The NYT had meetings with them before the story was printed.
This whole war is a waste of American lives, and we should get
out of there ASAP. Nuke their poppy fields, and go home.

The NYT had meetings with them before the story was printed.
This whole war is a waste of American lives, and we should get
out of there ASAP. Nuke their poppy fields, and go home.

This is the sort of fact-free analysis I came to expect from the NYT under Pinch.

It’s been known for decades about the extremist infiltration of the ISI. Previous governments hoped to co-opt the radicals, but wanted to keep them out of the Army, where the real power was for most of Pakistan’s history. The ISI was the answer because their main concern was India, and from a government policy point of view their extremism wasn’t a problem in that regard. And their islamist street cred actually helped forge cooperation with the Taliban and other Afghan Pushtun rebels fighting the Soviets.

But it was never true they had “taken over” the ISI – the Army would never have permitted it, although there were rogue units operating outside their control for a long time, and some still able to. But the extra funding we’ve been giving the Pakistanis since 9/11 has been going to gradually identify and isolate or remove these elements and compared to the situation we began with a lot of progress has been made.

Now, certainly if the Taliban has heat-seeking missiles they probably were procured through these rogue ISI contacts. But the leaks reveal a grand total of ONE chopper taken down – either the missiles aren’t up to date, the Taliban are terrible shots, they don’t have very many of them, or all of the above.

The true villains here are the leakers and the publisher of the leaks. Contemporaneous communiques from an ongoing war could endanger our troops in ways we cannot imagine. This is a serious security breach which must be addressed immediately and with the full force of the law.

This is the sort of fact-free analysis I came to expect from the NYT under Pinch.

It’s been known for decades about the extremist infiltration of the ISI. Previous governments hoped to co-opt the radicals, but wanted to keep them out of the Army, where the real power was for most of Pakistan’s history. The ISI was the answer because their main concern was India, and from a government policy point of view their extremism wasn’t a problem in that regard. And their islamist street cred actually helped forge cooperation with the Taliban and other Afghan Pushtun rebels fighting the Soviets.

But it was never true they had “taken over” the ISI – the Army would never have permitted it, although there were rogue units operating outside their control for a long time, and some still able to. But the extra funding we’ve been giving the Pakistanis since 9/11 has been going to gradually identify and isolate or remove these elements and compared to the situation we began with a lot of progress has been made.

Now, certainly if the Taliban has heat-seeking missiles they probably were procured through these rogue ISI contacts. But the leaks reveal a grand total of ONE chopper taken down – either the missiles aren’t up to date, the Taliban are terrible shots, they don’t have very many of them, or all of the above.

The true villains here are the leakers and the publisher of the leaks. Contemporaneous communiques from an ongoing war could endanger our troops in ways we cannot imagine. This is a serious security breach which must be addressed immediately and with the full force of the law.