Word: washington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Tropical Storm Danny was bearing down on New England as Boston got ready to lay her favorite son to rest; so President Obama cut his vacation short and flew in Friday night, so that nothing could keep him from Saturday morning's mass for Senator Edward Kennedy. In Washington, busloads of Senators lined up at dawn at the Capitol to proceed to Andrews Air Force base and then fly north. Presidents Clinton, Carter and Bush 43, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen were all expected as well; security was everywhere, the airspace over...
...More recently, Kennedy's snub of Adams at the St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Washington in 2005 and his decision to instead meet the family of Robert McCartney - the father of two allegedly murdered by IRA members in a Belfast bar earlier that year - was highly embarrassing for Sinn Fein. The McCartney murder, and Kennedy's reaction to it, added to the pressure on Sinn Fein to cooperate with police in Northern Ireland - something the party had historically refused to do. Today, Sinn Fein representatives sit on Northern Ireland's Policing Board, and the party routinely calls...
...counterterrorism officials worry that a failure to capitalize on the post-Baitullah confusion within the TTP will allow its new leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, to consolidate his position and reorganize the group. Officials in Washington say special envoy Richard Holbrooke and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal have pressed the Pakistanis to strike while the iron is hot. But after initial promises to launch a ground offensive in South Waziristan, the Pakistanis have backed...
That assessment is shared by some Pakistan experts in Washington, who say the country's military, despite some success against militants in the Swat Valley, simply doesn't have the ability to confront the TTP head-on. A ground operation would leave the Pakistani army "with its nose bloodied," says Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations. Having "come out of Swat looking reasonably good," Pakistan's generals don't want to risk "taking a morale hit." (Read "Are Pakistan's Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves...
...Obama Administration, the Pakistani military's reluctance to take on the TTP doesn't bode well for the pursuit of U.S. interests. Washington would like Islamabad to confront the groups that pose a direct threat to NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan - the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But "it's not clear that the Pakistanis are prepared to pay more than lip service to that," says Riedel...