Yerdaddy
12-23-2007, 06:33 PM
Here's another in a long list of examples of the way the current administration has handled the hunt for Bin Laden and the broader Wurr on Turr. And I say "Republican" leadership because the only Republican presidential candidates who don't promise to do things exactly as Bush has done them are McCain and Paul.
Billions in Aid to Pakistan Was Wasted, Officials Assert (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.
In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.
“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”
The $5 billion was provided through a program known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate program, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training.
Pakistan’s military relies on Washington for roughly a quarter of its entire $4 billion budget.
In interviews, American and Pakistani officials acknowledged that they had never agreed on the strategic goals that should drive how the money was spent, or how the Pakistanis would prove that they were performing up to American expectations.
After Six Years, a Plan
Early last week, six years after President Bush first began pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan’s military after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon completed a review that produced a classified plan to help the Pakistani military build an effective counterinsurgency force.
The plan, which now goes to the United States Embassy in Islamabad to carry out, seeks to focus American military aid toward specific equipment and training for Pakistani forces operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Qaeda leaders and local militants hold sway.
For their part, Pakistani officials angrily accused the United States of refusing to sell Pakistan the advanced helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, radios and night-vision equipment it needs.
“There have been many aspects of equipment that we’ve been keen on getting,” said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the Pakistani military’s chief spokesman. “There have been many delays which have hampered this war against extremists.”
United States military officials said the American military was so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that it had no advanced helicopters to give to Pakistan. American law also restricts the export of sophisticated drones, night-vision goggles and other equipment for security reasons.
There is at least one area of agreement. Both sides say the reimbursements have failed substantially to increase the ability of Pakistani forces to mount comprehensive counterinsurgency operations.
Today, with several billion more in aid scheduled for the coming years, American officials estimate it will take at least three to five years to train and equip large numbers of army and Frontier Corps units, a paramilitary force now battling militants.
“I don’t forecast any noticeable impact,” a Defense Department official said. “It’s pretty bleak.”
The program’s failures appear to be a sweeping setback for the administration as it approaches its final year in office. American intelligence officials believe Mr. Bush is likely to leave office in January 2009 with the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden still at large.
“We haven’t had a good lead on his exact whereabouts in two years,” another senior American military official lamented recently.
Al Qaeda More Active
This spring, American intelligence officials said that the Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas had reconstituted their command structure and become increasingly active. Backed by Al Qaeda, pro-Taliban militants have expanded their influence from the remote border regions into the more populated parts of Pakistan this year and mounted a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Coalition Support Funds program was intended to prevent that from happening. Under the program, Pakistani military officials submit bills and are paid for supplies, wear and tear on equipment and other costs, as well as for the American use of three Pakistani air bases, according to American officials.
Pakistani officials say the Coalition Support Funds money goes into the national treasury to repay the government for money already spent on 100,000 troops deployed in the tribal areas. But American military officials say the funds do not reach the men who need it. That is especially the case for helicopter maintenance and poorly equipped Frontier Corps units.
During a recent visit to the border, an American official found members of the Frontier Corps “standing there in the snow in sandals,” according to the official. Several were wearing World War I-era pith helmets and carrying barely functional Kalashnikov rifles with just 10 rounds of ammunition apiece.
“It is not making its way, for certain, we know, to the broader part of the armed forces which is carrying out the brunt of their operations on the border,” the senior American military official said.
For years, how money from the Coalition Support Funds was disbursed to the Pakistani government was veiled in secrecy. The size and scope of the payments to Pakistan was held so closely that one senior American military officer in Afghanistan said that he did not know that the administration was spending $1 billion a year until he attended a meeting in Islamabad in 2006.
“I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border — the Afghan side — we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”
But by mid-2007, the $1 billion-a-year figure became public, largely because of the objections of some military officials and defense experts who noted that during an ill-fated peace treaty between the military and militants in the tribal areas in 2005 and 2006, the money kept flowing. Pakistan continued to submit receipts for reimbursement, even though Pakistani troops had stopped fighting.
Even then, however, American officials said there was little effort to rethink the purposes of the aid, or impose stricter controls.
Pakistan is a country ballanced between modernity and corrupt traditionalism, and between secular pro-western political and military elite and fundamentalist pro-Taliban political and military elite. This means, with Bin Laden hiding and the Taliban recovering its strength in Pakistan, the country needed our attention as well as our aid in order to bolster it while ensuring that the government and military was truly on board with our Wurr on Turr. But the Bush administration policies towards Pakistan have been as incompetant as they were towards Iraq, and the decision to fuck up Iraq has drawn so much of our military, intelligence and management resources and talent away from Afghanistand and Pakistan that we let Pakistan pick our pockets like tourists and Bin Laden will probably die of old age.
And now Republicans are asking for more of the same, Part III.
Billions in Aid to Pakistan Was Wasted, Officials Assert (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.
In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.
“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”
The $5 billion was provided through a program known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate program, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training.
Pakistan’s military relies on Washington for roughly a quarter of its entire $4 billion budget.
In interviews, American and Pakistani officials acknowledged that they had never agreed on the strategic goals that should drive how the money was spent, or how the Pakistanis would prove that they were performing up to American expectations.
After Six Years, a Plan
Early last week, six years after President Bush first began pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan’s military after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon completed a review that produced a classified plan to help the Pakistani military build an effective counterinsurgency force.
The plan, which now goes to the United States Embassy in Islamabad to carry out, seeks to focus American military aid toward specific equipment and training for Pakistani forces operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Qaeda leaders and local militants hold sway.
For their part, Pakistani officials angrily accused the United States of refusing to sell Pakistan the advanced helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, radios and night-vision equipment it needs.
“There have been many aspects of equipment that we’ve been keen on getting,” said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the Pakistani military’s chief spokesman. “There have been many delays which have hampered this war against extremists.”
United States military officials said the American military was so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that it had no advanced helicopters to give to Pakistan. American law also restricts the export of sophisticated drones, night-vision goggles and other equipment for security reasons.
There is at least one area of agreement. Both sides say the reimbursements have failed substantially to increase the ability of Pakistani forces to mount comprehensive counterinsurgency operations.
Today, with several billion more in aid scheduled for the coming years, American officials estimate it will take at least three to five years to train and equip large numbers of army and Frontier Corps units, a paramilitary force now battling militants.
“I don’t forecast any noticeable impact,” a Defense Department official said. “It’s pretty bleak.”
The program’s failures appear to be a sweeping setback for the administration as it approaches its final year in office. American intelligence officials believe Mr. Bush is likely to leave office in January 2009 with the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden still at large.
“We haven’t had a good lead on his exact whereabouts in two years,” another senior American military official lamented recently.
Al Qaeda More Active
This spring, American intelligence officials said that the Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas had reconstituted their command structure and become increasingly active. Backed by Al Qaeda, pro-Taliban militants have expanded their influence from the remote border regions into the more populated parts of Pakistan this year and mounted a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Coalition Support Funds program was intended to prevent that from happening. Under the program, Pakistani military officials submit bills and are paid for supplies, wear and tear on equipment and other costs, as well as for the American use of three Pakistani air bases, according to American officials.
Pakistani officials say the Coalition Support Funds money goes into the national treasury to repay the government for money already spent on 100,000 troops deployed in the tribal areas. But American military officials say the funds do not reach the men who need it. That is especially the case for helicopter maintenance and poorly equipped Frontier Corps units.
During a recent visit to the border, an American official found members of the Frontier Corps “standing there in the snow in sandals,” according to the official. Several were wearing World War I-era pith helmets and carrying barely functional Kalashnikov rifles with just 10 rounds of ammunition apiece.
“It is not making its way, for certain, we know, to the broader part of the armed forces which is carrying out the brunt of their operations on the border,” the senior American military official said.
For years, how money from the Coalition Support Funds was disbursed to the Pakistani government was veiled in secrecy. The size and scope of the payments to Pakistan was held so closely that one senior American military officer in Afghanistan said that he did not know that the administration was spending $1 billion a year until he attended a meeting in Islamabad in 2006.
“I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border — the Afghan side — we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”
But by mid-2007, the $1 billion-a-year figure became public, largely because of the objections of some military officials and defense experts who noted that during an ill-fated peace treaty between the military and militants in the tribal areas in 2005 and 2006, the money kept flowing. Pakistan continued to submit receipts for reimbursement, even though Pakistani troops had stopped fighting.
Even then, however, American officials said there was little effort to rethink the purposes of the aid, or impose stricter controls.
Pakistan is a country ballanced between modernity and corrupt traditionalism, and between secular pro-western political and military elite and fundamentalist pro-Taliban political and military elite. This means, with Bin Laden hiding and the Taliban recovering its strength in Pakistan, the country needed our attention as well as our aid in order to bolster it while ensuring that the government and military was truly on board with our Wurr on Turr. But the Bush administration policies towards Pakistan have been as incompetant as they were towards Iraq, and the decision to fuck up Iraq has drawn so much of our military, intelligence and management resources and talent away from Afghanistand and Pakistan that we let Pakistan pick our pockets like tourists and Bin Laden will probably die of old age.
And now Republicans are asking for more of the same, Part III.