Question: what does the war on terror and the war in Iraq mean to the president? Can he take either seriously?
This report from the Los Angeles Times notes the vast majority of foreign insurgent fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia (nod: The Daily Dish):
About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior [U.S. military] officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.
The Bush family and the Saudis, of course, go way back. Funny, then, why the president doesn’t mention the Saudi foreign fighters in Iraq.
Now on to the Pakistanis. President Bush in 2001 stated this:
You’re either with us or against us
in the fight against terror.
But then we’ve recently learned that since we didn’t want to jeopardize our “relations” with Pakistan and President Musharraf, we in 2005 aborted a military strike to take out top al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. Curious. So the strike could have hurt our relations with this “ally” in the war on terror. If Pakistan is our ally, what good are they doing us? If they aren’t with us in rooting out terrorists, then aren’t they against us? From The New York Times:
The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.
What exactly are we paying them for? And if President Bush cannot take either of these wars seriously, how are the rest of us supposed to? Talk about seriously misguided.