Pakistan - Bush's nuclear-armed ally

Why does the United States bless the right of Pakistan to have nuclear weapons, but not Iran? Oh, yeah, Pakistan is our ally, according to our prezident.

I've often wondered about that. Pakistan seems to be about as unstable a country as you can find anywhere, and crammed with Islamic fundamentalists bent on destroying the Great Satan which is us (U.S.). Pakistan is where opposition political leaders suddenly find themselves out of the game with a bullet hole in the head.

How many billions of dollars do we give Pakistan each year?

And isn't Pakistan supposed to be helping us find bin Laden? Isn't Pakistan supposed to take the lead in shutting down the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Pakistan doesn't seem to be doing a very good job! The last word I heard was that bin Laden is alive and well and living in some mountain cave inside Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities just can't seem to locate him in spite of the fact that he keeps issuing video tapes and threats at his own convenience.

Now, according to an article at Yahoo News, the Rand Corporation has released a study claiming that "Pakistani intelligence agents and paramilitary forces have helped train Taliban insurgents and have given them information about American troop movements in Afghanistan."

It is true that the Rand Corporation was established by military people to provide resources for military people to, well, be military people, and this study was funded the the U.S. Defense Department, so what the Rand Corporation says must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

Nevertheless, the report makes some sense, even if it reiterates previous information. The facts, according to the Rand folks, are that Pakistani government officials have been assisting the Taliban in their fight against the United States military and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Evidently NATO officials have found that in several instances, Pakistani agents divulged intelligence information to the Taliban which "undermined several U.S. and NATO anti-Taliban military operations."

Pakistani government officials have further provided the Taliban with sanctuaries in Pakistan as well as money and medical care for their wounded. These sanctuaries house al-Qaida forces and several other terrorist groups.

You can read the entire article here.


How much U.S. money is donated to Pakistan to help fund those who fight against us? We send billions of dollars to Pakistan on a regular basis but we'll probably never know what percentage of those billions goes to terrorists who "regularly ship weapons, ammunition and supplies into Afghanistan from Pakistan" to be used against us by the Taliban, nor will we know how many of the suicide bombers that come from Afghan refugee camps based in Pakistan blow themselves up with munitions paid for by the U.S.

It somehow seems wrong that we should fund those who work to kill us. Perhaps a new administration will be able to revise this incredibly screwed up and wasteful expenditure of tax dollars.