Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Mental Confusion

The chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl, an Islamist political party in Pakistan, told the nation's Parliament "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace, they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad.... "

The Long War Journal reports that the Taliban are advanceing on the districts of Swabi, Mardan, and Malakand, and on Mansehra and Haripur. Ominously (emphasis mine),

The Taliban takeover of Haripur would put the Taliban on the doorstep of Islamabad and would also put two major nuclear facilities at risk.

Haripur borders the Margala Hills, a region in the Islamabad Capital Territory. Haripur also borders the Punjab districts of Attock and Rawalpindi.

Attock hosts two major nuclear facilities in Pakistan: the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex and the Kamra (Minhas) Airbase. The Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex host three sites where nuclear weapons and components are stored and assembled and aircraft and missiles are modified for use in nuclear attacks. The nearby Kamra Airbase is thought to host attack aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.


Apparently, this would little concern former Virginian governor Jim Gilmore, who afterward lost badly a Senate race and in his effort to claim the Republican nomination for President in 2008. According to the online edition of the Hampton Roads, Va. newspaper, The Daily Press, Gilmore has blasted Congressional Democrats and President Obama in a fundraising letter, claiming

....Our greatest danger comes from what's happening in Washington, D.C.

Thank you, Barack Obama. And running mate Joe Biden, former DNC head Howard Dean, and the Democratic campaign committees for the House and the Senate. If not for you, Gilmore and his crowd might be running the country. And we could have had another four years of his party: one whose ardent supporters went on and on about "radical Islamism" and "Islamofacism" while the President they supported conducted a war against a secular regime in Iraq, the assignment of which resources undermined the far more important task in Afghanistan. And a regime which subsidized a President- since forced to resign- of Pakistan, who turned around and made deals with Islamist terrorists which only emboldened and strengthened them.

We now have a chief executive who recognizes the importance of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region- and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee says he and his allies are the greatest danger faced by the United States of America. Fortunately, the adults have taken over, and some Republicans will learn to adjust, and catch up with the rest of the country, in time.

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