Gawd wrote:Geez, Seth, you should synchronize your propaganda with your terrorist department:
Pakistan blocks NATO supply route to Afghanistan after raid kills 24
Pakistan called that raid a flagrant violation of its sovereignty.
The Foreign Office equally condemned Saturday's attack.
"Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned in the strongest terms the NATO/ISAF attack on the Pakistani post," ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said in a statement. "On his direction, the matter is being taken (up) by the foreign ministry in the strongest terms with NATO and the U.S."
In a statement released following the incident, U.S. envoy to Pakistan Cameron Munter said that he regretted "the loss of life of any Pakistani servicemen, and pledge that the United States will work closely with Pakistan to investigate this incident."
The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen, said he had offered his condolences to the family of any Pakistani soldiers who "may have been killed or injured" during an "incident" on the border.
Yeah, right. One-sided propaganda. As I suspected, NATO forces were receiving fire from Pakistan at the time the airstrike was ordered, according to the
Wall Street Journal:
NATO and Afghan forces on a nighttime operation Saturday came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts, leaving U.S. relations with Pakistan in tatters, according to Afghan and Western officials' version of events...
Afghan and U.S. officials say their troops are increasingly facing fire from Pakistan's side of the border. Pakistan is angry over the increased incidence of cross-border raids by Afghan and NATO forces.
As U.S. military, Pakistani forces and Afghan officials sought to piece together the incident, three Afghan officials and one Western official said the attack took place in response to fire from the remote Pakistani posts in the Mohmand tribal region, a lawless border area that abuts Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province.
Two Afghan officials working in the border area where the attack took place said Sunday that the joint force was targeting Taliban forces in the area when it received fire from a Pakistan military outpost. That prompted the coalition force to call for an air attack on the Pakistani posts, said an Afghan Border Police official in the area. Pakistani officials were informed of the operation before it took place, he said....
"There was firing coming from the position against Afghan army soldiers who requested support and this is what happened," said a third Afghan official in Kabul, where Gen. Allen met with top government leaders for a special security meeting to discuss the incident. The Afghan official in Kabul said the government believes that the fire came from the Pakistan base—and not from insurgents operating nearby.
That view was bolstered by one Western official who discussed the attack with military officials in Kabul on Sunday.
"They were fired on from a Pakistani army base," the Western official in Kabul said. "It was a defensive action."
A U.S. official in Kabul said insurgents may have been firing into Afghanistan near the Pakistani border outpost Saturday morning, which prompted coalition forces to strike back. He pointed to an incident in September 2010, when a NATO helicopter fired on a Pakistan outpost, killing two soldiers.
"It was a situation where insurgent forces butted right up against a Pakistani border post and used that as a firing position. When we fired back, we hit Pakistani security forces. This is a possibility we're circulating here for Saturday's incident," the official said.
Military officials in Kabul said insurgents in Pakistan have also used empty Pakistan border bases to stage attacks, which may have been the working assumption of the coalition forces who called in the airstrike.
U.S. officials said the units believed they were responding to incoming fire from the Pakistan side of the border.
"They believed they were coming under attack from that side of the border," a senior U.S. official said, although investigators have yet to pinpoint the precise source of fire.
So, either Al Quaeda were bedded right up against the Paki post, and the Pakis ignored this fact and were tacitly allowing this to happen without contacting NATO and firing on the terrorists themselves, which they certainly had to be aware of, since sleeping during a firefight taking place on your perimeter or within a mile or two of it would be gross dereliction of duty on the part of the sentries, or the Pakis themselves were firing on NATO forces (highly likely), hoping their fire would be mistaken for Al Quaeda attacking and hoping that they would be immune from retaliation because they are Pakis.
In any event, it appears that the airstrike was justified because NATO forces were under attack from Pakistan.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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