Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA find Osama bin Laden - 33 year sentence

[chessdev]

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/23/11827022-pakistan-jails-doctor-who-helped-cia-find-osama-bin-laden?lite

Updated at 8:18 a.m. ET: PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden was convicted of high treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday.

Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination

Comments

[devil_ad_vocate]

Simple. They aren't our allies. Screw Pakistan.

[underlankers]

Bangladesh might disagree with them not being our allies. So would Russia, for that matter. So definitely also would India.

[hardblue]

It's always been a marriage of convenience at best.

[nairiporter]

Could you un-restrict the post please?

[chessdev]

I'm sorry. I didnt realize that was set - and I just got back to a computer just now.
I've set it to "Everyone"

Again - apologies on that

[nairiporter]

It's no big deal. :-)

[danalwyn]

Our relationship is simple. We pay them money, they give us access to Afghanistan. It gives the US the benefit of having an easy supply route, and lets Pakistan send the more troublesome of their ISI affiliates out into the wilderness with a bunch of American soldiers where they will kill each other off and diminish long-term American influence. Both sides benefit, although on different time scales.

We're not allies. We're business partners. But you don't have to like the people you do business with, a fact that Pakistan is only too keen to remind us of every once in a while.

[underlankers]

Um, we are allies and have been since the Cold War. Have people forgotten things like the US Navy moving a carrier fleet into the Indian Ocean to help our allies carry out a genocidal war against Bengalis?

[danalwyn]

Just because you do something for someone doesn't mean that you're allies. It may mean that one partner, or even both, would like to be allies, but simply because one wishes it to happen doesn't mean that it does.

And the 70s were pretty much a long time ago. In the 70s the US was firm allies with Iran - that doesn't mean we're allies now. We're no longer really allied with China against Russia. Pakistan is not so much an ally these days, regardless of what the official line is. Both of our countries have experienced shifting strategic objectives - and are drifting in different directions. Pakistan opens its supply routes because we pay them - that makes them a business partner. A shared goal would make us allies, and I don't think that we really have that, regardless of what the official line out of Islamabad is.

[underlankers]

The 70s were just the most brutal example. We would not have had anywhere so easy a time giving the USSR its own Vietnam if we were not allies with Zia Ul-Haq, while the GWOT offered a new means to strengthen the alliance. But I get it that Americans have the memory of a goldfish.

[sealwhiskers]

Pakistan is in bed with several partners, always has been. It also has a long history of corruption and military coups, not exactly a stable democracy in other words.
The US should have offered that doctor sanctuary long ago, it's pure negligence IMO that they didn't.