McClatchy's: "Taliban & other Pakistan-based groups that are fighting US-led forces have much closer ties to al Qaida now than they did before 9/11.."

McClatchy's/ here

".... White House officials are minimizing warnings about the risks of adopting a limited strategy focused on al Qaida, U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and military officials told McClatchy.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have found that the Taliban and other Pakistan-based groups that are fighting U.S.-led forces have much closer ties to al Qaida now than they did before 9/11, would allow the terrorist network to re-establish bases in Afghanistan and would help Osama bin Laden export his radical brand of Islam to Afghanistan's neighbors and beyond, the officials said.

McClatchy interviewed more than 15 senior and mid-level U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic officials, .... White House officials, they said, have concluded that McChrystal's approach could be doomed by election fraud, corruption and other problems in Afghanistan; by continued Pakistani covert support for the insurgency; by the strains on the Army, Marine Corps and the federal budget; and by a lack of political and public support at home, which they fear could also undermine the president's domestic priorities.... However, the officials said, in their effort to muster domestic support for a more limited counterterrorism strategy that would concentrate on disrupting and dismantling al Qaida, White House officials are neglecting warnings from their own experts about the dangers of a more modest approach.

"McChrystal and Petraeus are ignoring the problems their (counterinsurgency) approach would face in Afghanistan and here at home," said one intelligence official with extensive experience in South Asia and counterterrorism. "We don't have a reliable partner in Afghanistan or Pakistan; doubling the size of the Afghan army is a pipedream, given the corruption and literacy problems; and neither Congress or the American people are likely to give it the money, the troops or the decade or so it would need to work, if it would work. "Now the White House is downplaying the dangers of doing the only thing that they think Congress and the public will support -- a limited war against the guys who hit us on 9/11. The truth is, both approaches have huge problems, and neither one's likely to work."

(Continue/ here)