Myth: US bombing Pakistan is new.....

[Flabbergasted]

Pak accused of distorting Bush comments
5 Aug 2007, 1826 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN

WASHINGTON: The Pakistani foreign office distorted the contents of President Bush's phone call to Gen Musharraf on Friday, falsely claiming that he described remarks by presidential candidates about military strikes inside Pakistan as ''unsavory'' and made in the heat of electioneering, it has emerged.

White House officials have taken issue with the self-serving version of the call by Islamabad, even as it transpires that the US establishment is broadly on the same page about actions inside Pakistan (that they will respond with military strikes to actionable intelligence on terrorists if Pakistan does not act) except for minor differences in nuance and emphasis.

US officials confirmed that Bush phoned Musharraf, but said the president did not criticize comments made by Democrats and a Republican this week.

''He didn't say anything about unsavory or electioneering or anything like that,'' a White House official told news agencies. ''He said I know you've heard different things coming out of the system, basically, and you need to know we're going to work with you to defeat the terrorists.''

US military strikes inside Pakistan have been going on for several months now, but both Washington and Islamabad prefer to keep the fiction of Pakistan's sovereignty going to save Musharraf's face and prevent a domestic backlash.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak_accused_of_distorting_Bush_comments/articleshow/2257301.cms

US bombs Pakistani border patrol
Tuesday, 31 December, 2002, 10:40 GMT

The US conducts regular missions in eastern Afghanistan

US forces in Afghanistan bombed a Pakistani border patrol after they were shot at by a Pakistani soldier, the US military has revealed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2616939.stm

Pakistani fury at US bombing of border


America retaliates after shooting

Luke Harding, South Asia correspondent, and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday January 2, 2003
The Guardian


Conservative Pakistani politicians condemned the United States yesterday after an exchange of fire on the Afghan border culminated in the US bombing of an abandoned religious school which local officials claim is in Pakistan.
According to a US military report, the incident occurred on Sunday, when an armed man wearing a Pakistani border guard uniform approached a group of American and Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan side of the border.

US soldiers told the man to return to the Pakistani side of the border but as he was walking away, he opened fire with his rifle, wounding an American soldier in the neck.
US troops returned fire and the man fled into the Islamic school, or madrassa. The Americans then called in an air strike from an F16 fighter which dropped a 500lb bomb on the building.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,867372,00.html

Saturday, September 20, 2003

US bombs land in Waziristan

PESHAWAR: US warplanes on Friday dropped two bombs along a disputed part of the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border Friday, with witnesses saying they landed in Pakistani territory.

The bombs exploded in mountains in the border district of Angoor Ada in the tribal district of South Waziristan.

“Two bombs dropped by US warplanes hit Pakistani territory on the Durand Line,” local resident Mohammad Ghaffar Wazir said. Another resident said the bombs Friday landed between the Afghan border village of Ziara Lita and the Pakistani village of Pash Khena.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_20-9-2003_pg7_4

US bombs Pakistan: an act of reckless imperialism
Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 3:19 pm
Article: World Socialist Web Site

The US air strike carried out on January 13 on the isolated village of Damadola, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, was as reckless as it was criminal. At least 18 civilians were killed, including five women and five children, further inflaming already high political and social tensions inside Pakistan.

Under international law, the strike was an act of war. The Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf has collaborated with the US takeover of Afghanistan and its broader international aggression, but it has never formally granted the US military the right to cross the border and carry out operations on Pakistani soil or airspace. It is unclear whether the Pakistani government and military had pre-knowledge of the attack. But in the face of public outrage it has been compelled to issue a protest to the US ambassador and deplore the bombing of Damadola as “highly condemnable”.

Not only was the attack a violation of Pakistani national sovereignty, the intended target—the senior Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—was not even in the village. Haroon Rashid, the local member of the Pakistani National Assembly, told Afghan Islamic Press: “I know all the 18 people who were killed. There was neither al-Zawahiri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area.” A Pakistani military intelligence officer told Al Jazeerah: “Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on false information.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0601/S00188.htm

[Kagemusha]

1. So should Pakistan get to dictate what US candidates say, or not?

Some say that Pakistan is a highly important ally in the War on Terror and its sovereignty should be respected... (leaving unsaid whether the US' own is important to this effort.)

[Flabbergasted]

2. Sovereignty? US renting Pak army for $ 100 million a month.

US renting Pak army for $ 100 million a month


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_renting_Pak_army_for__100_million_a_month/articleshow/2202810.cms

With said army: (lots more examples)

Pakistan military action has lessened attacks in Afghanistan: US general

WASHINGTON: Attacks by militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border doubled last month over the same period in 2006, but are decreasing now because of Pakistan’s new military operations on its side of the frontier, a top US commander said on Wednesday.

Army Major General David Rodriguez also said there has been a 50 percent to 60 percent increase over last year in the number of foreign fighters flowing into Afghanistan from Pakistan. “The Al Qaeda network is the one that brings most of the foreign fighters in,” the general said.

Rodriguez estimated that foreign fighters account for less than 5 percent of insurgents there and said they execute a minority of attacks. But they provide money and other resources and have “leadership skills” to serve as a core for forming larger groups, he told Pentagon reporters via video conference from Afghanistan.

Rodriguez declined to say how many foreign fighters he was talking about. He also offered no figures on the number of attacks, saying only: “Last month it was about double what it was a year ago the same month. It’s ... decreased a little in the past month, mainly because of the Pakistani military operations being conducted at the present time.”

He also said the number of larger scale Taliban attacks has declined from a high point in May and June, as a result of operations by US, NATO and Pakistani forces. The operations had “a significant impact on their leadership that has disrupted their capability to conduct many of those large attacks,” he said.

Rodriguez said the US military in Afghanistan coordinates closely with the Pakistani military, and the have developed good intelligence sharing and communication. “We’ve made no plans to use US forces on their side of the border,” he added. agencies

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C07%5C26%5Cstory_26-7-2007_pg7_52