America goes after terrorists inside Pakistan

In a stunning development, the world decided not to hold off on news making events during the Republican convention. Unconscionable, I know. It seems the United States has decided that taking Pakistan's word that it's doing all it can to combat terrorism and sending them bags of free money to spend on whatever isn't the best or most effective policy. We decided to go after them ourselves.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil, American officials said.

Until now, allied forces in Afghanistan have occasionally carried out airstrikes and artillery attacks in the border region of Pakistan against militants hiding there, and American forces in “hot pursuit” of militants have had some latitude to chase them across the border.

But the commando raid by the American forces signaled what top American officials said could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council.

That's really gonna piss John McCain off. He's spent months deriding Obama's plan to go into the Pakistani/Afghan border to kill the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and who were conducting raids on our soldiers and destabilizing Afghanistan (a country you won't hear talked about at the RNC) as juvenile, reckless, and irresponsible. Of course you'll remember McCain's speech about following bin Laden to the gates of Hell, then calling off the pursuit once he found out those gates were just inside Pakistan.

McCain invests all this time and energy attacking Obama's sane plans to combat terrorism and then Bush has the nerve to deem them OK and do them. What's he more interested in, winning a war or a political campaign? It appears that by accident, Bush chose a war. It probably won't happen again, but I think everyone at home should mark it down on their calendars.