YOU HAVE TO LOVE THE NOTION THAT HE'S GOING TO BE TOUGHER ON PAKISTAN...:

2 U.S. Airstrikes Offer a Concrete Sign of Obama's Pakistan Policy (R. Jeffrey Smith, Candace Rondeaux and Joby Warrick, 1/23/09, Washington Post)

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

The shaky Pakistani government of Asif Ali Zardari has expressed hopes for warm relations with Obama, but members of Obama's new national security team have already telegraphed their intention to make firmer demands of Islamabad than the Bush administration, and to back up those demands with a threatened curtailment of the plentiful military aid that has been at the heart of U.S.-Pakistani ties for the past three decades.

The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency. A Pakistani security official said in Islamabad that the strikes appeared to have killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly even "a high-value target" such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official.

...as evidenced buy his pursuing W's policy.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at January 24, 2009 10:40 AM