Saturday, June 11, 2011

Pakistani "Cooperation"

To lighten the mood after noting this week's medical drama, I was going to post this brilliant satire from The Onion: "Pakistani Intelligence Announces Its Full Cooperation With U.S. Forces During Upcoming Top Secret June 12 Drone Strike on Al-Qaeda at 5:23 AM Near Small Town of Razmani in North Waziristan."

Then, sadly, the Washington Post reported this morning that twice in recent weeks, the U.S. provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and disappear before the sites were raided by Pakistani forces.  Although it is not clear whether these were intentional tip-offs by someone within Pakistan's ISI or merely poor operational security, the fact that these were Haqqani Network and al-Qa'ida factories means these were valuable opportunities lost.

Suddenly, the satire looks somewhat prophetic.

UPDATE: According to Time magazine, CIA Director Leon Panetta actually confronted the Pakistanis with satellite surveillance imagery showing the militants evacuating the IED factories in the 24 hours after the intelligence was shared.   Again, it isn't clear whether the leak was intentional or inadvertent, but, yeah, this doesn't look good.

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