U.S. Mulls Arming Pakistani Militias

The Skinny: Secret Military Plan Would Expand American Involvement In Tribal Areas

(CBS)  The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

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The New York Times follows up its scoop over the weekend with another exclusive Pakistan story this morning: The U.S. military wants to arm, train, and pay tribal paramilitary groups in the frontier areas of Pakistan to fight al Qaeda.

Should the new and classified plan go forward, it would likely expand the American military's presence in Pakistan and funnel more American tax dollars directly towards a "separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective," according to the Times. It would also involve paying militias that agreed to fight al Qaeda and foreign extremists.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, that's because it is. The proposal is modeled on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that was hailed as a great success in fighting insurgents there.

The shift in strategy reflects the U.S. military's sneaking suspicion that it put its money on the wrong horse. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has used billions of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, to carry out more aggressive military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the sporadic military campaigns were ineffective at best and often so badly botched they ticked off local residents who were used to Islamabad leaving them alone.

In other circumstances, the U.S. may have endured this bungling for a bit longer, but the last few weeks of upheaval in Pakistan has freaked out U.S. officials so much that they're apparently ready to start micromanaging.

This Is Not Your Paranoid Uncle's Peak Oil Theory

For the last couple decades, evangelists of the peak oil theory were often greeted at cocktail parties with the same patient smiles and barely suppressed eye rolls that confront the 9/11-was-an-inside-jobbers today.

But the Wall Street Journal reports that perhaps those skeptical of the idea that the world will soon (if it hasn't already) use up more than half of its oil ought to wipe those smirks off their faces. Yes, it's true, the peak oil folks have been proven wrong again and again - every time the world sails past another date they've identified for petroleum production Armageddon. But these days, oil executives are embracing a view of the world's oil future that sounds awfully similar to the peak oil theory.

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing the idea that the world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day, the paper reports.

Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil, producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit - which senior industry officials have recently pegged at about 100 million barrels a day - is well short of the global demand projections over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million barrels a day.

The new adherents don't believe that the global oil tank is at the half-empty point. But they do think that a global production ceiling is looming for other reasons: restricted access to oil fields, spiraling costs and increasingly complex oil field geology. This will create a global production plateau, not a peak, they contend, with oil output remaining relatively constant rather than rising or falling.

But that would feel a lot like a shortage to us, who are used to oil production's average of 2.3 percent annual growth rate since 1965. This expanding pool of cheap oil fued the post World War-II global economic expansion.

"Everyone thinks that Saudi Arabia will pull us out of this mess," said Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, a former head of exploration and production at Saudi Arabia's national oil company. "Saudi Arabia is doing all it can. But what it is doing, in the long run, won't be enough."

Wild Pigs Have Taken Over Texas

If you haven't bought your Thanksgiving turkey yet, why not consider a pig instead? The Los Angeles Times reports that several states have been so overrun with the feral versions of the creatures lately that bagging one of your own for the holiday might ultimately save a few tax dollars. But nowhere is the problem so bad as in Texas.

In some ways, it seems like the Times did the story just for the fun of checking in with Joe Paddock, a long-haired Ted Nugent look-alike who bills himself as The Dehoginator. If a band of feral swine is laying waste to someone's land - as more and more of them have been doing in the Lone Star State - he'll gladly don his night vision goggles and go swine-stalking with his AR-10 assault rifle. All he asks is they pay for the bullets.

But the problem is no laughing matter in the Lone Star State. While California and other states struggle to rein in feral swine, nowhere are the pigs more populous than in Texas, home to about 2 million wild hogs. And they're multiplying.

While surly pigs have startled joggers in Dallas, mobs of ravenous porkers are munching crops and tearing up hayfield in the countryside. One state estimate puts the damage at $52 million a year.

And despite the efforts of hog hunters like Paddock, officials seem to agree that the pigs are winning. Federal agriculture officials have resorted to gunning down the pigs from helicopters. State officials have declared open season on them: Hunters can shoots as many as they want, any time.

Why the explosion? Because pigs aren't as dumb as people think, experts say, making them rather tricky to catch. That, and they seem to have very healthy, nearly rabbit-like libidos.

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[downtowner97]

Fan the flames and destabilize the area more, then watch oil prices go up even more. US oil companies will make even larger profits. Who knew the war for oil was going to turn out to be a war to INCREASE the price of oil. More guns? Gandhi would be so sad.

[omega39-2009]

We created a monster (Osama) to help drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, now we''re talking about creating more monsters to go after the first.

[guruknows]

watch shocking videos of Alquida and pakistani military shooting Chinese worker....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYjQpFAGUrQ

[tbweb]

If the U.S. has permission from Pakistan to arm militias the U.S. should be able to use those same permissions to go after and fight suspected terrorist on its own, bomb suspected terrorist hideouts without arming the militias.

[superdem]

Why is the answer always guns and violence ? Got a problem with your neighbors ? Kill ''em all ! That seems to be the U.S. policy all over the world. The only qualm we have is - will it WORK or not ? In the long run, who ever is killed by U.S. supplied arms will have family members who will know where the bullets came from, who we supported, and they will hate us forever. It is not something we can forget about in some political equation. If I knew my family had been killed by Chinese weapons supplied by China to my local political opposition, I would hate my political opposition - AND China forever.

[ozonmojo]

Persons not authorized to speak to the media seem to be plenty in Pakistan.They are all speaking fluently, regularly and with impunity to papers like NYT.This shows the media is doing pretty well in Pakistan despite Musharraf''tough restrictions.

[guruknows]

Shocking video of Pakistani vilager torturing a chinese immigrant ... warning graphic,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y
YjQpFAGUrQ

[sevenveils]

Pigs for Pakistan, what a noble cause.

[klifton2-2009]

The US will sleep with the devil to protect its interests. If we are truly judged by the company we keep, than I rest my case.

[kevboom]

The real U.S. foreign policy is to keep the Arab world in a perpetual state of war, keeping the weapons contractors at home happy, the campaign contributions flowing, and the Islamic factions so busy killing each other they don''t have time to plan American killings. I guess that''s one strategy, but it should be pretty clear why 7/8 of the world hates the United States. Pit faction 1 against faction 2, and when faction 1 gets too strong, arm faction 3 to kill faction 1, and keep faction 4 armed too so faction 2 doesn''t rebound. Protecting America at all costs has become a bloody little game which is all fine and well until you see all the innocents murdered in the crossfire, and don''t be surprised when Americans have to start dodging bullets too. Just a matter of time before one of these groups double crossed by the American government rears its ugly head on domestic soil. The dollar is already in the toilet, and the government continues its endless waste on their fictionalized war. The only terror is the cost of American foreign policy to Americans and the foreign hatred it is breeding to the point of no return.

[oscarez]

"The U.S. military wants to arm, train, and pay tribal paramilitary groups in the frontier areas of Pakistan to fight al Qaeda."

Has the Bush Administration lost it''s cotton picking mind? Heck, lets arm, train, and pay rival gangs in LA and New York to kill drug dealers.

[likeablunchs]

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[likeablunchs]

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