United States commandos are prepared to stage raids into Pakistan's loosely governed Tribal Areas to stem mounting Taliban attacks against US troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent Al Qaeda operatives' efforts to map strikes against the US, a report published in The Houston Chronicle said on Wednesday.| Our special forces are pretty much ready for anything, particularly once they get a chance to train and to get a brief on the mission. |
The Bush administration is recalibrating US operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan, that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq, the lawmakers said.
The congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation's meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last Friday to urging additional action against militants in the Tribal Areas. But the congressmen said Pakistani officials had rejected resumption of the joint US-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional US military assistance and intelligence co-operation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the Tribal Areas.
| Thus removing them and making Perv and Gilani the continued strongmen in the Land of the Pure ... |