Newshoggers Archive: A Pretense At Pakistani Accountability

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Pretense At Pakistani Accountability

By Steve Hynd

Elements of the Kerry-Lugar Bill on aid to Pakistan upset that nation's military because they seemed to be metrics for making sure the money was used to serve American interests in the region: being used for counter-terrorism and reconstruction instead of weapons to face India or to line the Pakistani elite's own pockets. Skeptics noted that every line of those metrics contained a waiver and was unenforceable. Now Kerry's admitted flat out that none will be applied.

In a hastily arranged meeting, Kerry promised to give Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi a congressional report clarifying that Pakistan faced no US conditions to receive 7.5 billion dollars in non-military aid over five years.

Kerry is a key author of the plan, which would build schools, roads and democratic institutions in hopes of thwarting the appeal of Islamic extremists in the violence-gripped nuclear power.

But Pakistan's powerful military has led a nationalist backlash, charging that the package would violate sovereignty by insisting that the nation fight militants and curb nuclear proliferation.

"There is nothing in this bill that impinges on Pakistani sovereignty -- period, end of issue. And we have no intention of doing so," Kerry told a joint news conference with Qureshi.

...Kerry denied that Pakistan needed to meet any conditions for the aid, saying the burden was instead on the US executive branch to ensure the money is well spent.

So that's $7.5 billion of taxpayers dollars thrown down a money hole. Zardari and Kayani will be chuckling all the way to the bank.

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Pretense At Pakistani Accountability

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