big bada boom.
Much worse than outing Plame.
Drones based in Pakistan
The Predator planes that launch missile strikes against militants are based in Pakistan, the senator says. That suggests a much deeper relationship with the U.S. than Islamabad would like to admit.
By Greg Miller
A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.
The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.
At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise at Pakistani opposition to the ongoing campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan’s northwestern border.
“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said.
The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.
Ya think?
The CIA declined to comment, but former U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, confirmed that Feinstein’s account was accurate.
Ka-ching
Philip J. LaVelle, a spokesman for Feinstein, said her comment was based solely on previous news reports that Predators were operated from bases near Islamabad.
Probably not news reports, but classified intelligence she was privvy to
“We strongly object to Sen. Feinstein’s remarks being characterized as anything other than a reference” to an article that appeared last March in the Washington Post, LaVelle said. Feinstein did not refer to newspaper accounts during the hearing.
LaVelle is some douche mouthpiece for the senator, what do you expect him to say?
Many counter-terrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft take off from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan and are remotely piloted from locations in the United States.
By pimply faced cowards in air-conditioned rooms
Experts said the disclosure could create political problems for the government in Islamabad, which is considered relatively weak.
Ya think?
The attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, in part because of the high number of civilian casualties inflicted in dozens of strikes.
...
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said Feinstein’s comments put Pakistan’s government on the spot.
Ya think?
“If accurate, what this says is that Pakistani involvement, or at least acquiescence, has been much more extensive than has previously been known,” he said. “It puts the Pakistani government in a far more difficult position [in terms of] its credibility with its own people. Unfortunately it also has the potential to threaten Pakistani-American relations.”
As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein is privy to classified details of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. The CIA does not publicly acknowledge a campaign against Pakistan-based extremists using remotely piloted planes, making Feinstein’s comment all the more unusual.
Feinstein’s disclosure came during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair on the nation’s security threats. Blair did not respond directly to Feinstein’s remark, except to say that Pakistan was “sorting out” its cooperation with the United States.
Pakistani officials have long denied that they have even granted the U.S. permission to fly the Predator planes over Pakistani territory, let alone to operate the aircraft from within the country.
We don't need you're stinkin' permission, we pwn you
The civilian leadership that took over from an unpopular former general, Pervez Musharraf, last year, has gone to significant lengths to distance itself from the Predator strikes.
Ie, they are lying to their own people, and working for the US government
The Pakistani government regularly lodges diplomatic protests [yawn] against the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty [what sovereignty do these little brown people think they have?], and officials said the subject was raised with Richard C. Holbrooke, a newly appointed U.S. envoy to the region, who completed his first visit to the country on Thursday. [Surrounded by huge numbers of troops to keep him alive]
But one former CIA official familiar with the Predator operations said Pakistan’s government secretly approves of the flights because of the growing militant threat inside the country.
Feinstein prefaced her comment about the Predator basing Thursday by noting that Holbrooke “ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator strikes in the FATA areas,” a reference to what Pakistan calls its Federally Administered Tribal Area along the border with Afghanistan.
Despite public anger, many Pakistanis believe the civilian leadership has continued Musharraf’s policy of giving the United States tacit permission to carry out the strikes.
Pwned Pakistan
