US providing aid to a country where our enemies are: Corker

WASHINGTON: Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Bob Corker believes that the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in Abottabad, has provided the United States with a ‘relationship-changing opportunity’ to reassess its dealings with Pakistan and perhaps Afghanistan.

In an interview published Tuesday, Corker expressed some of his strongest skepticism to date about the direction of the war in Afghanistan.

‘If you travel through Afghanistan, and you talk to our military leaders, they're unbelievably frustrated, because they're fighting a war in a country where our enemies are not’, said Corker. "And on the other hand we're providing aid to a country where our enemies are. To me, and this is what I really pressed hard in this last hearing on, this is where our focus needs to be."

"Our men and women in uniform, I hold them in highest esteem in carrying out their mission, but much of what they're fighting there is just criminality," added Corker.

"I mean, one of the areas I was in, there was a prison nearby, there was about 1500 folks locked up there, and only 80 of them were extremists. The other 1420 were there because of criminality. So much of what our soldiers are fighting there is criminality.’