In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.
The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.
Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Well, we tried to be cordial with Musharraf, who's getting hammered in the elections, and we tried to go the "cooperation" route, only to be told that he's not "actively hunting Bin Laden".
If you're not going to hunt down the man that the entire world, with the exception of a fraction of a percentage of idiots, wants dead, then you simply must understand that the United States is going to defend itself from a terrorist organization that has decided to set up shop in your backyard.
Now, you can bitch and complain about that, but then we might start to wonder where your loyalty lies. It would be a crying shame if we were to leave you high and dry to fend off the wolves.
Every so often, Musharraf throws us a proverbial bone, but he's simply doing as little as possible to strike a balance in his country. That's completely unacceptable.
Travis
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