Pakistan Training Their Officers With Anti-American Rhetoric?

Are we actually learning something useful from WikiLeaks? A leaked diplomatic cable claims that Pakistan's National Defense University has badly biased material in their coursework.

"The elite of this crop of colonels and brigadiers are receiving biased NDU* training with no chance to hear alternative views of the U.S.," the Wikileaks cable, which was published in the Dawn newspaper, quoted Patterson as saying.

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors."

Some of the officers believed the CIA was in charge of the U.S. media, the report said.

Anti-Americanism runs high among many of Pakistan's mainly Muslim people but it has deepened after bin Laden's killing in a secret U.S. raid which many Pakistanis see as breach of sovereignty.

Patterson said the United States must target a "lost generation" of military officers who missed training programs in the United States after Washington imposed sanctions against Pakistan in the 1990s for its nuclear program.

The cables also documented the account of a U.S. army officer, Colonel Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU and corroborated the views expressed by Patterson.

"The senior level instructors had misperception about U.S. policies and culture and infused the lectures with these suspicions, while the students share these misconceptions with their superiors despite having children who attended universities in the U.S. or London," the cables quoted Schleicher as saying.

* This is Pakistan's NDU, not the American one.

By: Brant