If ever there was any doubt that during the past few years, Indian American kids have come to virtually own the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee competition, it was erased with a vengeance on Thursday morning when of the 11 championship finalists, seven or more than 60 percent were Indian Americans, belonging to a minority population that is less than one percent of the total US population.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who just couldn't stop praising Pakistani Army General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , told Congress Thursday that Kayani has purged the so-called 'rogue' elements from the ISI who are in cahoots with the Taliban.
The Al Qaeda network is not located in Afghanistan, but clearly headquartered in Pakistan, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress Thursday, and warned that if the Taliban takes over Afghanistan again, it would mean the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan to plan and plot attacks against the US reminiscent of 9/11.
Saying that the challenges the United States faces in Pakistan are far greater to that in Afghanistan, Senator John F Kerry, the chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, warned that if Pakistan, "a nuclear-armed nation of 170 million people" becomes a failed state, it would pose 'an unimaginable peril to itself, its neighbors and the world.'
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved a legislation that would triple economic assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year, authored by its chairman Congressman Howard Berman, California Democrat, despite being vehemently opposed by the pro-Pakistan lobby and the Obama Administration.
Several US lawmakers pledged to support the Sikh community's efforts to serve in the US armed forces without compromising their religious principles.
A bi-partisan group of some of the most influential US Senators has called on the Sri Lankan government to expeditiously alleviate the suffering of thousands of Tamil refugees and return them to their homes by the end of the year.
"India is one of our most important allies and creating an exchange program between members of the US Congress and Representatives of India's Parliament will only deepen our ties and lead to greater understanding between our countries," McDermott said.
United States Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta says that while the CIA has been scrupulously tracking the whereabouts of Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal, it has no intelligence about where they are dispersed.
Senior diplomatic observers and administration sources have told rediff.com that in the weeks following the formation of the new Indian government, the Obama administration will press for India to resurrect the composite dialogue with Pakistan that lie comatose after the Mumbai terror attacks.
The massive $7.5 billion aid legislation to Pakistan, authored by United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John F Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar, would be approved without any difficulty in the coming weeks. The massive aid to Pakistan will be approved in spite of the serious doubts raised by some members of the committee, including a senior Democrat and a few Republicans, they said.
The Indian elections in no way precluded the United States from working jointly with India to try to alleviate the lot of the affected Tamil civilians caught up in the crossfire between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan troops, the outgoing point man on South Asia for the Obama Administration has said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's New York-based daughter Amrit Singh, who has been one of the fiercest critics of former United States President George W Bush and his administration for its alleged condoning of torture and other abuse of prisoners, on Wednesday turned her guns on President Barack Obama for his decision to fight to block the court-ordered release of photographs of detainee abuse by US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other prisons.
The Barack Obama administration's top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, has admitted that the United States is getting battered by the Taliban in the information war in the Federally Administered Tribal Area and the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan. He warned that the 'success' in the US-led assault on these militant groups would ring hollow if there is no propaganda victory against these extremists."We are losing that war," he said.
Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on Tuesday scrupulously eschewed commenting on what the US can do to urge India to ease its tensions with Pakistan to help alleviate the Pakistani military's 'obsession' with India and hence be a catalyst in promoting President Barack Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy.
Two days after saying that he did not consider India a threat to Pakistan and it was the internal terrorist threat from within that is of concern, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was splitting hairs saying the larger threat from India and the so-called existential internal threat as the US has continued to describe it, were different.
Pakistani's President Asif Ali Zardari, asked on NBC's 'Meet the Press' program where Osama bin Laden was, told the interviewer, "You'll have been there for eight years. (So) You tell me.You lost him in Tora Bora, I didn't, I was in prison."
Less than two weeks after her arrival in Washington, India's Ambassador-designate to the United States, Meera Shankar, became India's ambassador after presenting her credentials at the State Department to Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was obviously so impressed by her meetings with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari that she ventured into the White House briefing room after sitting in on the meetings between President Barack Obama and the two leaders, to express her optimism that a solid alliance had been formed committed to crushing the Taliban and other extremist elements destabilising the region.
Holbrooke declared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, "We do not think that Pakistan is a failed State. We think it's a State under extreme test from the enemies who are also our enemies and who have the same common enemy -- the United States and Pakistan. It just isn't (a failed State). But it is a State under enormous social, political and economic pressure. And India is always a factor."
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