Pakistan outs CIA chief in Islamabad

In a sign of how bad ties are between the two countries, Pakistani media on Saturday once again publicly named the CIA station chief in Islamabad, a breach of both protocol and trust, that is bound to enrage Washington.

A Pakistani TV channel and a newspaper considered mouthpieces of the country's military said the ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha had met CIA station chief Mark Carlton to protest US incursion into Abbottabad to kill al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. CIA station chiefs remain anonymous and unnamed in public although the host government is told.

Earlier, the Obama administration had asked Pakistan to disclose names of its top intelligence operatives to determine whether they had contact with Osama or his agents.

The latest breach indicates that a section of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment is determined to run the CIA out of the country fearing that the ISI's links with terror groups and its sheltering of terrorist leaders will be exposed.

While one must consider the source - the Times of India is not very reliable when disseminating any news about Pakistan - that last part about a rogue section of the ISI wanting the CIA out of the country rings true.

They've been exposed. And the reason we want those names is because we have numerous telephone numbers picked up at OBL's mansion (two numbers were actually sewn into his clothes) that would no doubt find their match in the ranks of the ISI and probably high levels of the Pakistani military. They are caught dead to rights and their only escape is to carry out a pogrom against the CIA.

Zardari is caught between elements of the military not under his control while being held responsible by the US for harboring OBL:

Zardari has been waiting to come to US practically every week for several months now, with Hussain Haqqani, his ambassador in Washington, doing the spadework for the visit. The visit was first slated for March and then pushed to May as ties headed south after the Raymond Davis episode.

Obama meanwhile had promised to visit Pakistan when the White House announced his India trip, in part to assuage Islamabad's wounded pride at being left out. No dates were announced but it was expected sometime later this year. But Pakistans furious reaction to the wide-spread belief that it sheltered Osama has for now wrecked both trips. There is also growing realization in Washington that the military junta fully controls Pakistan and it rather pointless to publicly engage a weak civilian government that cannot deliver on promises.

A blow up is inevitable, but when? We have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan dependent on the Pakistiani supply line to continue fighting and building. We don't have the airlift capability to supply the military in Afghanistan even a quarter of what it needs on a daily basis. That chow line is vital to the war effort and Pakistan has shown in the past that it can cut it off at any time.

For the moment, we have to grit our teeth and soldier on. But I imagine that eventually, Pakistan will rue the day it harbored OBL either through much closer US-India relations (taking their side in the Kashmir dispute for instance) or a total cut off of all aid.

Despite the US having some friends in the ISI and military, the bulk of the armed forces are against us as they have proved once again in sheltering OBL for what appears now to be 7 1/2 years.