The AP reports this morning:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan investigated reports Tuesday that a senior al-Qaida figure was among six people killed in a suspected U.S. missile strike amid anger that the attack had violated the Islamic nation's sovereignty.
One year ago, on August 1, 2007,in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Barack Obama said the following:
"Let me make this clear," Obama said. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."
There was an immediate outcry. The New York Post headline read: Obama: I'd Invade Ally: Stunning Plan to Fight Qaeda in Pakistan.
On February 10, 2008, President Bush was interviewed on Fox News by Chris Wallace. The interview included this exchange:
WALLACE: Do you think there's a rush to judgment about Barack Obama. Do you think voters know enough about him?
BUSH: I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad.
>Marc Ambinder Blog
Joseph Wilson, acting as a Hillary Clinton surrogate, said:
It was reinforced today by Musharraf's comment that any U.S. bombing of Pakistan would be considered a hostile act. That is precisely how reckless it is to be sitting there saying, yeah, if we have actionable intelligence we'll just go ahead and bomb a sovereign country. The last thing we need to do is to further exacerbate anti-American opinion in a country that has a significant fundamentalist population and has nuclear weapons. So I think that is really born out by what Musharraf said yesterday or today. How delicate international diplomacy is today and how important it is to measure your statements and not to act in a way that can be construed as reckless
Taylor Marsh Column
Today, in the story linked above, the AP reports:
The pre-dawn strike on a border village in the South Waziristan tribal region came hours before Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met with President Bush at the White House.
There is increasing pressure from the West on the four-month-old Pakistan government to act against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds in its frontier region with Afghanistan amid concern that peace deals have given militants more freedom to operate.
The two leaders made no mention of the missile attack when they addressed reporters on the White House lawn. They expressed common resolve to fight terrorism.
But later in an interview with CNN, Gilani said the strike was "certainly" a violation of sovereignty if the U.S. had acted unilaterally. He said he told Bush that both countries should do a better job of sharing intelligence so that Pakistan could fight extremists itself.