TIMES OF INDIA– The United States is lining up billions of dollars in new economic and military aid to Pakistan despite reports that Islamabad is using American tax-payer money for deals with the Taliban and accounts of US arms ending up in the hands of the extremists.

Amid an ongoing review of the so-called Af-Pak policy initiated by the Obama administration, Washington, under pressure from influential Senator John Kerry among other lawmakers and lobbyists, is said to be considering a one-time $ 5 billion aid to Pakistan over and above the $ 1.5 billion annual package for ten years currently under review for passage through Congress.

Releasing a report by the think-tank Atlantic Council on Wednesday, Kerry, who is also the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is in a position to pilot the aid package, raised the prospect of a total collapse in Pakistan if it was not helped urgently.

“If we fail, we face a truly frightening prospect: terrorist sanctuary, economic meltdown, and spiraling radicalism, all in a nation with 170 million inhabitants and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons,” he said. “The stakes could not be higher, and [this] report could not be more timely.”

The 27-page report calls for “a total of $4-5 billion above the (Biden)-Kerry-Lugar proposals and beyond the IMF and other loans from the US. and other sources,” for Pakistan. Of this, it recommends, about $3 billion should go to the economic and social sectors directly. About $1 billion of fresh or redirected funds would go to security forces — both military and law enforcement.

US government reports in recent times have detailed how Pakistan has misused billions in aid for a military build-up against India instead of using it for the intended war on terror. Audits have also detailed million of dollars in fraudulent claims by the Pakistani military. Reimbursement to Pakistan have been halted for several minths because of this but are set to resume soon after the Obama administration has given a green signal pending further audits.

Continue reading about the US Pledging Billions to Pakistan.

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© TIMES OF INDIA, 2009

MSNBC– The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.

The new U.S. Embassy also seems as cloaked in secrecy as the ministate in Rome. “We can’t talk about it. Security reasons,” Roberta Rossi, a spokeswoman at the current embassy, said when asked for information about the project.

A British tabloid even told readers the location was being kept secret — news that would surprise Baghdadis who for months have watched the forest of construction cranes at work across the winding Tigris, at the very center of their city and within easy mortar range of anti-U.S. forces in the capital, though fewer explode there these days.

The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report — is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified “Green Zone,” just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein’s, and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.

The Republican Palace, where U.S. Embassy functions are temporarily housed in cubicles among the chandelier-hung rooms, is less than a mile away in the 4-square-mile zone, an enclave of American and Iraqi government offices and lodgings ringed by miles of concrete barriers.

Continue reading about the Giant US Embassy in Iraq.

© 2010 The Associated Press.

CNN– The U.S. military’s first and only study looking into ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda showed no connection between the two, according to a military report released by the Pentagon.

A U.S. soldier in front of a bus hit by a roadside bomb near Nasiriyah, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday.

The report released by the Joint Forces Command five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq said it found no “smoking gun” after reviewing about 600,000 Iraqi documents captured in the invasion and looking at interviews of key Iraqi leadership held by the United States, Pentagon officials said.

The assessment of the al Qaeda connection and the insistence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were two primary elements in the Bush administration’s arguments in favor of going to war with Iraq.

The Pentagon’s report also contradicts then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said in September 2002 that the CIA provided “bulletproof” evidence demonstrating “that there are, in fact, al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Although other groups, like the September 11 commission, have concluded that there was no link between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Pentagon was able to analyze much more information.

The documents cited in the report do reveal that Hussein supported a number of terrorists and terrorist activities inside and outside Iraq.

“The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq,” according to the report. Read excerpts from report (pdf)

Most of the terrorism was aimed at keeping Hussein and his Baath party in power, according to Pentagon officials.

“State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability in the recruiting, training and resourcing of terrorists,” according to the report.

The report cited such examples as training for car bombs and suicide bombings in 1999 and 2000, both of which U.S. and Iraqi forces have struggled to contain since the rise of the insurgency in summer 2003.

Photo by flickr user DBKing

© COPYRIGHT CNN, 2008