NYT Reporter: We've Been Fighting the Wrong Enemy. The Right Enemy is Pakistan.

This isn't much of a surprise to anyone paying attention, except to the extent a member of the media elite is willing to admit what the non-media-elite have known for a decade.

Gall said she first had the realization that Pakistan was fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan “very soon” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I went to Quetta and found Taliban resting up there and regrouping,” she said. “They had assistance, some of them talked about being forced and threatened and told to go in and fight the Americans … and when you're there, on the ground, seeing every bombing, the suicide bombing had started, the insurgency that grew, and you investigate where it's coming from, it kept leading back to Pakistan.”

Gall said that Pakistan’s leaders, and especially former President Pervez Musharraf, were “very clever” and tricked the United States into believing that Pakistan was an ally.

“I think the politicians, not all of them, but the diplomats … it took ages for them to understand that actually the persuasion wasn't working; the engagement wasn't bringing them on board; they were actually double dealing,” she said. “And now diplomats will tell you very plainly, ‘Yes, Musharraf was double dealing.’”

She makes the not-at-all-controversial claim that the ISI knew where bin Ladin was and was in fact hiding him, and are currently performing the same service for Al Zawahiri.

posted by Ace at 01:15 PM

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