Osama bin Laden is dead

[smc]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Odds are that the Pakistani military did know Bin Laden was living right next to their equivalent of West Point and allowed him to live there in secrecy. The military in Pakistan is much more independent than in the US and is more sympathetic to Al Qaeda than the US. Our billions may have gone to the government of Pakistan. But if the government presses too hard on the military to go after Al Qaeda then they will simply sieze control of the country.

The Taliban attacked recruits leaving a paramilitary training center. If Pakistan's military is helping Al Qaeda, then the Taliban is helping the US.

What I have bolded above may well be the most ridiculous application of the old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" that I have ever read on this site, and there has been some ridiculousness of epic proportions posted here in the past.

The Pakistani military is, by all less-than-facile analyses, is not a monolith. Many of its officers were trained in the West, just like officers in the Egyptian armed forces, and thus often have somewhat dual value systems. The analyses by most of the foreign policy institutes in Washington suggest that the rank-and-file soldiers in the Pakistani military are more likely to have Taliban/Al Qaeda sympathies than officers, although there is nothing absolute about that. Most important is to draw a clear distinction between the Pakistani military and the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency. It is with the latter that the bigger problem for U.S. interests lies.