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US drone attack kills four in Pakistan
[Dawn] A US drone strike killed four Islamic fascisti in northwestern Pakistain on Friday, the third such attack in 48 hours against Taliban hotbeds in Wazoo near the Afghan border, officials said.

The drone fired two missiles into a vehicle as it drove through Darpa Khel village about four kilometres (two miles) west of Miramshah, the main town in the district of North Waziristan, the Pak security officials told AFP.

"The US drone fired two missiles," one of the officials told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.

"Four Islamic fascisti were killed in the attack, they were all in the vehicle," he added.

The identities of the dead were not clear, but the village is a stronghold for Islamic fascisti fighting against US troops in Afghanistan.

Covert CIA drones are the chief US weapon against Taliban and al Qaeda Islamic fascisti who use Pakistain's lawless tribal areas as launchpads for attacking US troops in Afghanistan and plotting attacks on the West.

A US official in Washington described a commander in the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network who was killed on Thursday as "the most senior Haqqani leader in Pakistain to be taken off the battlefield".

Pak officials reported 10 Islamic fascisti killed in two US drone strikes on Thursday and named the Haqqani commander as Jamil Haqqani, a coordinator for the Afghan Taliban faction in North Waziristan.

The US official said he was known as Jamil and as Janbaz Zadran, accusing him of having "played a central role in helping the Haqqani network attack US and coalition targets in Kabul and southeastern Afghanistan".

Pak officials said the slain commander was not a relative of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Afghan warlord who founded the Taliban faction, but had been close to his son Sirajuddin Haqqani, who now runs the network.

The United States blames the Haqqanis for fuelling the 10-year insurgency in Afghanistan, attacking US-led NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
troops and working to destabilize the Western-backed government of Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...

The US military has accused Pakistain's premier intelligence outfit, the ISI, of having close ties to the network and of being involved in a 19-hour siege of the American embassy in Kabul on September 13.

After that attack, which killed 14 Afghans, Washington significantly stepped up demands on Pakistain to take action against the Haqqani network.

But Pakistain has refused to launch a sweeping ground offensive in North Waziristan, the Haqqanis' leadership base, leaving American response largely limited to US drone strikes.

More than 50 have been reported in Pakistain so far this year including dozens since Navy SEALs killed al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden
... who is no longer with us, and won't be again...
in the garrison city of Abbottabad, close to the capital Islamabad, on May 2.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
has said for the first time that the United States was waging "war" in Pakistain against Death Eaters, referring to the covert CIA drone campaign that Washington refuses to discuss publicly.
Posted by: Fred 2011-10-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=331634