Another Guantanamo PR disaster

In 2001, Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was captured on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He was held as an enemy combatant and taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The US military charged al-Haj with being a courier for terrorists, a claim he denies. He didn’t face prosecution.
Al-Haj was just released and returned to his home in Sudan [...]

US troop deaths in Pakistan?

Passport posted today on NATO troop commitments in Afghanistan by the numbers. Instead of listing the exact troop numbers, they used a ratio of the members’ population between 20-39/troops. Included in this was the death count:
The Top 5 (troop fatalities per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

Denmark — 0.0099
Canada — 0.0090
Britain — 0.0056 (includes Ministry of [...]

US air strikes in Pakistan on the rise

Looks like the US is getting serious about knocking off al Qaeda along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan:
The United States has stepped up its use of pilotless planes to strike at Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s rugged border area, a measure that in the past drew protests from President Pervez Musharraf but now has his government’s tacit [...]

Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan?

NYT is reporting that the Bush Administration is debating exporting the wild successes of its missions in Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan:
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas [...]