In repetitive report on Shahzad, a claim of Adm. Mullen on the phone with Pakistan's army chief

By Elise Labott, CNN
May 10, 2010

This report is repetitive and irrelevant, warranted to appear in a hard news outlet maybe Friday or Saturday. However, it contains a rather spurious claim at the end that Admiral Mullen spoke with Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani on the phone with assurances.

If this is not a fabrication, it addresses a claim I made in a post yesterday that vague pressure upon Pakistan from a global powerhouse like Secretary Clinton is sure to fetch murderous, wholesale results in a place where the army charges out into the tribal areas hunting for retribution for mud on the face of some suits in Islamabad because government affairs aren't going according to plan.

The last paragraph of Elise Labott's story quotes an unidentified source speaking about a top brass phone conversation. Were this bit of information a deliberate leak, we must ask why the U.S. military would want CNN to whisper in the ears of its audience Pakistan isn't being tossed into the cold without dinner to hunt terrorists.

"CNN has learned that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani Army, to discuss the matter. But Mullen called to 'reassure Kayani we are not trying to pressure him as a result of this case,' said a senior U.S. military official. 'Mullen didn't call to say, 'You gotta do more because this Pakistani-American was trained on your territory.'"