Defense Secretary Gates raked over the coals in recent visit to Pakistan

$3 billion dollars in military aid in the last year, plus all the other aid
we have given Ragastan,  Pakistsan one would think they would be
a a bit more hospitable to Defense Secretary Gates. This was certainly
not the case on his most recent trip to our ally(?) who shares a nasty,
unruled border with Afghanistan. Pakistan consistently denies the
presence or links to Al-Qaeda with Muslim Islamic terrorist groups.
This is an outright lie. No other words for it, or at least ones that I can
write here as not to offend anyone. With all the aid we have given
'this ally' of ours, the treatment and comments made to Gates, maybe
it is time to see how they do without so much aid from us. India would
most likley find that an appealing turnabout for the region. We should
have secured Ragistan's, Pakistan's nuclear weapons long ago. The
government is so unstable and there have already been too many
close calls. The struggle between India and Ragistan Pakistan for
control of the region will continue to be a major distraction, allow
Muslim Islamic terrorist groups to rain havoc and death upon both
countries. When you get right down to it we have no trustworthy
allies in any Islamic country. I would hesitate to call any Islamic
country our ally, period. We should tell them all to go to Hell.


New York Times
Elisabeth Bumiller


As the No. 2 official at the C.I.A. in the 1980s, Mr. Gates helped channel Reagan-era covert aid and weapons through Pakistan’s spy agency to the American allies at the time: Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Many of those fundamentalists regrouped as the Taliban, who gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and now threaten Pakistan.


In meetings on Thursday, Pakistani leaders repeatedly asked Mr. Gates to give them their own armed drones to go after the militants, not just a dozen smaller, unarmed ones that Mr. Gates announced as gifts meant to placate Pakistan and induce its cooperation.

Pakistani journalists asked Mr. Gates if the United States had plans to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (Mr. Gates said no) and whether the United States would expand the drone strikes farther south into Baluchistan, as is under discussion. Mr. Gates did not answer.

At the same time, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman told American reporters at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Thursday that the military had no immediate plans to launch an offensive against extremists in the tribal region of North Waziristan, as American officials have repeatedly urged.

And the spokesman, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, rejected Mr. Gates’s assertion that Al Qaeda had links to militant groups on Pakistan’s border. Asked why the United States would have such a view, the spokesman, General Abbas, curtly replied, “Ask the United States.”

General Abbas’s comments, made only hours after Mr. Gates arrived in Islamabad, were an affront to an American ally that gave Pakistan $3 billion in military aid last year. But American officials, trying to put a positive face on the general’s remarks and laying out what they described as military reality, said that the Pakistani Army was stretched thin from offensives against militants in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan and probably did not have the troops.

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Why President Bush was a more intelligent leader than Obama. Here are 10 reasons why.

I voted for George Bush twice and have no problems with that or him.
He did a decent job during extremely tough times. I did not agree
with everything he did but compared to what we have now,
he did and still does understand the complexity of world power better
than BHO ever will. Bush never apologized for America and
understood the need for a very strong military defeating our enemies.

Down the road, as the years pass by, the presidency of George Bush
will stand out much more favorably than it does today.


Niles Gardiner
Telegraph.co.u.k.


When President Bush was in power he may not have been hugely popular abroad, but the United States was widely feared on the world stage, her enemies were hunted to the ends of the earth, and her real allies were treated with respect. As Barack Obama is discovering to his cost, the world stage is not an extension of the set of American Idol, and global leadership is not about winning popularity contests. The doctrine of “smart power” looks increasingly like an empty shell, a naive approach that has reaped no dividends and threatens to usher in an era of American decline, unless it is reversed.

I’ve outlined below ten areas where George W. Bush’s international leadership was considerably smarter than that of his successor. As I noted in an article at the end of the Bush presidency, ten or twenty years from now, historians will view Bush’s actions on the world stage in a more favourable light. President Bush, like Ronald Reagan, understood that American global leadership rests heavily upon the projection of hard power as well as diplomacy, and the United States can only lead effectively if it is willing to aggressively confront its enemies and defeat them.



1. Bush never apologised for his country

Barack Obama has apologised for America’s past actions in practically every speech he’s given on foreign soil, and has humiliatingly referred to America’s “arrogance”. In contrast, George W. Bush’s speeches before international audiences were filled with pride for America’s history and achievements, with an uncompromising belief in the greatness of his country. The Obama approach has simply projected weakness rather than strength, and his diatribes against the previous administration’s counter-terror strategy has provided ample ammunition for those who believe the United States lacks the stomach for the fight ahead.

2. Bush identified and confronted evil

There was something very refreshing in George W. Bush’s Reaganesque interpretation of the world in terms of good and evil. In contrast, Barack Obama has viewed the globe largely in shades of grey, with a reluctance to describe who exactly America’s enemies are, from North Korea and Iran to Islamist terrorists. I applauded Bush when he delivered his infamous Axis of Evil address because he correctly identified the nature and scale of the threat the West is facing from an array of rogue regimes, who in some cases also act as large-scale sponsors of international terrorism. President Obama’s disastrous decision to engage Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs of Iran has simply bought the regime in Tehran valuable time to advance its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme, as well as its ambitions to dominate the Middle East.

3. Bush made the advance of freedom a key component of his agenda

The spread of freedom and liberty was always a centerpiece of the Bush agenda. His critics derided this approach as unrealistic, or as a grandiose dream. But few would argue today that the people of Iraq were better off living under a monstrous tyrant like Saddam Hussein. In marked contrast, Barack Obama rarely mentions the word freedom, and the issue of human rights is far down his list of priorities. He has remained largely silent in the face of extreme brutality by the Iranian regime, has extended the hand of friendship to genocidal killers in Sudan and has turned a blind eye to repression in places like Burma. There is a name for this kind of strategy – appeasement – and it only serves to weaken America’s standing in the world and strengthen the brutal fist of its enemies.


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