Word: afghanistan
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...military is now spending more on defense, on average, than it did during the Cold War - even after the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are erased. (See pictures of Defense Secretary Robert Gates...
...sure, it would be difficult to hack away at the funds needed to wage the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet military spending today is 41% more than it was in 1998, not even counting the billions earmarked for the wars. The cost of a standing military, after eliminating inflation's impact, has soared to $459,000 per trooper - 78% higher than during President Reagan's defense buildup, 95% higher than in 1989 and three times the Vietnam-era average, according to a recent study by the liberal-leaning Project on Defense Alternatives. (See video of soldiers in Iraq...
...Pakistan for refuge. Meanwhile, the U.S. is being generous with its intelligence. Pakistani military sources say the U.S. has passed on GPS coordinates of the bases used by the Pakistani Taliban - extremist tribesmen who see Islamabad as their enemy No. 1, not the NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan - so that the Pakistani military under General Khan can hammer them with artillery or aircraft strikes. These sources say that several dozen American "trainers" are passing on intelligence on the Pakistani Taliban that was gleaned from the eye-in-the-sky drones...
...repaying with the capture of Baradar and three Afghan Taliban "shadow" governors who were operating out of Pakistan. Mehsud had masterminded a suicide-bombing campaign that hit schools, police stations, bazaars and garrisons across the country, killing hundreds. (On Tuesday, another Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Qadir, ex-governor of Afghanistan's Nangahar province, was reportedly arrested, though neither Pakistan nor the Taliban spokesman would confirm the capture.) (See pictures of the October 2009 attack on a Pakistani university...
Privately, some army officers present a different perspective. They see the Haqqanis as future players in any deal that might be struck between Karzai and the resistance - and believe it is crucial that the Pakistani military remain close to the clan in order to preserve Islamabad's influence in Afghanistan. That is not a result the U.S. wants. The Americans blame the young Haqqani warlord Sirajuddin for the most lethal attacks, many of them by suicide bombers, on NATO forces around Kabul. U.S. intelligence suspects that the Haqqanis are sheltering dozens of al-Qaeda fighters...