We will know the end of world is near when Pakistani officials don't tack "We need more money" onto their every tale of woe

"Pakistani officials say they do not have the financial resources to train police or buy the forensic equipment needed to adequately investigate and prosecute terrorism cases."

Awwww...now I think I'm going to cry. Where is my Kleenex box?

Crack open a few bank accounts in Dubai, London and Geneva, you buzzards.

Mr Holbrooke, you're supposed to be working for the USA

Don't worry, Pakistan! I, Richard Holbrooke, will save you!

"Here lizard lizard lizard"

It's only natural for people to see their work as important and for the Type A's among us to attempt to expand their job description. But Richard Holbrooke's Godzilla-sized ego is now a serious problem for the ISAF war effort in Afghanistan, and for Afghans fighting the tyranny of Pakistan's proxy terrorist groups.

I know that General Petraeus has called Mr Holbrooke his 'wing man,' but perhaps they can perform their flying act somewhere less dangerous, like in the middle of Ohio:

Afghans Blast Pakistan Over Insurgent Fight
By Yaroslav Trofimov and Maria Abi-Habib
The Wall Street Journal, October 27

KABUL — Senior Afghan officials pressed the U.S. at a closed-door strategy session to force Pakistan to crack down on insurgents on its territory, saying recent military gains will be short-lived as long as these havens remain across the border.

"If we do not get rid of them, we're just wasting time, lives and money," Afghan national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta told the two-day conference that ended Wednesday, according to some participants. Mr. Spanta's aide confirmed the comments.
[...]
The Kabul meeting, known as the Rehearsal of Concept Drill, was aimed at coordinating the war effort for the coming year.

It convened as coalition and Afghan troops advanced in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar province. The U.S.-led military coalition told the conference that the insurgency in Afghanistan "has lost its momentum" because of recent allied operations, but remains "resilient," according to some participants.

The meeting brought together senior officials from the U.S., Afghanistan and Western nations. It was attended by U.S. special representative Richard Holbrooke, coalition forces commander Gen. David Petraeus and President Barack Obama's special assistant for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute.

American officials agreed with their Afghan counterparts that the insurgents' ability to regroup in Pakistan, especially the tribal area of North Waziristan, poses a serious challenge to the war effort.

The Obama administration has been pressing Islamabad to act there, and has told Pakistan that some funding could be in jeopardy if it doesn't move against the insurgents.

But, at the Kabul session, Mr. Holbrooke pushed back against Mr. Spanta's suggestion for the U.S. to threaten Pakistan with a cutoff in billions of dollars of American aid.

According to a U.S. official present, Mr. Holbrooke said the Pakistani government is focused on dealing with the aftermath of devastating floods there, and that the U.S. expects Islamabad will soon switch its focus to the insurgency. Pakistani officials have said their military is already overstretched, and that an offensive in North Waziristan could lead to a new wave of retaliatory terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities.

"Pakistan needs to be part of the solution, not part of the problem," Mr. Holbrooke said. "We will not achieve peace and stability in Afghanistan until Pakistan plays a positive and contributive role here."
[...]

Pakistan is the problem, you insufferable twit, and you have no business trying to ram Pakistan down Afghan throats.

Holbrooke is mindlessly parroting Pakistan's Prime Minister, who says what he's told to say by Pakistan's military. But Holbrook is not bothering to listen to other opinion in Pakistan on the matter of the Pakistani military's meddling in Afghanistan, and yet he should listen -- or more to the point, the U.S. military and the Obama administration should.

Gilani's remarks disrespect for Afghan sovereignty: Pakistani nationalists
By tullah Kharotai
Pajhwok via e-Ariana
10/14/2010

QUETTA - Some Pakistani nationalist politicians say that Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani's recent remarks about the ongoing peace process in Afghanistan were tantamount to an attack and disrespect for the sovereignty of that country.

In a televised interview on Tuesday, Gilani said without Pakistan's help, the peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban were useless.

He said his country would be part of the process. "Look, nothing can happen without us because we are part of the solution. We are not part of the problem," the prime minister said.

His remarks came after President Hamid Karzai confirmed "unofficial contacts" were in place with the Taliban to bring them back to a normal life.

Wednesday was the first official working day for the long-awaited 70-member high peace council aimed at holding talks with Taliban and other armed opposition groups and bringing them into the national mainstream. However, the Taliban deny Karzai's claim of contacts with them.

Osman Kakar, the leader of the Awami National Party in Pakistan's Balochistan province, told Pajhwok Afghan News that Pakistan and its intelligence agencies had been interfering in Afghanistan's internal issues over the past three decades.

He said Pakistani government officials had no right to intervene into Afghanistan. He warned the country would never realistically work for the betterment of Afghanistan.

Kakar said Gilani's remarks proved the allegations that Pakistan had long been interfering in Afghanistan.

An influential figure, Malik Aman Kasi, believes that Pakistan sees its stability in a destabilised Afghanistan. He said Afghanistan was an independent country and can take any step it sees suitable under its social conditions.

A political analyst, Shamsuddin, says that if Pakistan is given any role in the Afghan-initiated peace process, the country would work to spoil the efforts instead of making it a success.

However, provincial secretary of the Awami National Party in Balochistan, Arbab Zahir Kasi, come up with a different opinion. He said that Pakistan should have been given a role in peace talks with the Taliban because of the country's good relations with the Taliban.

He said Pakistan could play its bit to convince the Taliban to arrive at the negotiating table.

However, he did not rule out Pakistan's interference in Afghanistan and training Taliban on its soil and then sending them to sabotage security in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Maximum Carnage: scouting Washington, DC Metro system for bombing targets, and the planned death toll for 26/11

The 26/11 planners intended to kill 5,000 people, not a few hundred

Even before the 62-hour seige of Mumbai in November 2008 was ended, two boxes containing 8 kg. RDX bombs had been found near the Taj Mahal Hotel & Towers, and two 8.8 kg bombs were later found at Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station. Both the Taj and CST were among the targets for the 10 terrorists' shooting rampage, but the question is why the bombs weren't detonated. One theory is that there was an 11th terrorist, one who was never found, and who was tasked with detonating the bombs.

Reportedly other undetonated bombs were found -- inside the Taj, inside Nariman House, and if I recall correctly inside the Trident hotel -- although I don't know the size and type of the bomb material in those bombs.

Why weren't the bombs detonated? I don't know; all I know is that at some point during the attacks the handlers who were directing the terrorists by cell phone came to suspect that the Indian authorities were monitoring the conversations, and that within minutes of zeroing in the phone exchanges the Indian government was fairly certain about the identity of the terror group that was directing the attacks: the LeT, which had close ties to Pakistan's military and its ISI branch, and that after interrogating the captured terrorist they were certain.

That is why, on day 2 of the siege, India's prime minister asked his counterpart in Pakistan to send the head of the ISI to New Delhi to explain what he knew of the attacks.

This caused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was dispatched to Islamabad, to chirp that she was satisfied with Pakistan's commitment to fighting terrorism: "I found a Pakistani leadership that is very focused and I think very committed for its own reasons."

There has been disagreement about the primary target of the 26/11 terror attacks but the number of casualties -- 173 people killed and at least 308 wounded -- is misleading in light of the fact that the planners intended to massacre at least 5,000 civilians. This means the differences of opinion are moot. The planners intended to inflict maximum carnage, irrespective of the victims' religion, ethnic makeup, social standing, vocation, and nationality.

It is the same for Farooque Ahmed, of Ashburn, Virgina, the Pakistani-American who was caught in a FBI sting to flush out people willing to engage in terrorist attacks on Americans. Ahmed not only scouted locations for bombings on Washington, DC Metro subway stations, he also advised how to inflict maximum carnage:

In July and August, Mr. Ahmed conducted surveillance and recorded videotape of the Arlington Cemetery, Pentagon City and Court House Metro stations in Washington's Virginia suburbs, the indictment says. He also did surveillance of a hotel in Washington, to study security and determine the busiest periods at the locations, the indictment says.

At a meeting in September, prosecutors allege, Mr. Ahmed told the contact an attack could cause the most casualties between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. He suggested placing bombs on trains at the three stations he had cased and proposed using rolling suitcases in simultaneous attacks in 2011, the indictment says. The suburban stations Mr. Ahmed allegedly scouted are often crowded with contractors and military personnel who work in offices affiliated with the nearby Pentagon.
[...]

The trains going through those subway stations are also packed at rush hour with people who do not work at the Pentagon or as defense consultants, and the Arlington Cemetery station sees large numbers of riders who are tourists or Americans paying respects to dead relatives. Given his place of residence there is no way Ahmed did not know that. Again, maximum civilian deaths and maiming, not an attack on defense personnel, was his aim.

A few minutes ago the McNorman blogger sent me a news report that rocket launchers and bombs hidden in Lagos, the huge metropolis and former capital of Nigeria, had been found by authorities. Her covering note: "Don't blow a gasket."

With all due respect and great sympathy for law-abiding Nigerians -- and Indians -- I do not live in Lagos, or Mumbai. I live in Washington, DC, which is ground zero for the next major terrorist attack on the United States. And my commuting route in Northern Virginia was messed up by the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

But just to show McNorman what an even-tempered gal I am, this is the clean version of my remarks for Admiral Mullen, the CIA, FBI, MI6, U.S. and British foreign offices, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Atlantic Council, Council of Foreign Relations, RAND and the rest of the alphabet soup of think tanks and academic institutions on both sides of the Pond that have ever once cranked out apologies for Pakistan's regime:

Ya'll better get your heads out of your asses because if there's a major terrorist attack on the USA on your watch, you will be lucky if the editor of the Mashed Potato Falls, Wyoming gazette agrees to publish your op-eds.

With regard to the British government -- because I am such a sympathetic person, I fully understand that the British Isles, which cover a small land mass, cannot absorb many large-scale terrorist attacks. However, the government needs understand that cutting off your fingers to feed a tiger will not prevent it from making a meal of you.

To make sure we're all on the same page:

Before starting his visits to India, he had taken a new passport under the name David Coleman Headley in place of his previous passport under the name Daood Gilani in order to conceal his Pakistani origin from the Indian consular and immigration authorities.

The FBI would have been expected to share this information with the Indian authorities, but it did not do so. Had the FBI done so, the Indian authorities might have been able to establish the details of his Indian network, arrest and question him and pre-empt the [2008 massacre in Mumbai]. -- B. Raman, October 17, 2010, Headley Case: Indian distrust of FBI will increase