“Davis has an official business visa, so why argue …. ?” Fauzia Wahab

A US drone strike killed five militants in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border. The strike hit the Dandey Darpa Khel area, about five kilometres from Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district, a known hub for Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.
“The US drone fired three missiles and hit a house used by militants. Five militants have been killed,” A senior security official in Peshawar said. An intelligence official in Miranshah also confirmed the attack and the toll. The Monday attack is the second in three days, …

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has called plans to build a build a $100 million, 13-story community center including the prayer space near the site of the 9/11 terror attack in New York City an “unnecessary provocation.”
Sarah Palin wrote in a tweet, “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts, Pls reject it in interest of healing.”
She also tweeted a plea asking “peaceful New Yorkers” to “pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too …

Pakistan’s strategic assets are completely safe and secure Islamabad does not require and will not allow any foreign assistance.

Hillary Clinton was on a mission to mend fences with the Pakistani public, media and opposition.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered critical questions on US policy in Pakistan while unveiling cash for universities and calling for peace with India.
Hillary Clinton earlier visited a mosque in Lahore on the second day of a visit focused on public diplomacy and strengthening moves towards democracy.
Clinton’s visit to the second largest city in Pakistan, which has been hit by a series of gun, suicide and grenade attacks this year, has been accompanied by draconian security measures a day after a car bomb killed 104 in Peshawar.
Clinton said:
Horrific bombing’ …

The Obama administration’s coordinator of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke said he is hopeful that the November 7, 2009  election will not see a repeat of the widespread fraud that caused a U.N.-backed election investigation to throw out nearly one-third of the votes cast for Karzai in the August 20, 2009 balloting. That pushed Karzai below the 50 percent mark he needed to avoid a runoff.
Holbrooke said:
It is reasonable to hope that there will be less irregularities this time for several reasons. Three, the international community, including the …

NATO defense ministers acknowledged that operation in Afghanistan was not working and agreed that they needed a new approach to seize the initiative from Taliban and al-Qaeda in a recent meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia. NATO defense ministers also backed a plan to shift towards a full-fledged counter-insurgency strategy without elaborating how the new plan will be made to work, or commit troops to the move.
While addressing to reporters, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:
It does not solve the problems in Afghanistan just to hunt down and kill individual terrorists. …

According to CNN, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Monday that he is planning to increase the size of the U.S. troops by up to 22,000 troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and other missions around the world during the next three years.  The new deployment will expand the U.S. troop level from the current 547,000 to a maximum of 569,000 during the next three fiscal years.
The increased level of US troops will help to ease the strain of deployment, as many troops have faced repeated lengthy rotations in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Gates said that tThe …

June 30th 2009 – the day on which occupying combat troops have left the Iraqi cities and handed over the control to Iraqi security forces. However, it is more or less only symbolic as US advsiors will keep on working in Iraq as well as US forces will patrol the cities along with the Iraqi forces.
It is a coincidence that this very day Iraq has auctioned off some of the country’s largest oil fields to companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. Is it not a reminder of the real motives …