What Obama needs to say next on Pakistan

[DogPoundPup]

By Cernig

As George Bush urges Pakistan to "take responsibility" for extremists, there's massive disagreement within the US intelligence community about his administration's policy of unilateral attacks inside Pakistani territory.

The entire US intelligence community got behind a warning to the White House against indiscriminate attacks into Pakistan, like recent ones which apparently hit civilians and aroused a vehement reaction from Pakistan, including a threat to retaliate.

Gareth Porter writes that the warning, from the National Intelligence Council, was a consensus view of the entire intelligence apparatus and said that such attacks would carry a high risk of further destabilising the Pakistani military and government.

That blunt warning was conveyed to the White House in an oral briefing by a top official of the NIC two or three weeks ago, according to Philip Giraldi, former operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist in the CIA Directorate of Operations, who maintains contacts with the intelligence community.

Another source, who has been briefed by NIC officials on the issue, confirms that the NIC message, representing a consensus in the intelligence community, was conveyed to the Bush administration in August, just as an intense debate over whether to carry out commando raids against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan was still under way.

The source, who asked not to be identified because of the confidentiality of his contacts with the NIC, said the White House was warned that if U.S. commando raids continued over a longer period of time, the NIC believes they could threaten the unity of the Pakistani military.

... Patrick Lang, former defence intelligence officer for the Middle East at the Defence Intelligence Agency, told IPS he understands the intelligence community issued a "pretty clear warning" against the commando raid. "They said, in effect, if you want to see the Pakistani government collapse, go right ahead," Lang said.

To some, this might look like bad news for Obama's foreign policy - the McCain campaign has characterised his stance as saying Obama would invade Pakistan in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and others - but that would be to only look at soundbites. Obama's position is actually more nuanced. This is what he wrote: .... finish reading @ http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/09/what-obama-need.html