Looking for Bin Laden

Yesterday the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talked about what the U.S. is prepared to do in Pakistan: he said a more comprehensive strategy was being devised to combat terrorism in the tribal areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The New York Times alluded to that strategy when it said the Bush administration secretly approved orders in July to allow U.S. forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan, which the Pakistani government did not approve. This Pakistani foreign Minister says the attacks by the Americans are counter-productive and he says the U.S. raids will backfire. This analyst agrees with that assessment. He says the timing of the U.S.-led raid is about politics and military strategy and the U.S. is testing the new Pakistani Prime Minister who says he will be more cooperative than Musharraf. This analyst says the friendship between Pakistan and the U.S. has limits and the new Pakistani Prime Minister will lose political points at home if he gives in too much to the U.S.’s demands. However, the analyst says the Pakistanis can’t control the insurgency by themselves. Today the Pakistani military said it did kill 100 Al Qaeda linked militants near its border, a sign to the U.S. but this analyst says the U.S. is going to ignore such messages to root out extremists.