U.S. strikes within Pakistan — without notice

[Guest guest]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23228197

U.S. strikes within Pakistan & #8212; without notice

Unilateral attack on al-Qaeda commander called a model for

operations

By Joby Warrick and Robin

updated 11:45 p.m. CT, Mon., Feb. 18, 2008

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.

Model for the future

Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often

scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda

inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from

well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the

government's formal permission beforehand.

It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more

frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from

yesterday's election and associated political tumult. The

administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about

undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it

less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident.

Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country's

sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and

Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational

details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in

the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have

been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State

Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani

public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the

brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its

relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials.

Pakistan considered unreliable

U.S. military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of

their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington

pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox

path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence

officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack

sympathy for U.S. interests.

Top Bush administration policy officials -- who are increasingly

worried about al-Qaeda's use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally

ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to

the West -- have quietly begun to accept the military's point of

view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the

Libi strike.

" In the past it required getting approval from the highest levels, "

said one former intelligence official involved in planning for

previous strikes. " You may have information that is valid for only

30 minutes. If you wait, the information is no longer valid. "

But when the autonomous U.S. military operations in Pakistan

succeed, support for them grows in Washington in probably the same

proportion as Pakistani resentments increase. Even as U.S. officials

ramp up the pressure on Musharraf to do more, Pakistan's embattled

president has taken a harder line in public against cooperation in

recent months, the sources said. " The posture that was evident two

years ago is not evident, " said a senior U.S. official who

frequently visits the region.

A U.S. military official familiar with operations in the tribal

areas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not

authorized to talk about the operations, said: " We'll get these

one-off flukes once every eight months or so, but that's still not a

strategy -- it's not a plan. Every now and then something will come

together. What that serves to do [is] it tamps down discussion about

whether there is a better way to do it. "

The target is identified

During seven years of searching for Osama bin Laden and his

followers, the U.S. government has deployed billions of dollars'

worth of surveillance hardware to South Asia, from top-secret spy

satellites to sophisticated eavesdropping gear for intercepting text

messages and cellphone conversations.

Yet some of the initial clues that led to the Libi strike were

decidedly low-tech, according to an account supplied by four

officials briefed on the operation. The CIA declined to comment

about the strike and neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Hours before the attack, multiple sources said, the CIA was alerted

to a convoy of vehicles that bore all the signatures of al-Qaeda

officers on the move. Local residents -- who two sources said were

not connected to the Pakistani army or intelligence service -- began

monitoring the cluster of vehicles as it passed through North

Waziristan, a rugged, largely lawless province that borders

Afghanistan.

Eventually the local sources determined that the convoy carried up

to seven al-Qaeda operatives and one individual who appeared to be

of high rank. Asked how the local support had been arranged, a U.S.

official familiar with the episode said, " All it takes is bags of

cash. "

Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Strategic

Forecasting, a private intelligence group, said the informants could

have been recruits from the Afghanistan side of the border, where

the U.S. military operates freely.

" People in this region don't recognize the border, which is very

porous, " Bokhari said. " It is very likely that our people were in

contact with intelligence sources who frequent both sides and could

provide some kind of targeting information. "

Precisely what U.S. officials knew about the " high-value target " in

the al-Qaeda convoy is unclear. Libi, a 41-year-old al-Qaeda

commander who had slowly climbed to the No. 5 spot on the CIA's most

wanted list, was a hulking figure who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall. He

spoke Libyan-accented Arabic and learned to be cautious after

narrowly escaping a previous CIA strike. U.S. intelligence officials

say he directed several deadly attacks, including a bombing at a

U.S. military base in Afghanistan last year that killed 23 people.

Observing their prey

Alerted to the suspicious convoy, the CIA used a variety of

surveillance techniques to follow its progression through Mir Ali,

North Waziristan's second-largest town, and to a walled compound in

a village on the town's outskirts.

The stopping place itself was an indication that these were

important men: The compound was the home of Abdus Sattar, 45, a

local Taliban commander and an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, the

man accused by both the CIA and Pakistan of plotting the

assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27.

With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered

the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept

at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be

stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require

government permission, officials said.

During the early hours of Jan. 29, the slow-moving, 27-foot-long

plane circled the village before vectoring in to lock its camera

sights on Sattar's compound. Watching intently were CIA and Air

Force operators who controlled the aircraft's movements from an

operations center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

On orders from CIA officials in McLean, the operators in Nevada

released the Predator's two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 100-pound,

rocket-propelled munitions each tipped with a high-explosive

warhead. The missiles tore into the compound's main building and an

adjoining guesthouse where the al-Qaeda officers were believed to be

staying.

Even when viewed from computer monitors thousands of miles away, the

missiles' impact was stunning. The buildings were completely

destroyed, and as many as 13 inhabitants were killed, U.S. officials

said. The pictures captured after the attack were " not pretty, " said

one knowledgeable source.

Libi's death was confirmed by al-Qaeda, which announced

his " martyrdom " on Feb. 1 in messages posted on the Web sites of

sympathetic groups. One message hailed Libi as " the father of many

lions who now own the land and mountains of jihadi Afghanistan " and

said al-Qaeda's struggle " would not be defeated by the death of one

person, no matter how important he may be. "

A temporary impact

Publicly, reaction to the strike among U.S. and Pakistani leaders

has been muted, with neither side appearing eager to call attention

to an awkward, albeit successful, unilateral U.S. military

operation. Some Pakistani government spokesmen have even questioned

whether the terrorist leader was killed.

" It's not going to overwhelm their network or break anything up

definitively, " acknowledged a military official briefed on details

of the Libi strike. He added: " We're now in a sit-and-wait mode

until someone else pops up. "

A. e, a former counterterrorism adviser to the Clinton

and Bush administrations, said he has been told by those involved

that the counterterror effort requires constant pressure on the

Pakistani government.

" The United States has gotten into a pattern where it sends a

high-level delegation over to beat Musharraf up, and then you find

that within a week or two a high-value target has been identified.

Then he ignores us for a while until we send over another high-level

delegation, " e said.

Some officials also emphasized that such airstrikes have a marginal

and temporary impact. And they do not yield the kind of intelligence

dividends often associated with the live capture of terrorists --

documents, computers, equipment and diaries that could lead to

further unraveling the network.

The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success

against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaeda's

presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior U.S. official

briefed on the strike said: " Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now

and then. But overall, we're in worse shape than we were 18 months

ago. "

[Guest guest]

Its about time. Musharaff is on his way out and it is likely that anything that takes his place won't be friendly to us. Sadly, we may have fooled around too long and let too many bad guys get away to do anything about it. Still, if a hostile power does take over in Pakistan, it is likely the nukes would be used on India before us.

In a message dated 2/19/2008 11:19:28 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23228197U.S. strikes within Pakistan & #8212; without noticeUnilateral attack on al-Qaeda commander called a model for operationsBy Joby Warrick and Robin updated 11:45 p.m. CT, Mon., Feb. 18, 2008In 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.Model for the futureOfficials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government's formal permission beforehand. It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from yesterday's election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident. Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country's sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials. Pakistan considered unreliableU.S. military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for U.S. interests. Top Bush administration policy officials -- who are increasingly worried about al-Qaeda's use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to the West -- have quietly begun to accept the military's point of view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the Libi strike. "In the past it required getting approval from the highest levels," said one former intelligence official involved in planning for previous strikes. "You may have information that is valid for only 30 minutes. If you wait, the information is no longer valid." But when the autonomous U.S. military operations in Pakistan succeed, support for them grows in Washington in probably the same proportion as Pakistani resentments increase. Even as U.S. officials ramp up the pressure on Musharraf to do more, Pakistan's embattled president has taken a harder line in public against cooperation in recent months, the sources said. "The posture that was evident two years ago is not evident," said a senior U.S. official who frequently visits the region. A U.S. military official familiar with operations in the tribal areas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the operations, said: "We'll get these one-off flukes once every eight months or so, but that's still not a strategy -- it's not a plan. Every now and then something will come together. What that serves to do [is] it tamps down discussion about whether there is a better way to do it."The target is identified During seven years of searching for Osama bin Laden and his followers, the U.S. government has deployed billions of dollars' worth of surveillance hardware to South Asia, from top-secret spy satellites to sophisticated eavesdropping gear for intercepting text messages and cellphone conversations. Yet some of the initial clues that led to the Libi strike were decidedly low-tech, according to an account supplied by four officials briefed on the operation. The CIA declined to comment about the strike and neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. Hours before the attack, multiple sources said, the CIA was alerted to a convoy of vehicles that bore all the signatures of al-Qaeda officers on the move. Local residents -- who two sources said were not connected to the Pakistani army or intelligence service -- began monitoring the cluster of vehicles as it passed through North Waziristan, a rugged, largely lawless province that borders Afghanistan. Eventually the local sources determined that the convoy carried up to seven al-Qaeda operatives and one individual who appeared to be of high rank. Asked how the local support had been arranged, a U.S. official familiar with the episode said, "All it takes is bags of cash." Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence group, said the informants could have been recruits from the Afghanistan side of the border, where the U.S. military operates freely. "People in this region don't recognize the border, which is very porous," Bokhari said. "It is very likely that our people were in contact with intelligence sources who frequent both sides and could provide some kind of targeting information." Precisely what U.S. officials knew about the "high-value target" in the al-Qaeda convoy is unclear. Libi, a 41-year-old al-Qaeda commander who had slowly climbed to the No. 5 spot on the CIA's most wanted list, was a hulking figure who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall. He spoke Libyan-accented Arabic and learned to be cautious after narrowly escaping a previous CIA strike. U.S. intelligence officials say he directed several deadly attacks, including a bombing at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan last year that killed 23 people.Observing their preyAlerted to the suspicious convoy, the CIA used a variety of surveillance techniques to follow its progression through Mir Ali, North Waziristan's second-largest town, and to a walled compound in a village on the town's outskirts. The stopping place itself was an indication that these were important men: The compound was the home of Abdus Sattar, 45, a local Taliban commander and an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by both the CIA and Pakistan of plotting the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27. With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require government permission, officials said.During the early hours of Jan. 29, the slow-moving, 27-foot-long plane circled the village before vectoring in to lock its camera sights on Sattar's compound. Watching intently were CIA and Air Force operators who controlled the aircraft's movements from an operations center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. On orders from CIA officials in McLean, the operators in Nevada released the Predator's two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 100-pound, rocket-propelled munitions each tipped with a high-explosive warhead. The missiles tore into the compound's main building and an adjoining guesthouse where the al-Qaeda officers were believed to be staying. Even when viewed from computer monitors thousands of miles away, the missiles' impact was stunning. The buildings were completely destroyed, and as many as 13 inhabitants were killed, U.S. officials said. The pictures captured after the attack were "not pretty," said one knowledgeable source. Libi's death was confirmed by al-Qaeda, which announced his "martyrdom" on Feb. 1 in messages posted on the Web sites of sympathetic groups. One message hailed Libi as "the father of many lions who now own the land and mountains of jihadi Afghanistan" and said al-Qaeda's struggle "would not be defeated by the death of one person, no matter how important he may be." A temporary impactPublicly, reaction to the strike among U.S. and Pakistani leaders has been muted, with neither side appearing eager to call attention to an awkward, albeit successful, unilateral U.S. military operation. Some Pakistani government spokesmen have even questioned whether the terrorist leader was killed. "It's not going to overwhelm their network or break anything up definitively," acknowledged a military official briefed on details of the Libi strike. He added: "We're now in a sit-and-wait mode until someone else pops up." A. e, a former counterterrorism adviser to the Clinton and Bush administrations, said he has been told by those involved that the counterterror effort requires constant pressure on the Pakistani government. "The United States has gotten into a pattern where it sends a high-level delegation over to beat Musharraf up, and then you find that within a week or two a high-value target has been identified. Then he ignores us for a while until we send over another high-level delegation," e said. Some officials also emphasized that such airstrikes have a marginal and temporary impact. And they do not yield the kind of intelligence dividends often associated with the live capture of terrorists -- documents, computers, equipment and diaries that could lead to further unraveling the network. The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaeda's presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior U.S. official briefed on the strike said: "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we're in worse shape than we were 18 months ago." Delicious ideas to please the pickiest eaters. Watch the video on AOL Living.

[Guest guest]

Its about time. Musharaff is on his way out and it is likely that anything that takes his place won't be friendly to us. Sadly, we may have fooled around too long and let too many bad guys get away to do anything about it. Still, if a hostile power does take over in Pakistan, it is likely the nukes would be used on India before us.

In a message dated 2/19/2008 11:19:28 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23228197U.S. strikes within Pakistan & #8212; without noticeUnilateral attack on al-Qaeda commander called a model for operationsBy Joby Warrick and Robin updated 11:45 p.m. CT, Mon., Feb. 18, 2008In 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.Model for the futureOfficials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government's formal permission beforehand. It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from yesterday's election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident. Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country's sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials. Pakistan considered unreliableU.S. military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for U.S. interests. Top Bush administration policy officials -- who are increasingly worried about al-Qaeda's use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to the West -- have quietly begun to accept the military's point of view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the Libi strike. "In the past it required getting approval from the highest levels," said one former intelligence official involved in planning for previous strikes. "You may have information that is valid for only 30 minutes. If you wait, the information is no longer valid." But when the autonomous U.S. military operations in Pakistan succeed, support for them grows in Washington in probably the same proportion as Pakistani resentments increase. Even as U.S. officials ramp up the pressure on Musharraf to do more, Pakistan's embattled president has taken a harder line in public against cooperation in recent months, the sources said. "The posture that was evident two years ago is not evident," said a senior U.S. official who frequently visits the region. A U.S. military official familiar with operations in the tribal areas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the operations, said: "We'll get these one-off flukes once every eight months or so, but that's still not a strategy -- it's not a plan. Every now and then something will come together. What that serves to do [is] it tamps down discussion about whether there is a better way to do it."The target is identified During seven years of searching for Osama bin Laden and his followers, the U.S. government has deployed billions of dollars' worth of surveillance hardware to South Asia, from top-secret spy satellites to sophisticated eavesdropping gear for intercepting text messages and cellphone conversations. Yet some of the initial clues that led to the Libi strike were decidedly low-tech, according to an account supplied by four officials briefed on the operation. The CIA declined to comment about the strike and neither confirmed nor denied its involvement. Hours before the attack, multiple sources said, the CIA was alerted to a convoy of vehicles that bore all the signatures of al-Qaeda officers on the move. Local residents -- who two sources said were not connected to the Pakistani army or intelligence service -- began monitoring the cluster of vehicles as it passed through North Waziristan, a rugged, largely lawless province that borders Afghanistan. Eventually the local sources determined that the convoy carried up to seven al-Qaeda operatives and one individual who appeared to be of high rank. Asked how the local support had been arranged, a U.S. official familiar with the episode said, "All it takes is bags of cash." Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence group, said the informants could have been recruits from the Afghanistan side of the border, where the U.S. military operates freely. "People in this region don't recognize the border, which is very porous," Bokhari said. "It is very likely that our people were in contact with intelligence sources who frequent both sides and could provide some kind of targeting information." Precisely what U.S. officials knew about the "high-value target" in the al-Qaeda convoy is unclear. Libi, a 41-year-old al-Qaeda commander who had slowly climbed to the No. 5 spot on the CIA's most wanted list, was a hulking figure who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall. He spoke Libyan-accented Arabic and learned to be cautious after narrowly escaping a previous CIA strike. U.S. intelligence officials say he directed several deadly attacks, including a bombing at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan last year that killed 23 people.Observing their preyAlerted to the suspicious convoy, the CIA used a variety of surveillance techniques to follow its progression through Mir Ali, North Waziristan's second-largest town, and to a walled compound in a village on the town's outskirts. The stopping place itself was an indication that these were important men: The compound was the home of Abdus Sattar, 45, a local Taliban commander and an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by both the CIA and Pakistan of plotting the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27. With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require government permission, officials said.During the early hours of Jan. 29, the slow-moving, 27-foot-long plane circled the village before vectoring in to lock its camera sights on Sattar's compound. Watching intently were CIA and Air Force operators who controlled the aircraft's movements from an operations center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. On orders from CIA officials in McLean, the operators in Nevada released the Predator's two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 100-pound, rocket-propelled munitions each tipped with a high-explosive warhead. The missiles tore into the compound's main building and an adjoining guesthouse where the al-Qaeda officers were believed to be staying. Even when viewed from computer monitors thousands of miles away, the missiles' impact was stunning. The buildings were completely destroyed, and as many as 13 inhabitants were killed, U.S. officials said. The pictures captured after the attack were "not pretty," said one knowledgeable source. Libi's death was confirmed by al-Qaeda, which announced his "martyrdom" on Feb. 1 in messages posted on the Web sites of sympathetic groups. One message hailed Libi as "the father of many lions who now own the land and mountains of jihadi Afghanistan" and said al-Qaeda's struggle "would not be defeated by the death of one person, no matter how important he may be." A temporary impactPublicly, reaction to the strike among U.S. and Pakistani leaders has been muted, with neither side appearing eager to call attention to an awkward, albeit successful, unilateral U.S. military operation. Some Pakistani government spokesmen have even questioned whether the terrorist leader was killed. "It's not going to overwhelm their network or break anything up definitively," acknowledged a military official briefed on details of the Libi strike. He added: "We're now in a sit-and-wait mode until someone else pops up." A. e, a former counterterrorism adviser to the Clinton and Bush administrations, said he has been told by those involved that the counterterror effort requires constant pressure on the Pakistani government. "The United States has gotten into a pattern where it sends a high-level delegation over to beat Musharraf up, and then you find that within a week or two a high-value target has been identified. Then he ignores us for a while until we send over another high-level delegation," e said. Some officials also emphasized that such airstrikes have a marginal and temporary impact. And they do not yield the kind of intelligence dividends often associated with the live capture of terrorists -- documents, computers, equipment and diaries that could lead to further unraveling the network. The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaeda's presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior U.S. official briefed on the strike said: "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we're in worse shape than we were 18 months ago." Delicious ideas to please the pickiest eaters. Watch the video on AOL Living.

[Guest guest]

" Its about time. Musharaff is on his way out and it is likely that

anything that takes his place won't be friendly to us. Sadly, we may

have fooled around too long and let too many bad guys get away to do

anything about it. Still, if a hostile power does take over in

Pakistan, it is likely the nukes would be used on India before us. "

I'm predicting we will see a few things happen before Bush leaves

office.

1) More of these targeted strikes in countries like Pakistan,

Sudan,a few Sub-Saharan African countries, and the Middle East, and

possibly a former Soviet country non-allied to the US known to be

hosting terrorist militants.

2) Some sort of strike against Iran's nuclear reactors/enrichment

operations.

3) A fusillade of last minute strikes against targets in Afghanistan

and Iraq in anticipation of a Democratic administration's probable

recall and withdrawal of troops from those two countries.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" Its about time. Musharaff is on his way out and it is likely that

anything that takes his place won't be friendly to us. Sadly, we may

have fooled around too long and let too many bad guys get away to do

anything about it. Still, if a hostile power does take over in

Pakistan, it is likely the nukes would be used on India before us. "

I'm predicting we will see a few things happen before Bush leaves

office.

1) More of these targeted strikes in countries like Pakistan,

Sudan,a few Sub-Saharan African countries, and the Middle East, and

possibly a former Soviet country non-allied to the US known to be

hosting terrorist militants.

2) Some sort of strike against Iran's nuclear reactors/enrichment

operations.

3) A fusillade of last minute strikes against targets in Afghanistan

and Iraq in anticipation of a Democratic administration's probable

recall and withdrawal of troops from those two countries.

Tom

Administrator

[Guest guest]

" Its about time. Musharaff is on his way out and it is likely that

anything that takes his place won't be friendly to us. Sadly, we may

have fooled around too long and let too many bad guys get away to do

anything about it. Still, if a hostile power does take over in

Pakistan, it is likely the nukes would be used on India before us. "

I'm predicting we will see a few things happen before Bush leaves

office.

1) More of these targeted strikes in countries like Pakistan,

Sudan,a few Sub-Saharan African countries, and the Middle East, and

possibly a former Soviet country non-allied to the US known to be

hosting terrorist militants.

2) Some sort of strike against Iran's nuclear reactors/enrichment

operations.

3) A fusillade of last minute strikes against targets in Afghanistan

and Iraq in anticipation of a Democratic administration's probable

recall and withdrawal of troops from those two countries.

Tom

Administrator