If Bush had pushed Musharraff to Democracy we might have Gaza in Pakistan.

The SEALs plan was to go in a small group and do the work. By the time it reached Rumsfeld the plan had turned into a full scale military operation.

Rumsfeld didn’t veto a commando attack. He vetoed a major incursion into Pakistan.

What the SEALs were going to do could have been explained away by both the US and Pakistani governments. The final plan could not.

A number of times in the past we have seen the military hierarchy increase the numbers required to a level where the civilian leadership might be loath to proceed. Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind.

Might be interesting to find out who finalised this plan.

First, Pakistan doesn’t need long-range ICBMs to reach India, so if Pakistan develops them they will not add a significant MAD deterrent for India.

By that I mean that if Pakistan were to hypothetically launch ICBMs at the USA, Pakistan would still have their shorter-range nukes with which to enforce a MAD strategy with India.

I’ve reviewed your opinions in this thread and will try to infer from the an answer to your last post, in which you referred to my looking at a globe.

First, Pakistan doesn’t need long-range ICBMs to reach India, so if Pakistan develops them they will not add a significant MAD deterrent for India.

In my posts above where I refer to a possible first strike capability, I wasn’t suggesting, necessarily, that if Musharraf falls his successor will immediately strike the US, but rather that due to MAD we will have to stay our hand while there is a possibility that some of Pakistan’s nukes could be smuggled into the west to be used for blackmail or whatever else they might desire.

To address another point that you may have been inferring, that perhaps the shortest path for an ICBM to the US would pass over India, thus risk provoking them into a retaliatory strike on Pakistan: I think it would depend upon the range of the hypothetical Pak ICBM’s to determine if launching over India would be necessary. My globe is in storage so it’s difficult for me to gauge relative distances at this time.

But in essence, the general point of my posts above wasn’t that a sane person would actually launch a first strike, but that the capability to do so would preclude us from interfering in Pakistani internal affairs and thus Al Qaeda would have a secure base of operations that we couldn’t touch without risking a full blown traditional nuclear war. Also, there is no guarantee that Musharraf’s successor will be sane.

On a related note, I seem to recall that when Musharraf visited the US a while back, which was around the time he was promoting his new book, I seem to recall that he made some statements that suggested he wouldn’t have been as cooperative with the US if he hadn’t felt as threatened as he was. That being the case, if he can develop his arsenal to enforce MAD with the USA, I’m of the opinion that his cooperation would likely end.

Allah, if the NYT story is true, I can understand why Rummy pulled the plug because of too many troops: if you are operating in a country without official permission, you have to keep the op small enough so that if things go sideways, you retain the element of political plausible deniability. A single squad? Yep, dear General, they were “rogue”. Sorry for the mistake. “Hundreds of troops”, though? Every paper on the planet would be spinning that one as the vanguard for an invasion. Ugly.

Hundreds of SEALs and Rangers don’t exactly stick out like a sore thumb. They like to be discreet as possible. Even if they were noticed, there aren’t a dearth of reporters in that region to let the world know. Any Western reporter that steps out of Islamabad goes the way of Danny Pearl, and they know it.
Bush didn’t care what the papers thought before invading Iraq, did he? He went in anyway. Why would Pakistan be any different?

Pakistan? Strike the US. With mortal enemy nuclear India next door. Have you looked at a globe recently?

infidel4life on July 8, 2007 at 12:11 PM

Yeah, it’s in storage, but I’ve spent a lot of time looking at maps and globes over the years. Why do you ask?

I agree with you that it’s probable the instability an invasion would have caused the Musharraf regime was a major factor in deciding to scrub the mission.

FloatingRock on July 8, 2007 at 4:17 AM

This would have been the ONLY reason not to have carried out the op, though I still would have carried it out, had it been my choice. I feel that it is more important for the US to impress on the muslims the idea that they will find no safe haven on Earth. In addition, Musharraf is going to fall eventually, anyway. It’s almost a miracle that the guy is still alive today!

However, Pakistan is a nexus of Islamism in the world and that problem needs to be dealt with.

FloatingRock on July 8, 2007 at 4:17 AM

I’m with you on this, which is why I wrote in my first post:

Bush’s decision to bind tightly to Pakistan never struck me as smart, since the Pakistani nuclear arsenal (and complex) must eventually be destroyed.

progressoverpeace on July 7, 2007 at 6:02 PM

Exit question: Why didn’t they just call in an airstrike on Zawahiri instead?

Why indeed.

Assuming this story is true – and given its provenance, I’m not at all sure about that – then the only reason I can think of why we wouldn’t just send in a Predator with a couple of Hellfire missiles would be because we wanted Zawahiri to stay alive, so we could track his movements as well as identify and track who he was hanging out with.

But the trouble with that is, we’ve already evidently tried once to take out Zawahiri with an airstrike, so it seems doubtful that letting him live was the motivation for not trying it again.

Bottom line: I can understand not wanting to stage a large-scale raid with ground troops, but there’s no satisfactory explanation of why we wouldn’t have tried another airstrike. Again, assuming that the story is true at all, more details are needed to make more sense of it.

a first strike capability against the US
FloatingRock on July 8, 2007 at 4:34 AM

Pakistan? Strike the US. With mortal enemy nuclear India next door. Have you looked at a globe recently?

I always chuckle when “civies” question military decisions on the ground.
This “story” from the Ny Traitor Times is no exception. Amazing that for once they are devulging a secret after it supposedly happened. That’s a…

Rumsfeld is a great man!
Perfect? of coarse not.
TheSitRep on July 7, 2007 at 9:57 PM
Please explain how not being perfect makes one great.
(Using proper spelling, of course.)
;-)
infidel4life on July 7, 2007 at 10:05 PM

Sorry for my coarse spelling InfidelforLife. I like to think I don’t misspell, I just spell differently. Did you know, spelling is a very new concept in literature?
My usage of GREAT is subjective as it is my opinion here check out the definition and connotations.

For those who wondered “whither the airstrike(s)?” even those are difficult, because of that little thingy called sovereignty. The few airstrikes that have been made by Predator drones get reams of bad press and people up in arms; can you imagine one performed by a manned fighter?

And that’s not even getting into the “what if the op causes the Pakistani government to destablise, and the nukes fall into the hands of the Taliban (or other islamoterrorist group)?” punditry territory.

NYT, IMHO, is always “for” a strategy, after the fact, that ends up being the direct opposite of what Bush and his commanders do, regardless of anything they may have said beforehand. After all, it’s much easier to snipe from the sidelines afterwards, than to weigh the potential consequences of various options in the heat of the moment, with the [often] limited information at hand. Just ask anyone who slams Bush about his administration’s conduct leading up to 9/11…

Whether they are 200 or 200,000 in number, Islamists will keep going and going and going until they’re dead or we are (or we are converted), in spite of the assassinations of those who step forward to call themselves leaders in the Jihad.

Estimates are 10% of muslims are hardcore. That’s 100 million. When are we going to stop pretending that there are moderate muslims? A few guys who’ve grown up in the US sound reasonable so we think they are a sign of a silent majority? There are NEVER muslim led protests about terrorism but they kill over cartoons. 1600 years of terror and conquest and we still can’t see the writing on the wall.

Post modernmoral relativism has not only destroyed critical thought, but those still capable of it are considered a bigger threat then islam.

I can see why Allah was getting agitated with this thread…

Yeah after 10 posts he calls the few that think differently truthers, such amazing powers of patience and restraint.

I agree with you that it’s probable the instability an invasion would have caused the Musharraf regime was a major factor in deciding to scrub the mission. However, Pakistan is a nexus of Islamism in the world and that problem needs to be dealt with.

Hopefully Musharraf’s crackdown on the Red Mosque is a sign of his strengthening resolve to work toward that end, although I’m not at all confident that he will be able to carry it to the necessary conclusion. If he is able to secure his regime then perhaps it will be enough, (or will seem to be), but at some point, as often happens in that part of the world, he will probably fail, and if Pakistan has long range nukes at that time our position will be far more tenuous than it would be if he failed now.

It will essentially be to late to affect change in Pakistan short of capitulation and appeasement.

If Musharraf doesn’t fix his country before our intelligence determines that his successor will be able to strike the US and enforce MAD, I think that his time will have lapsed. If Musharraf is able and willing, our forces can work in conjunction with his but the job will still need to get done at some point before it is too late.

The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan

Let me think of Clinton profession the path to September 11 2001 a made up propaganda lie.