Pre-9/11, we would not have worked with the Northern Alliance. Things changed on Sept. 11th, but the lefties are still snoozing on Sept. 10th.

Uh, pre-9/11, we did work with the Northern Alliance. That’s whom we teamed up with during the Afghan war against the Soviets. It was the Pakistani Intelligence Agency that funded the Taliban. It was after the Soviets left that the Taliban basically routed the Northern Alliance and took over in Afghanistan.

Allah, I think that addresses one of your points, too. We didn’t work with bin Laden or the Talis. No money, no help.

Finally, I wouldn’t trust Wiki on anything remotely political. It has been more than unreliable in the past, and this is ripe for manipulation to make us look bad. Especially since it’s now big news.

So, yes, you have reason to be concerned. But I don’t think we have all of the facts yet.

JammieWearingFool on April 4, 2007 at 8:04 AM

I’m not sure, but did I detect a tone of sarcasim in that link? /sarc off

hahaha

We need to can the whole damn lot and hire Michael, Sonny, and Tom Hagen.

I’m with Allahpundit on this: bad, bad idea:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American…

……

As for the article itself, I enthusiastically question the timing. This is quite the scoop for “U.S. intelligence sources” to be leaking in the midst of the British hostage crisis.

This is the sort of thing that can get those sailors killed.

- The Cat

Want to disable Iran?

step 1 – put the kettle on

step 2 – fire off a few well placed missiles at key military & power/communications infrastructure targets.

step 3 – make a nice cup of tea

But the blotter says it was from both US and Pakistani intelligence sources. So either it was people posing as US and Pakistani sources or there was some reason for people in both intelligence services to leak at the same time to the same outlet.

Tell me the significance of “encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005.” Pretty nebulous charge. Encouraged and advised to do what? Lets see…

“A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.”

I’m sure the US is reaching-out to many groups like this throughout the region. Like it or not, this kind of “human intelligence” work is necessary. In that part of the world, there is shortage of “nice guys” to work with.

A leak about this work, with this group, at this time, smacks of another leak from a disgruntled CIA type.

It’s amazing how the left worked themselves into a tail-spin of anger and fury over a CIA desk jockey being outed but show none of this outrage when a top-secret operation is exposed, putting our countries security on the line:……

We could, but the politics aren’t there for it.

forged rite on April 3, 2007 at 11:29 PM

Not now they aren’t, but in the future? Who knows? Look at our alliance with Saudi Arabia. We can all see the writing on the wall. We are eventually going to confront them on their ties to terrorist activity. But for now, they are a valuable ally and we turn a mostly blind eye to it. I could be wrong, but it just seems to me that the same recurring pattern is/has emerge in all our foriegn policy entanglements.

Also, I don’t know if I managed to make that entirely clear, I completely agree with you that we should be concerned that we might be repeating earlier mistakes here, I just don’t see it as a given. Again, we ought to have learned from what went wrong the last time. Yes, I know, I’m being incurably optimistic again ;-)

Optimism isn’t a bad thing, but I do think it’s gotten us in a lot of trouble as a country. At heart, Americans are good people who want to believe the best of everyone. That’s a good philosophy to have, but it doesn’t always make for good foreign policy.

Especially when you’re dealing with people who AP has appropriately referred to as “degenerates.”

Nothing really new in any of the accusations. It is basically word for word the accusations that Iranians have been making for years. I wonder why both US and Pakistani “intelligence sources” would “leak” the same thing at the same time.

You or I may not have moral qualms about it, but the striped-pantsed weenies that make up our State Department certainly don’t seem willing to do such a thing.

Slublog on April 3, 2007 at 11:39 PM

Touche, Slublog. Good point.

Also, I don’t know if I managed to make that entirely clear, I completely agree with you that we should be concerned that we might be repeating earlier mistakes here, I just don’t see it as a given. Again, we ought to have learned from what went wrong the last time. Yes, I know, I’m being incurably optimistic again ;-)

I agree with all three points, even though they seem to be contradictory.

georgej on April 3, 2007 at 11:43 PM

They may, but they really aren’t. I was just covering all the bases, including the very hypothetical situation in which the ABC story is true.

Whether there’s a leak or not, that journalist needs the thumbscrews in order to find out. If there isn’t one, then we should hang the journalist for providing aid and comfort to the enemy by willfully, with malice aforethought (lying pretty much guarantees that that’s the case), attempting to undermine our government in a time of war.

If there is a leaker, we should hang him next to the journalist for treason as well.

Not that any of this will happen. We, as a nation, long ago lost the ability to fight and win a war, not to mention the will to employ all the means necessary. If this were WWII, the New York Times would publish daily convoy schedules for the Kriegsmarine to read, and ABC would be tripping over themselves to let the Germans know that we’d cracked Enigma.

Because “it’s in the public interest”, of course.