Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Something's fishy...

Hmmm... Something doesn't add up. Pakistan is complaining after a US strike killed 11 Pakistani soldiers:
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has condemned an air strike by Afghanistan-based US forces that Islamabad says killed 11 of its troops.

The incident took place inside Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The US military confirmed it had used artillery and air strikes after coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces.

The incident comes as relations between the US and Pakistan militaries have been hit by mounting tensions.

The soldiers' deaths occurred overnight at a border post in the mountainous Gora Prai region in Mohmand, one of Pakistan's tribal areas, across the border from Afghanistan's Kunar province.

Eight Taleban militants
(sic) were also killed in the clashes, a Taleban spokesman said.

...

A spokesman for a pro-Taleban militant group in Pakistan said it had
launched an attack on US and Afghan army troops trying to set up a
border control post.


"We launched an attack on them from several sides and caused serious
harm - and then the US and Nato forces began a series of air strikes,"
said the spokesman, Maulvi Umar.

Now here's what doesn't compute for me: If this is a case of "friendly fire" or plain, old fashioned recklessness, as the Pakistanis would have us believe, then how did eight Taleban terrorists get killed alongside the eleven innocent Pakistanis? In order for the Pakistanis and the Taleban to get killed side by side, they had to have been in close proximity before the shooting started. This, of course, should make us wonder what the Pakistanis were doing while the Taleban terrorists were shooting at the American and Afghan troops. Reloading?