CIA in Pakistan: The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

In another disastrously flawed move, the Bush government delivered a set back to the war on terrorism. As if the United States had not done enough to destabilize already precarious rulers in the Middle East, the CIA botched another attack this week. Pakistanis Condemn U.S. Attack:

Bin Laden's deputy was not killed in an airstrike that claimed the lives of civilians, including women and children, Islamabad says.

The government demanded an explanation Saturday for a U.S. airstrike on a remote village near the Afghan border that Pakistani officials said missed Al Qaeda's second in command but killed a number of civilians, including women and children.

The Pakistani government is already under enough pressure from the Pakistani people. This folly is just one more example of the foolish Bush 'cowboy' diplomacy as beset in Egypt in November, 2005. Iraq War Unintended Consequences: Egypt in Trouble

The consequences may be intended or unintended, but the Bush government has an uncanny knack of making life miserable for every precarious world leader with a nation critically opposed to their government's support of the United States' war on terrorism.

It was the second time this month that Pakistan's Foreign Ministry complained about a U.S. attack on its territory.

On Monday, the Foreign Ministry lodged what it called a strong protest against an attack by U.S. forces across the Afghan border, which killed eight Pakistanis. Witnesses in that case said U.S. forces in vehicles and helicopters crossed into Pakistan to carry out the attack. Pakistani officials said U.S. troops had not crossed the border, and that the casualties were caused by fire from across the border in Afghanistan, where the U.S. maintains a sizable troop presence.

During World War II, the Nazis followed a savage ages-old practice of going into villages fully armed, looking for pockets of resistance.  As a lesson to the villagers and others, they would massacre innocent people, often by the thousands, to prove their point. 

Whether it is done intentionally or unintentionally, the revulsion is the same. And  I doubt that many Pakistanis are going to distinguish between the atrocities of the Nazi government and the good intentions of ours.