Is Pakistan an asset in the war on terrorism??

Before reading this article my opinon was already with the YES side because they have nuclear weapons and because they are close (in distance to the countries we are against in the war on terrorism. I didn't really have any knownledge in the topic, though.

At first in the summary (first page), the article talks about how the US and Pakistan have been in a teeter-totter relationship. We weren't friends with them and then we were, and then incidents happened and then we couldn't trust them, and it seemed to me, that we, the US are/were only using them. I think that because they have a nuclear weapons program and because they agreed to help us with ending terrorism. Obviously we would agree because that is what we want, but in previous cases, we also turned our back from them just because they didn't really have or give what we wanted.

I chose the YES side, with Teresita Schaffer because he/she?? gave better reasoning than the NO side. Teresita talked about four major issues in South Asia including: Securingand strengthening peace, controlling and ending terrorism, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and knowhow and developing a concept of regional security that fits the changing face of Asia. In the securing and strengthening peace section, it talked about Pakistan's relationship with India. Pakistan and India both believed that a peace process means good politics. This person also believes that Pakistan is the key to controlling terrorism, which I also believe is true. The US built a new trust with Pakistan after 9/11. There were two opinions we both had agreed on and they were cooperation against terrorism and on the understanding that this was a goal both countries needed to pursue for their own reasons. Then it goes on talking about Pakistan's decision to end its support for the Taliban government in Afghanistand. Then there was the issue that democracy should be restored in Pakistan but that probably wouldn't happen for awhile. Then the article talked about nuclear proliferation and how their nuclear scientist in Pakistan, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan had engaged in a nuclear black market solely on his own, without government authorization. The US remained in peace with Pakistan because they still trusted that Pakistan wasn't going behind their backs on the treaty. The security article really didn't catch my attention as well as the other topics did. This pertained more to China, Japan and Indonesia. The security didn't really give me a whole lot of involvement on where the US stood.

The NO side gave facts that we could have caught on a commerical..LITERALLY! The topics pertaining to Osama bin Laden, and the hunt for him. They didn't do a whole lot of research into their topics. Instead of fighting against Pakistan and the issues that were wrong, they focused on topics such as Osama and how we shouldn't trust Pakistan because that is where all the terrorist are.