23 posts tagged “america”

An interesting piece of news on the war on terror.

Apparently the US Army made a huge mistake by bombing fellow allies the Pakistanis, killing 11 of them.

It's a crazy war when you can simply bomb you allies.

Or does America no longer consider them allies because they're negotiating peace with the Afghan militants?

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan's military condemned a "cowardly" US air strike that killed 11 Pakistani troops near the Afghan border on Wednesday, saying it could jeopardise cooperation in the "war on terror".

The attack on a checkpost in Pakistan's volatile tribal zone was the first of its kind since Islamabad joined Western efforts against the hardline Taliban movement in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It heightened tensions between Pakistan and the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, which recently warned that the new government's decision to hold peace talks with militants could increase cross-border infiltration.

A Pakistani army spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act" and blamed the coalition for the "aerial attack" that destroyed a paramilitary post in the Mohmand tribal region, a statement said.

It confirmed that 11 soldiers were killed including an officer. "The incident had hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the coalition in the war against terror," it quoted the spokesman as saying. Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the coalition, it said.

Heavily armed local tribesmen brandishing rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles gathered near the checkpost in the mountainous Gora Prai area to show their support after the attack, residents said.

The US-led coalition in Afghanistan referred queries to the US embassy in Islamabad, which in turn said that the Pentagon was dealing with the matter. The Afghan military made no immediate comment.

Pakistani security officials said the deaths came after Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy the strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, which borders eastern Afghanistan.

The post was in an area that has long been disputed between the two countries. Pakistani troops repulsed the Afghan soldiers and the coalition then bombed the area.

Coalition aircraft also killed around 15 Taliban militants about a kilometre (half a mile) away, the officials said. A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants, Maulvi Omar, said eight "mujahideen (holy warriors)" were killed in an air strike by coalition helicopters.

He also said the rebels had shot down a coalition helicopter and captured seven Afghan soldiers when they were returning from "attacking" the post. There was no confirmation of either claim.

Pakistan has protested over a series of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months, including one in the tribal region of Bajaur in May that killed more than a dozen people.

Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells but it appears to be the first time that any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.

Disputes over the 2,500-kilometre (1,500-mile) frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both key allies in the US-led "war on terror," have flared up several times in recent years. Pakistan's new government, which ousted allies of President Pervez Musharraf in elections in February, has entered peace talks with pro-Taliban militants in the tribal belt, causing concerns among its Western allies.

The attack came two days after a US think tank said in a report that members of Pakistan's intelligence services and its paramilitaries were supporting Taliban insurgents. The study by the RAND corporation, funded by the US Department of Defence, said that if Taliban bases in Pakistan were not eliminated, the forces supporting the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "will face crippling long-term consequences in their effort to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan."

Pakistan's military denounced the claims in a statement as "yet another smear campaign maligning Pakistan armed forces and creating differences as well as misunderstanding amongst the coalition partners."

What happened to the war lasting 100 years.....?

What happened to not believing in climate change initiatives...?

Is the elephant turning donkey-ish?

Someone e-mailed me Krugman's argument on Clinton vs. Obama in terms of universal health care for Americans, and Krugman makes his point rather clear.

Clinton can bring universal health care to Americans, and if this election was only based on that, perhaps she does deserve the nomination.

Then someone e-mailed me another e-mail on how Obama is actually a Muslim.

Um...okay.

Kinda the wrong guy to send it to, plus I was actually well informed enough to know that he isn't, and Indonesia, though the largest Muslim country in the world, has a population of Christians which his stepfather, is.

This election is about more than a single issue, though after Michael Moore's Sicko, health care has become an important one at that. More important than education, even, after I've listened to some of the debates.

Personally, I would have thought one would look into education and health care with the same discretion, not health care, followed by Iraq if the candidates are reminded of it, economy if they Dow is down, and then followed by education.

But then, what do I know. All that's relevant to me is foreign policy, and Obama seems to have it right on that point. Though a word of caution, too much talk without action is disastrous, and same goes for covert ops as well.

Don't go doing another Bay of Pigs invasion on Iran, or another War on Terror on Iran. It's not worth it. Force them down like you did North Korea.

Romney's quitting his bid for the Presidency.

Poof! All gone!

Damn....

Are the Voxers in Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky all right?

I just heard the latest, it's 47 people dead and hundreds if not thousands more wounded. Heck, CNN was showing an entire girls dormitory gutted by the storm.

My prayers are with you.

The NY Times has chosen to endorse Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Is anyone surprised...?

I extend my condolences to anyone who may have been involved in the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. They were just mentioning on the news that a school bus with kids was on the bridge when it happened. Hope all the rescue efforts are being conducted in urgency.

However, I'm still looking out on how an 800 metre (half a mile) stretch of bridge can suddenly collapse into the river.

So now, is America going to send their troops into Mexico?

Just to protect their borders, perhaps?

First off, let's lay off the issue of further troop deployments in Iraq, as well as the recent Senate vote which demolished the soldier's to have their rest period back home = the length of their deployment in Iraq.

Here's the thing.

Has anyone noticed how the American government has stopped talking about Iraq supporting itself, all the talk about how the Iraqis are ready to handle their own government?

Has anyone also noticed that Iraq is no longer interacting with it's neighbors, Iran and Syria, which earlier stated that they were willing to help Iraq reach some sort of peace?

What's happened to that?

What's been followed through, if at all, on President Musharraf's idea of having a coalition of Muslim countries to send troops into Iraq, to make it less strenuous on the American military?

Basically, we've seen that these ideas, although brilliant but perhaps troubling to certain parties, are no longer being looked at.

Instead, we continually hear the harping of how Iran is selling arms and training members of Muqtada Al-Sadr's army. We also hear connotations of how Syrians are now coming into the folds of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as suicide bombers. Honestly, the way they make it sound is as if the Americans suddenly saw these militants with the words "Made In Iran" hanging from their necks or something.

Looks to me like someone is trying an isolationist effort to stop Iraq from interacting with it's neighbors, thus perhaps keeping the spoils of war for themselves.

We've also stopped hearing about any other Muslim country in the region offering aid to Iraq, especially after King Abdullah stated that America was a bane upon the people there.

Not something you want to hear from one of your key allies in the Middle East, by the way.

All this boils down to a simple question. Is America isolating Iraq, to basically stop them from interacting with anyone in the region?

If so, what exactly is the reasoning of such a move?

America recently published a report

Considering the fact that I've actually blown a fuse on the topic, I decided to delve deeper into the American report on Malaysia, and the current steps taken to deal with the news.

Fact #1: This report's basis is in the year 2006 and published just recently. Reading through it, it mostly shows one simple thing that I actually agree with, which is that the leaders of this country were passing laws that were never enforced by the police. How sweet.

Basically, the message sent through was that our armed forces were definitely not doing enough about human trafficking.

Fact #2: Malaysia does have sex slaves, as I have experienced personally by having a pimp offering to introduce me to a "lenglui" or "pretty woman" in Chinese (not sure which dialect) in Johor Bahru. But then, doesn't every country?

Fact #3: Malaysia had tabled it's Anti-Trafficking in Persons Bill 2007 on May 24, 2007.

So what if Malaysia's slow on the uptake and America might put sanctions on us. We've always been known as a nation of procrastinators when it comes to dealing with America. Heck, we were even late with our FTA agreement talks with America.

If anything, the pimping might actually be helpful to bring in more tourists for our Visit Malaysia Year 2007. God knows how many people need to get laid to calm down.