Neocon Bill Kristol Expects Bush To Attack Pakistan - Video Inside

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Neocon Bill Kristol expects Bush to attack Pakistan

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Neocon_Bill_Kristol_urges_Bush_to_0712.html

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday July 12, 2007

Fox News on Thursday asked Neoconservative Bill Kristol to comment on the interim progress report on Iraq, which is about to be released and is expected to show an even split between benchmarks which show progress and those which do not.

"They're silly benchmarks, a lot of them," said Kristol. "The military situation is better than anyone expected. ... If Bush can just hang on there and beat back the people in Congress who want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of possible success ... I think we're going to win this war."

A Fox host then cited a new report that "al Qaeda ... is running from Iraq, apparently to Pakistan" and asked "did this report come out on purpose so that we will have the right ... to go after Pakistan now?"

Kristol responded, "I think the president's going to have to take military action there over the next few weeks or months. ... Bush has to disrupt that sanctuary."

"I think, frankly, we won't even tell Musharraf," Kirstol continued. "We'll do what we have to do in Western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, 'Hey, they didn't tell me.'"

The following video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on July 12.

Video At Source

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Musharraf vows war on militants
President Pervez Musharraf says he is determined that extremism and terrorism will be eradicated in Pakistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6896179.stm

7/12/2007

He was speaking in a televised address to the nation after officials said 75 bodies had been found at the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad.

Troops launched a 36 hour attack on the mosque early on Tuesday to flush extremists out of the mosque complex.

For months clerics and students had been defying the authorities in their campaign for Sharia law in the capital.

Students had kidnapped police as well as Islamabad residents they considered to be engaged in un-Islamic activity.

'Madrassa a fortress'
Gen Musharraf praised Pakistan's security forces for freeing the Red Mosque in Islamabad "from the hands of terrorists".

"Unfortunately we have been up against our own people... they had strayed from the right path and become susceptible to terrorism."

"What do we want as a nation want?" President Musharraf asked. "What kind of Islam do these people represent?"

"In the garb of Islamic teaching they have been training for terrorism... they prepared the madrassa as a fortress for war and housed other terrorists in there.

"I will not allow any madrassa to be used for extremism."

Gen Musharraf said those members of the military who died had given their blood for the country.

He insisted that his government had acted with restraint and had acted only when negotiations had broken down.

A short while earlier, officials said the bodies of 19 people, charred beyond recognition, were among the 75 bodies found in the mosque complex, which includes a religious school for women and girls.

An army spokesman said five of the charred bodies were of people killed by a suicide bomber in a locked room.

There are fears women and children may be among the victims but immediate confirmation is impossible.

Ten soldiers were killed in the operation. Officials say one suicide bomber was inside the buildings.

'Any gender, any age'
"We recovered the head of the suicide bomber and his body parts," said army spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad.

"We also found five bodies that were burned beyond recognition."

He said another 13 bodies were found that were also so badly charred they could be "any gender, any age".

Military officials said they have taken photographs, fingerprints and DNA samples from the 75 bodies they say were found at the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid.

Most of the bodies were buried Thursday morning in temporary graves identified with numbers.

An Islamabad city official said at least two children were among 69 bodies buried on Thursday.

The BBC's Barbara Plett says the girls' school, or madrassa, suffered the most damage.

Walls are covered with bullet holes and shattered glass lies everywhere, she says.

The cleric who led the last days of resistance in the mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was buried on Thursday in his home village of Basti Abdullah in Punjab province in front of hundreds of mourners.

Our correspondent says many Pakistanis supported the operation, saying the government had no choice but to confront the Islamic extremists.

But, she adds, the authorities fear a violent reaction from other radicals and the country is on high alert.

Attacks said to be linked to the mosque assault continued on Thursday in Pakistan's volatile north-west, where support for the Taleban is strong.

In the tribal area of North Waziristan near the Afghan border, a suicide bomber killed himself and two government officials in the town of Miran Shah, police said.

Further north in Swat district, at least five people, three of them police, were killed in a suicide car bombing, officials said. At least one of those killed was reported to be the bomber.