressed to the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation” (the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009).

We noted that the extravagant aid package had sailed through Congress in 21 days from introduction to the president's signature without a vote ever being recorded — thanks to the techniques known as "unanimous consent" and "passage by voice vote."

The most effective criticism of the aid package during the House debate came from California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who noted (among other illuminating facts) that “After 9/11 and spending all of this money, our military reports right now indicate that the ISI, that is the Pakistani intelligence service, still provides support for the Taliban.”

Yes Madame Secretary, your suspicion that someone in the Pakistani government knows where al Qaeda’s leaders are and that Pakistani intelligence could “get them if they really wanted to” is very likely a legitimate one.

However, as valid as Clinton’s charges are, in view of our own government’s track record vis-à-vis al Qaeda, this may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black!

While space prevents a lengthy discussion of this topic here, consider just a few points:

In the article “Foreknowledge and Failure” in The New American magazine for June 17, 2002, journalist William Norman Grigg observed:

In another article in The New American for Oct. 31, 2005 entitled “‘Able Danger’ and 9/11 Foreknowledge,” journalist William F. Jasper unveiled a top-secret Pentagon operation, known as “Able Danger,” that was tracking and monitoring al-Qaeda. Notes Jasper:

An exhaustive amount of additional information documenting the catastrophic failure of our intelligence systems to neutralize al Qaeda and thwart 9-11 exists, much of it found in the two articles we have just cited.

In considering Secretary Clinton’s veiled indictment of Pakistani intelligence for failing to  locate al Qaeda’s leaders — who presumably are hiding somewhere in the mountains separating Afghanistan and Pakistan — we must look at just how limited Pakistan’s resources must be in comparison to our own.

As a report in the Los Angles Times for October 23, 2009 notes:

Since superior entities provide assistance to inferior ones, it is to be surmised from the above that U.S. intelligence (as might be expected) is superior to Pakistani. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that U.S. CIA agents are on the ground in Western Afghanistan helping our military target Taliban hideouts in Western Pakistan with missiles fired from drone aircraft.

In view of these facts, it is far more likely that U.S. intelligence knows more about the location of al Qaeda’s leaders than does Pakistan’s.

Therefore, it is about time for U.S. citizens to present the same statement to their government that Secretary Clinton has just made to the Pakistanis:

“Al Qaeda has had safe haven in [Eastern Afghanistan and] Pakistan since 2002. We find it hard to believe that nobody in our government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”



 

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rprew said:

... "... including $103 million dollars for improving law enforcement and border security ..." Why are we spending $103 million dollars for Pakistani border security? If I remember my geography correctly, Pakistan does not share a common border with the United States. Meanwhile, the borders we do share (Mexico and Canada) are sieves. Little misdirected effort here, don't you think? As to the location of bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda leaders, has anyone thought to look in San Francisco, a known sanctuary and hiding place of fugitives?

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October 29, 2009
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Still Free said:

	Didn't the US track down that one "Mad cow," right to its stall? Exactly, Rprew. The Insiders want our borders unsecured--that's part of their plan. Stop the endless wars! Stop the endless spending!
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October 29, 2009
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