Lets Threaten to invade a nuclear quasi ally!Follow

So, am I missing something here, or is Obama about to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is ******* insane? I may be a bit of a war hawk when it comes to my oppinions on Pakistan, but even I know better than to believe that invadeing Pakistan would be a good idea, or for that matter that proposing invading a different country right now is not going to help ones political chances.

Also Rupert Murdoch just bought the wall street journal, so this IS the end times anyways.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20070536/

Obama says he might send troops to Pakistan
Democratic hopeful said Musharraf should do more about terrorists

Updated: 55 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Excerpts ahead of speech
The excerpts were provided by the Obama campaign in advance of the speech.

Obama’s speech comes the week after his rivalry with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton erupted into a public fight over their diplomatic intentions.

Obama said he would be willing to meet leaders of rogue states like Cuba, North Korea and Iran without conditions, an idea that Clinton criticized as irresponsible and naive. Obama responded by using the same words to describe Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war and called her “Bush-Cheney lite.”

Thousands of Taliban fighters are based in Pakistan’s vast and jagged mountains, where they can pass into Afghanistan, train for suicide operations and find refuge from local tribesmen. Intelligence experts warn that al-Qaida could be rebuilding here to mount another attack on the United States.

Musharraf has been a key ally of Washington in fighting terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but has faced accusations from some quarters in Pakistan of being too closely tied to America.

The Bush administration has supported Musharraf and stressed the need to cooperate with Pakistan, but lately administration officials have suggested the possibility of military strikes to deal with al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

Destabilizing?
Analysts say an invasion could risk destabilizing Pakistan, breeding more militancy and undermining Musharraf. The Pakistani Foreign Office, protective of its national sovereignty, has warned that U.S. military action would violate international law and be deeply resented.

A military invasion could be risky, given Pakistan’s hostile terrain and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen against uninvited outsiders.

Congress passed legislation Friday that would tie aid from the United States to Islamabad’s efforts to stop al-Qaida and the Taliban from operating in its territory. President Bush has yet to sign it.

Obama’s speech was a condemnation of President Bush’s leadership in the war on terror. He said the focus on Iraq has left Americans in more danger than before Sept. 11, and that Bush has misrepresented the enemy as Iraqis who are fighting a civil war instead of the terrorists responsible for the attacks six years ago.

“He confuses our mission,” Obama said, then he spread responsibility to lawmakers like Clinton who voted for the invasion. “By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Obama said that as commander in chief he would remove troops from Iraq and putting them “on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” He said he would send at least two more brigades to Afghanistan and increase nonmilitary aid to the country by $1 billion.

He also said he would create a three-year, $5 billion program to share intelligence with allies worldwide to take out terrorist networks from Indonesia to Africa.

I suspect that Obama is banking on the general population to know just little enough to think that ANY idea to actaully go after Bin Laden is a good one..as long as it isn't George Bush's.

Or...maybe just trying to get the bloggers away from Hillary's letters???

well that makes things interesting doesnt it? advocating sending troops to "help" the acting gov. is one thing, but to threaten more invasion, that is nuts, we do not have the military force to do that right now. not with all of the military man power cut backs started by Clinton in the late 80s.

the US Military is understaffed as it is and has more then over reached it self in manpower around the world.

Why can't the Democrats put up a viable candidate? Hillary is showing clear signs of schizophrenia and Obama puts more thought into tying his shoes than into foreign policy. Edwards is starting to look good, which is not saying much.

Does anyone disagree with [1] and [2]? [3] is basically irrelevant. I'm no expert, but let's assume [1] and [2] are true for the sake of argument. From that, does [4] follow?

Of course Musharraf is acting - he just doesn't have the control over his nation that, say, the USA does. And the USA has, what, 12 million illegal immigrants? Ya - Musharraf has no where near that kind of control. Especially over the region we're talking about.

Say what? What dimension do you live in man?

Granted Clinton had a few problems in the first part of his first term coughSomalia,Haiticough that led to some morale problems and low numbers for new recruits and reenlistments but he raised pay and reorganized forces that solved that problem right quick, nailing victories in Afghanistan and Serbia. He wasn't a slouch by any means.



Perhaps if the people even believed in the "mission" this wouldn't be a problem. Recruitment goes up in times of peace and in times of just war.

I read that as "replace any government/innocent victims you destroyed".

"So.. that's thirty-seven innocent victims we owe ya. Illegal Mexicans okay?"

The thing with high level terror meetings and Intel gathering, is that you always have a choice. You can decapitate the head, and hope that the rest of the organization will fall apart, or you can leave them intact and use the meeting as a known place to track movements and contacts that the various attendees make from there, hopefully gathering enough data to break the entire ring once and for all. It is a tradeoff, and given that al qaida has a distinct tendancy to come back with new leadership.

Taking out Osama would be a good idea, but only if we knew he was going to be there for sure. Otherwise you just drive potential targets further underground.

If the enemy thinks your intel agents are easy to fool. They may get sloppy.

It's empty rhetoric. There is no one who could be elected who will stop fellating Pakistan. The only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons is pretty much guaranteed blind constant support from the US until they sell or use a nuclear weapon.

I totally agree. They've already had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan who, quite easily, could have brought about the end of the world.

However, replacing Bush with virtually anyone running on either side will improve the situation.

The obvious solution then is for us to give nuclear arms to Algeria so Pakistan won't be the only one.

France is getting around to that. They LOVE fighting those shifty brown devils. You know Legion etrangere is DYING to have a division nuked so they can sing about it.

Nice

/channeling Toutem

See that's why we can't have a black man for president.