Top US Spook - “Al Qaeda Rebuilding in Pakistan”
What did I tell you? If I had a dollar for every time I had these crackpots pegged . . .I'd be sitting on a lot of worthless dollars.
The new director of national intelligence told members of Congress on Tuesday that senior leaders of Al Qaeda were steadily rebuilding the network’s bases inside Pakistan and that future attacks against the United States could be planned from Pakistan’s remote western mountains.
I'm telling you - this map reads like a blueprint for US-israeli military strategy.
It's all you need to interpret the news.
In his first testimony since taking office last month, Mike McConnell said Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were supervising the establishment of Qaeda camps in Pakistan similar to those that existed in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, although he said the camps were not as fully developed as the former Afghan bases.
A not-so-subtle threat that we have another 9/11 to look forward to - if we don't do something to stop them now...
Mr. McConnell’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee followed a succession of meetings between top American officials and Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who officials in Washington have said was not doing enough to root out Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
“It’s something we’re very worried about and very concerned about,” Mr. McConnell said.
Intelligence and counterterrorism officials, speaking anonymously, have spoken in the past several weeks about the new camps in Pakistan and the gradual rebuilding of Al Qaeda’s command and control apparatus, but Mr. McConnell is the most senior official in Washington to describe in public what he called a growing problem.
A day earlier, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, sidestepped questions about whether the White House was unhappy with General Musharraf’s government and reaffirmed President Bush’s confidence in the Pakistani president.
The top intelligence officials assembled before the Senate panel on Tuesday issued a blunter assessment.
“We believe they could do more,” said Mr. McConnell, who suggested that General Musharraf could have had his eye on elections later this year when he pledged to keep Pakistani troops from carrying out military operations in the tribal areas.
Sitting beside Mr. McConnell, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described the border region as a “haven for Al Qaeda’s leadership.” It is from that area, Mr. McConnell said, that any future attacks against the United States by Al Qaeda would most likely be planned.
General Musharraf has said repeatedly that he has done everything in his power to root out Taliban and Qaeda militants, but lawmakers were skeptical.
“Long-term prospects for eliminating the Taliban threat appear dim so long as the sanctuary remains in Pakistan, and there are no encouraging signs that Pakistan is eliminating it,” said the committee’s chairman, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan.
The rebuilding of the Qaeda infrastructure in Pakistan has forced a debate within the Bush administration about how hard to press General Musharraf, and some officials have even advocated direct American airstrikes against the camps.
Administration officials said that for now the White House had ruled out any unilateral American military actions in Pakistan. Vice President Dick Cheney was said to have warned the Pakistani president during their meeting on Monday in Islamabad that Democratic members of Congress could move to cut military aid to Pakistan unless its government took stronger action against Islamist militants in the tribal areas.
Losing military "AID" is the least of their worries.
Musharraf better start figuring out how he's going to avoid a pre-emptive strike against his nation and a unilateral redrawing of its borders by zionists.
