Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.............. American officials have rarely uncovered definitive evidence of direct ISI involvement in a major attack. But in July 2008, the C.I.A.’s deputy director, Stephen R. Kappes, confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that the ISI helped plan the deadly suicide bombing of India’s Embassy in Kabul. From the current trove, one report shows that Polish intelligence warned of a complex attack against the Indian Embassy a week before that bombing, though the attackers and their methods differed. The ISI was not named in the report warning of the attack. Another, dated August 2008, identifies a colonel in the ISI plotting with a Taliban official to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. The report says there was no information about how or when this would be carried out. The account could not be verified. General Linked to Militants Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, a time when Pakistani spies and the C.I.A. joined forces to run guns and money to Afghan militias who were battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. After the fighting stopped, he maintained his contacts with the former mujahedeen, who would eventually transform themselves into the Taliban. And more than two decades later, it appears that General Gul is still at work. The documents indicate that he has worked tirelessly to reactivate his old networks, employing familiar allies like Jaluluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose networks of thousands of fighters are responsible for waves of violence in Afghanistan. General Gul is mentioned so many times in the reports, if they are to be believed, that it seems unlikely that Pakistan’s current military and intelligence officials could not know of at least some of his wide-ranging activities. For example, one intelligence report describes him meeting with a group of militants in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, in January 2009. There, he met with three senior Afghan insurgent commanders and three “older†Arab men, presumably representatives of Al Qaeda, who the report suggests were important “because they had a large security contingent with them.†The gathering was designed to hatch a plan to avenge the death of “Zamarai,†the nom de guerre of Osama al-Kini, who had been killed days earlier by a C.I.A. drone attack. Mr. Kini had directed Qaeda operations in Pakistan and had spearheaded some of the group’s most devastating attacks. ...................... US has Pakistan as a friend. Israel - Turkey. http://www.cnbc.com/id/38406867/
Yes, the above is a report that is based on the thousands of classified CIA documents leaked by WikiLeaks, and shows how Pakistan has been playing a double game with the US - taking billions of Dollars in aid from the country to supposedly fight Taliban and Alqaeda while secretly supporting those groups to fight the US!! A more detailed article has been published in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html
There is an update to this story in the WSJ: Pakistan Fight Stalls for U.S. The summary is this: The U.S. has given up on Pakistan.
I think the Islamists rule Pakistan and have found a better way to fight US. Just pretend they are our friends, get money and use it for personal benefits plus to help the Talebans. The west must start idealogical compaign to let the muslim world know there is a better way of living. There better ideas that talebens and islamists can offer. Like respecting the rights of each person for example. Giving equal rights to all.
It appears that what Osama bin Laden is really afraid of isn't the advanced technological weapons of the civilized world, but the cultural invasion of the civilized world into the Islamic world. He felt that he had to act to prevent American values and culture from wiping out Islam like sunlight wipes out darkness. I think he was/is a bit more worried than he should have been. People show a remarkable resistance to learning. Most humans are happy to be born and die without ever living.
Look, it's like throwing a boulder into the mud and getting the face muddied in the bargain. There are a few things that hardly change by the application of external force (Sorry Sir Isac Newton, your first law has a limitation when it comes to politics). Look, y0ou can't straighten a doggy's tail by putting it in an iron pipe, right? It springs back to its original mindset (oops! tail set) no sooner than you remove the pipe.
Still though, ST12 is right, we do have to find a way to help our fellow humans escape from Islam. Irreversible and unstoppable technological advancement is making this planet a much smaller and tighter neighborhood. In the distant past, we could ignore the crazies killing each other off in faraway lands. By Jefferson's time, we had to deploy the Marines to protect commercial shipping from them. Today, they can visit the U.S. as "students" with trivial security precautions. Tomorrow, their own universities will be able to create nuclear and biological weapons of terrifying capabilities -- cheaply and easily. Within a few hundred years, it will be impossible for free men and Muslims to live together on this planet. This will lead to inevitable and horrifically bloody conflict. Technology will be a major determinant in success, and free societies create technology at a far more rapid pace than totalitarian societies. However, if the conflict is delayed long enough, the totalitarian societies will obtain enough technology to destroy the free societies (and possibly all life on Earth) by copying scientific advanced made by the free societies. Before this inevitable conflict, it seems reasonable to try to recruit as many of "the best and the brightest" minds who currently live in Islamic societies away from those societies. Good minds, and the good genes behind them, are the most rare and valuable treasures on Earth. To date, I have not seen a well formulated campaign to recruit Muslims to modern societies. Apostates of Islam and Faith Freedom are organizations run by recovering Muslims who are attempting to convince their brothers to free themselves. Where modern civilizations are failing is really in presenting freedom in a positive light. I believe that this is largely due to the leftist domination of our mass media. Their long romantic affair with totalitarian socialism has left them at odds with freedom and with the societies which have nurtured their existence. This is something modern civilizations are going to have to fix if we hope to continue to exist. We have to believe in ourselves before we can convince the Muslims to believe in us.