BEIJING – Last week Chinese dissident author Yu Jie fled to the United States to avoid what he described as further “inhumane treatment” by the government.

Now Yu, 38, is speaking out about his experience in detention during a sensitive time in China’s recent human rights history: the 2010 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to his friend and fellow dissident, Liu Xiaobo.

Yu is a best-selling author who began producing literary works at age 13 and eventually rose to become vice president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center from 2005-2007. A devout Christian, Yu visited President George W. Bush in 2006 and was acknowledged for his work on behalf of underground Christian and Roman Catholic house church practitioners in China who worship in private out of fear or imprisonment by the authorities.

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Besides religious freedom, Yu has also often publicly criticized the Communist party on other issues and was one of 10 prominent Chinese social activists whom we profiled in 2010 ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize.

During his years of activism, Yu was frequently detained for his writing – most notably, his 2010 book “China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao,” which was published in Hong Kong and took a negative view of the mainland’s prime minister. The book quickly drew the ire of officials and led to his temporary home detention in Beijing.

In October 2010, Yu was placed under house arrest again five days after Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize win was announced. This time, his computer, phone and other communication devices were confiscated.

At a press conference Wednesday in Washington, Yu described the tight security around his house at the time as being “like a dragnet.” He explained: “Four plainclothes policemen watched the entrance to my home 24 hours a day, even pressing a table against the main door and installing six cameras and infrared detectors at the front and back of my house.”

In the weeks and days leading up to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, state security officers worked to quietly roundup social activists and dissidents who could potentially embarrass China. Yu was detained on Dec. 9, 2010, one day before the official Nobel ceremony in Oslo.   

The final moments after Yu was hauled from his home to a waiting police car were brutal, he says.  “Over a dozen plainclothes officers and several cars were waiting there,” Yu recalled at the press conference in D.C. “Immediately, two burly men charged at me, slapping the glasses from my face and covering my head with a black hood, and then forcing me into the back of a car.”

Yu was driven to an undisclosed location, where he says he was stripped naked and made to kneel while officers took turns delivering blows to his head and body and stomping him when he was on the ground.

“They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the face,” said Yu. “They even forced me to slap myself. They would be satisfied only when they heard the slapping sound, and laughed madly.”

All the while, police hurled verbal abuse at Yu and continually called him a traitor for writing articles attacking the Communist Party. Yu also recalled police officers taking photos of him naked and periodically threatening to post them on the Internet to humiliate him.

When Yu finally collapsed unconscious, police took him to a hospital and were said to have told hospital staff that he was epileptic. He was eventually released after he promised state security that he would not talk to foreign journalists about his detention.

Government officials have not publicly commented on Yu’s account of events.

An ‘exile at heart’
Yu and his wife and young son were allowed to leave China last week, bringing to an end his near decade-long ban from publishing.

In a telephone interview with Reuters after his arrival last Friday, Yu did not say whether he formally sought asylum in the United States for himself or his family. He had visited the U.S. many times before and said authorities had warned him to keep quiet ahead of this latest trip.  

For their part, the U.S. State Department denied having an active role in bringing Yu here. In answer to a question about Yu’s arrival in country during a regular press briefing last week, the State Department responded: “We are aware of reports of Mr. Yu’s arrival to the United States. We have not had any contact with Chinese officials about his reported arrival.”

Still, if Yu had been warned by the Chinese about being outspoken on his arrival here, he seems to have ignored them. During his prepared remarks in Washington. Yu looked back on what he sees as a deteriorating environment of free speech in China: 

“During the Jiang Zemin era [1989-2002], I had been able to publish some of my works in China – there was still a certain space for free speech in China. After Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took power in 2004, I was totally blocked. Since that time, no media in mainland China would print a single word by me, and articles by others which mentioned my name would be deleted. Though I was physically in China, I became an “exile at heart” and a “non-existent person” in the public space.”

The Chinese government’s refusal to publish anything about Yu Jie in state publications has manifested itself in the seeming indifference to his release by the general public. On Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, there were posts about Yu, underscoring again the effectiveness of China’s propaganda and censoring mechanisms.

Censoring discussion of Yu Jie’s next work though may prove to be more problematic: Yu is soon planning to release a biography about Liu Xiaobo that has been authorized by Liu’s wife.

BEIJING – Turns out the Year of the Dragon may be inauspicious for China-U.S. relations.

Beijing has just released a New Year’s commemorative stamp featuring a ferocious-looking dragon last week, stirring up talk that China was sending an intimidating message to the world. Meantime, the United States has proclaimed a new, more robust, military strategy in Asia. 

Are the two countries headed for a dangerous confrontation? Is the U.S. beginning to pursue a Cold War-style containment policy toward China?  What is China’s rightful place on the world stage?

As Beijing prepares for events celebrating the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s landmark trip to China in 1972 that opened up official diplomacy between the two countries, analysts say the superpowers are entering a new chapter in their uneasy relationship.

Questions about growing competition between the two super-powers are unnerving officials, as well as energizing opinion-makers, and bringing to the fore pessimistic theories about a possible great-power conflict.

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‘Don't blame the mirror designer’
The “fiery debate” sparked by the release of the official Year of the Dragon stamp was emblematic of China’s self-image issues as it  continues to grow as a world power. 

The image shows the fang-baring face of the mythical ancestor of the Chinese, the most revered of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac. Critics say the image sends a menacing message at a time of growing international unease over China’s rise.

 “When I saw the design of the dragon stamp in a newspaper, I was almost scared to death,” said Zhang Yihe, a noted writer, said on her micro blog on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service.

 “It’s truly intimidating and powerful,” echoed another post. The “fierce stare and wide-open mouth” conveys an image that is “frightening and aggressive,” said another commentator. 

The stamp’s graphic artist Chen Shaohua defended his work, however, writing in his blog that the image is reflective of China’s newly -found “national confidence” as a major world power.

While past dragon stamps showed the creature in more gracious, gentler poses in keeping with the early years of China’s opening up to the word, he said that this year’s image of a “powerful, intimidating, fierce and confident dragon” befits China’s “prestige and self-confidence.”

Yue Luping, another micro-blogger, likened the dragon stamp to a mirror. “We have destroyed the old mirror of ourselves as poor old dragon.  After a hundred years, we see our image as powerful, menacing… Don’t blame the mirror designer.  You may be scared of what you see in the new mirror, but don’t forget, what you see is our very own image,” he wrote.

“A hundred years ago,” wrote Yue Luping, a respected art critic and blogger, “revolution shattered the mirror of our collective consciousness as Chinese. After a hundred years, Chen Shaohua's Year of the Dragon stamp has let us view our image once again: powerful, menacing, and not even 'auspicious looking' anymore; we can't reproach the mirror designer, it's a new mirror, you may be scared by what you see in the mirror but don't forget, that is our own image today.”

America’s shifting strategy
However, more baffling for the Chinese as they grapple with their global standing is the new defense strategy that U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled recently. It features a leaner military, but one with a greater focus on the Asia-Pacific and China’s growing power.

“The United States is deploying forces around the Asia-Pacific in advance in order to contain China’s rise,” warned Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, writing on the official newspaper of China’s People’s Liberation Army, in the strongest Chinese reaction so far to America’s new strategy.

“Who can believe that you are not aiming this at China, that this is not the return of a Cold War mentality?” he asked on the Chinese-language Liberation Daily.

“Obama said the country will ‘continue to get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems,’ it would do better to do away with its entire Cold War mentality,” declared the state-run China Daily. The newspaper added that both countries will lose if the U.S. regards the region “as a wrestling ring in which to contain emerging powers like China.”

China’s official response has been more subdued, with the foreign ministry merely defending China’s policy as “defensive” and calling U.S. accusations as “groundless and untrustworthy."

But in a recent briefing with a select group of Western and Chinese media that included NBC News, China’s chief diplomat in charge of U.S. relations shared his misgivings about the U.S. moves. 

“Peace and prosperity are still what many countries want, not military alliances,” said Cui Tiankai, Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister.

“I find it hard to understand why the U.S., which has the strongest military in the world, feels insecure about other countries,” said Cui. “I suggest the U.S. should do more to make other countries feel less worried about the U.S., so that other countries will feel safe and the U.S. will feel safe as well,” he added.

Doctrine of “offensive realism”
But to Professor John J. Mearsheimer, America’s strategic shift and the intensifying security competition in Asia all seem inevitable. 

Mearsheimer, a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, is an international relations theorist who authored the pioneering book, “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,” which propounds the theory of “offensive realism." The doctrine regards all great powers as perpetually on the offensive, constantly seeking security by maximizing power. He broadly anticipated America’s response to China’s growing challenge. 

In an interview with NBC News, Mearsheimer shared his views on the growing power play in Asia. 

“The Obama administration is definitely worried about China’s growing power as well as its aggressive rhetoric over the past two years, and that is why it is beginning to build a balancing coalition to contain China,” he said.

“My realist theory tells me that China will try to dominate the Asia-Pacific region as it grows more powerful and that the United States and China’s neighbors will try to contain Chinese power. It is too soon to say for sure whether my theory will be proved correct, but recent developments suggest that my theory will have a lot to say about Asia’s future,” he added.

Reflecting on the upcoming 40-year anniversary of Nixon’s landmark visit to China in 1972 that changed U.S.-China, Mearsheimer pointed out that U.S-China relations are based on realpolitik.

“Relations between the United States and China are largely determined by the balance of power in Asia, not by principles or ideals,” he said. “Beijing and Washington were driven together 40 years ago because they faced a common threat – the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union is now gone and the Asian balance of power has changed drastically.”

For Mearsheimer, China’s new 21^st century role in the world, has changed the power dynamic.

“Today, China is the most powerful state in the region and if it continues its rapid growth over the next 30 years, it will be by far the most powerful country in Asia.  I believe that it will try to dominate the region the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere.  However, Washington will go to great lengths to prevent that outcome, which means that China and America are destined to become rivals if China continues its rise,” he observed.

“There is little that Chinese or American leaders can do to avoid strategic competition, which carries with it the real possibility of armed conflict between those two great powers,” he warned.

Agreement and disagreement
“I totally agree with Professor John Mearsheimer,” said Dr. Yan Xuetong, China’s top international security expert and dean of the Institute of Contemporary International Relations at Tsinghua University.  “As the gap of comprehensive power between the U.S. and China narrows, the tension between the two will intensify and there will be more conflict rather than less,” he told NBC News. 

“But I disagree that this competition will get out of control and escalate into war,” he said. “Both sides have nuclear weapons which will deter them from going to war. I have great confidence in nuclear weapons, which have the important political function of preventing war between China and the United States.”

Professor Yan considers the recent developments as validation of his argument against the danger of “superficial friendship” between America and China. “I think that the ‘superficial friendship’ will turn into ‘superficial enmity’ this year,” he predicted.

“We are not partners but we need to carefully manage the competition to prevent it from escalating into a major confrontation,” he said.

“If both sides fail to admit the competitive relationship and instead consider it as a partnership, then that, for me, will be very dangerous,” he warned.

Researcher Ting Zhao contributed to this report.

BEIJING – Wenzy Duan dreams about becoming a delegate to the United Nations.

“I know this [ambition] is pretty high,” said the 17-year old Beijing native.  “But I think I can give it a shot.” 

To prepare, Duan wants to study international relations at an American college – someplace like the University of Washington. “I hear [it] is good at social science," she said.

The University of Washington is one of approximately 10 U.S. universities Duan plans to apply to in the coming year with the help of an education consultant she hired last summer.

“I know that the scores is not the only thing that the university will consider whether you can get in or not,” said the high school senior.

Duan is not alone.  Today, China sends more of its students to America than any other country. During the 2010-11 academic year, 157,588 Chinese students were studying in the U.S. – an increase of 23 percent from the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education. 

The growing market of Chinese students wanting to go to the U.S. has created various cottage industries in China and the U.S. –  among them are education consultants who help students navigate the maze of college applications and "brokers" representing American universities who seek student candidates paying full tuition. But it's also fueled anxiety among American students and their parents about increased competition from abroad.

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Education consultants: the main cottage industry
“When [Chinese students] decide to come to the U.S. and study in the U.S. school, they have no idea,” said Steven Ma, president of ThinkTank Learning, the consulting group with which Duan is working.  "What do colleges in the U.S. look for anyway?  What do they want?  What type of students they want?  And that’s where we come in.”

ThinkTank Learning, based in Santa Clara, Calif., offers tutoring and college counseling.  Most of the students contracting its services have been Asian-American, but Ma said increasingly his firm began fielding calls from mainland Chinese families wanting their advice. 

Eventually ThinkTank Learning opened a branch in Shenzhen in 2009 and then in Beijing a year later.  It charges anywhere from $17,000 to almost $40,000 for tailored consultation packages lasting six to 12 months, dispensing advice on choosing the right schools, writing essays, or preparing for interviews.  

“They’ll just tell you when you need to get something done by what deadline and how do you prepare your application to the school’s standards,” said Julia Yin, Duan’s mother, a petroleum engineer who hails from Hunan province.  “Basically, everything is DIY [do it yourself.]"

Go West, Young Man (and Woman)
China sent its first student to an American college in 1850: A native of Guangdong Province named Yung Wing earned his degree from Yale University, paving the way for thousands more over the following century.

The flow of students from China to America dried up in the 1950s when the establishment of the People’s Republic of China gave way to tumult and isolation, and did not re-start until 1974 1978.

From then until just a few years ago, "It was almost all graduate students, most of them funded by the host universities through research assistantships or teaching assistantships," said Peggy Blumenthal, senior counselor to the president at the Institute of International Education (IIE).

Now, Chinese undergraduates drive the growth, particularly in the past two years.  At the start of the 2006-07 academic year, 9,955 Chinese undergrads were enrolled in U.S. schools. The following year, that figure jumped to 16,450.  By the 2010-11 academic year, 56,976 undergraduates made up a third of all Chinese students living in the U.S.

“What you’re seeing is the growth of the middle class of China who can really afford to send their kids to the U.S.,” said Blumenthal.  “The Chinese undergrads are all coming virtually self-funded.”

The fact that so many students pay their own way has not gone unnoticed.

"Foreign students spend about $21 billion a year in the U.S. in tuition and living expenses for them and their families,” said Charles Bennett, Minister-Counselor for Consular Affairs at the U.S. embassy in Beijing – where Ambassador Gary Locke has made among his top priorities the expansion of visa processing capacity in China.

“That’s a very large sum of money for U.S. academic institutions,” continued Bennett, especially as so many face shrinking endowments or reduced state funding.

The Chinese comprise at least 21 percent of all international students newly enrolled in American schools, which means that they and their families contribute roughly $4 billion to the American economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Edging out American students in America?
Recent reports, however, have suggested mainland Chinese students and their ability to pay full tuition are costing American students placement in American colleges. A bankrupt state school system in California – one of the most popular destinations for Chinese students – has meant that its well-regarded schools are seeing record enrollments from out-of-state and international students. 

For the 2010-11 academic year, California welcomed the most international students – 96,535. And for the tenth year in a row the University of Southern California was the leading host U.S. institution for overseas students, enrolling 8,615, according to the IIE.

But the IIE argues adding mainland Chinese students is helpful for diversity.  “Most Americans will not study abroad. On the other hand, their careers will be global,” observed Blumenthal.  “They need to learn how to interact with professionals from other countries, and many of them will be from China.  There are very few industries or business not affected by China.”

Moreover, at the graduate level, Chinese students aren’t competing against American students for a seat in the classroom, according to Blumenthal.  “There still aren’t enough Americans in the pipeline wanting to get graduate training in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” she said.

But detractors note other challenges have surfaced as a result of so many Chinese students going to U.S. schools.  Among them is whether some applicants from the mainland are cheating their way into admissions by falsifying their academic records or achievements. 

One consulting company in Beijing that works U.S. universities, Zinch China, says 90 percent of Chinese undergraduates submit false recommendation letters for their U.S. college applications and that 70 percent enlist someone else to write their essays.

The dishonesty works the other way, too.  A growing number of “education brokers,” who work on behalf of U.S. institutions to solicit Chinese students, have led to misrepresentations and predatory fees, according to a revealing report from Bloomberg News. Some agents promise admission to top-flight schools, charge exorbitant fees, in some instances including a portion of scholarship funds, and students can end up at schools that are a far cry from the "dream schools" they hope to attend.  

Can China produce innovative thinkers?
The desire among Chinese students to seek an American college degree has grown stronger over the years owing to a number of factors.

Above everything else, there is the fierce competition for gaining admissions to a preeminent Chinese university. The selection process is decided solely by the gaokao, an annual national college entrance examination that lasts nine grueling hours over two to three days.

This past year, more than 9 million students across China took the gaokao.  And believe it or not, that number has been declining since 2008 as more students opt out of the gaokao and sign up for exams like the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), both of which are generally prerequisites for applying to any U.S. college or university.

A lively debate is growing about whether China’s education system can produce innovative thinkers who can enable the country to lead – not just catch up with or follow in the footsteps of industrialized economies like the U.S. or Britain. Such concerns triggered a widespread discussion online when Steve Jobs died earlier this year.

“The students here are not as robotic as Americans think,” said Gene Hwang, a 27-year-old Taiwanese-American, who has been working in China for ThinkTank Learning for almost two years.  “But they are held back by some of the systems in schools, which emphasize rote memorization….  We work with them on [developing] critical thinking.”

Broadening those horizons
“When I get into America, I can get [a liberal] education [that] could open my mind,” said Zhang Yuqi, a soft-spoken but intense 17-year-old high school senior.

He’s been working with a ThinkTank Learning consultant for three months, reviewing which schools to apply to and working on his essays.  A possible math major, he has his eye on Carnegie-Mellon and Emory where he hopes to find a climate that differs from his elite Beijing high school, which he says has too many “planned activities.”

Duan wants to study in the U.S., because “they accept all different kinds of different ideas.  You can dream about anything,” she said.  “In America, I can experience more…maybe all kinds of things I will never experience in China.”

For high school junior Dolly Luo, it's simply about getting the best education.  “The U.S. has the most well-developed college education," said the 16-year-old Beijing native who loves Harry Potter and dreams about attending an Ivy League college.

Her parents have similar faith in the U.S. college experience.

“She will have more opportunities, and it will broaden her horizons,” said William Luo.  In fact, Dolly’s father had harbored his own U.S. scholarly ambitions, but he didn’t have the financial resources to enable him to pursue his graduate studies in America.

“I hope when Dolly goes abroad and she learns American values or Western values that she can absorb the Western education – the good parts: the culture, the education,” continued Luo.  “In China, we would need that.” 

American gunships launch a strike across the Afghan border into Pakistan, hitting a Pakistani check post and killing 11 soldiers. U.S. officials say the attack was in response to insurgent firing. Pakistan calls the attacks "unprovoked and cowardly."  That was in June of 2008.

Three Pakistani soldiers are killed at their border post as a result of an American helicopter strike. U.S. officials say they were targeting insurgents who were launching mortar rounds into Afghanistan. Pakistan protests by blocking the supply route for U.S. and NATO convoys. That was in September of 2010.

The details of exactly what happened during Saturday's early morning hours in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency, on the border with Afghanistan, are still unclear, but the story line is familiar.

This time, U.S. officials say they took fire from across the border in Pakistan and called in air support, reportedly checking with their Pakistani counterparts before authorizing a strike. Pakistani officials say they were never consulted, that their pleas to NATO to stop the attack once it had started were ignored, and responded by again shutting down the supply routes.

One thing that is certainly different this time is the death toll: 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in this latest incident, including two officers, making it the deadliest incident of its kind since Pakistan and the U.S. declared an alliance in 2001. The higher death toll, according to analysts, means more pressure on Pakistan's military and civilian leaders to react strongly.

There is no debating that U.S.-Pakistan relations have taken a beating over the last year. But have they hit rock bottom? Or is this just the new "all-time low?"

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Last straw in a tough year
The condemnation from Pakistan over the latest attack has been swift and unrelenting.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's Army Chief, called the attack "unacceptable." Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said it was "an assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan," and pledged to conduct a complete review of all diplomatic, political, military and intelligence cooperation with the U.S. In addition Pakistan announced it would boycott next month's Bonn Conference on Afghanistan.

Amid the rising anger, Pakistan's military released a set of images Wednesday which it says shows the remote border posts attacked by NATO helicopters and fighter jets on Saturday.

"They're taking a tougher line than they have before," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based defense analyst. "They're staking out a strong position to demonstrate within a domestic context that they can protect Pakistan's interests."

That, according to Rizvi, is even more important to the government and military establishments now, in a year when they've both lost credibility following a series of humiliating actions by the U.S.

Back in March, U.S. pressure to release CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot and killed two Pakistanis, forced Pakistan to take the domestically unpopular action of negotiating his exit in the face of intense public anger.

Then came the unilateral, American operation in May to capture and kill Osama Bin Laden within miles of Pakistan's premier military academy which forced Islamabad to choose between confessing involvement or admitting incompetence.

Former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen's September accusation that Pakistan's largest intelligence agency uses the militant Haqqani network as a "veritable arm" to launch attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan left the relationship even further strained, and Pakistan's Army brass feeling "betrayed," according to military sources.

This latest incident, according to multiple Pakistani officials, has forced the country to rethink its engagement with the U.S. "We cannot be just a subject of abuse and attack," said one military official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Both of these entities – the government and military – have been discredited," said Rizvi. "Within Pakistan they are discredited because of U.S. actions across their borders. Outside, they are discredited because the U.S. is saying they are helping the Taliban."

Public relations problem
But according to some, the government and military's credibility problem may be partly their own making.

"The problem is that there's not really a source of information that's geared to inform," said Dr. Christine Fair, who focuses on South Asian political and military affairs at Georgetown University. "They're geared to massage perceptions of events, and the Pakistani government love taking their citizens for a ride on the victim bus."

A growing sense of anti-Americanism in Pakistan over the last decade has been fanned by a dominant, conservative Islamic, public discourse, said Rizvi – a sentiment the establishment has tapped into from time to time to pursue its own national interests. That's how a discussion about a potential U.S. aid package devolves into talk-show debates about America respecting Pakistan's sovereignty. Or the discovery of al Qaida's leader hiding in Pakistan turns into national outrage that the borders were breached by the U.S.

"In Pakistan, there are only two entities that publicly support good relations with the U.S.: One is the military, the second is the federal government," said Rizvi. "You don't find any other political party or major society group openly supporting the ‘War on Terror’ or relations with the U.S."

What about the billions in U.S. aid?
One question many Americans ask is: “Why do Pakistanis hate us so much if we give them so much money? “
Despite the fact that billions of dollars in U.S. aid and reimbursements have gone to Pakistan in the last decade, anti-U.S. feelings within the population are running higher than ever.

Opposition leader Imran Khan has capitalized on those frustrations, channeling them into a groundswell of political support in recent months and a 68 percent approval rating, according to one recent poll. Separately, a poll conducted exclusively in Pakistan's tribal regions last year found almost 80 percent opposed the “war on terror.” The Pew Research Center's 2010 Global Attitudes project showed a mere 17 percent of all Pakistanis polled held a favorable view of the U.S. and nearly 60 percent described the U.S. as an enemy.
 
American money has been used to fund everything from education projects to agricultural development, but money has been slow to hit the ground and has not been used in ways that directly affect most Pakistanis.

According to the Congressional Research Service, of the $20.7 billion allocated for Pakistan between FY2002 and FY2012, only $6.5 billion was "economic-related." The vast majority, $14.1 billion, was "security-related," and the lion's share of that, $8.8 billion, was military reimbursement for operations supporting the US/NATO mission across the border in Afghanistan, known as "Coalition Support Funds," or CSF.

Rizvi said that most Pakistanis fail to benefit from U.S.-funded projects, and very little is known among the everyday citizenry about just how American money is being used on the ground – a problem, he says, that is one of "public relations."

"Over the last few years, a lot of funding has gone to state educational facilities, to improve facilities, enable professors to go to other countries for conferences, but very few people know that its American money," said Rizvi. "The [Pakistani] government doesn't tell them it’s American money, they create the impression that the government is making this possible for them."

That same "public relations" strategy has meant that the establishment has failed to mobilize domestic support for the war on terror, despite the fact that 30,000 Pakistanis have died in terror-related incidents since 2001. Losses in that war – accidental or deliberate – are therefore met with greater public anger, by a population that believes its military is fighting an American war.

Treading lightly
In the days since the latest tragic border clash, there has been a flurry of high-level efforts made by U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials to reach out to their Pakistani counterparts.

The U.S. and NATO are using careful language. NATO called the incident "tragic and unintended." A joint statement by the U.S. Departments of Defense and State expressed "deepest condolences" and "sympathies" from Secretaries Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton. Officials have pledged to fully investigate what actually transpired on the ground. 

Following the incidents in 2008 and 2010, the U.S. and Pakistan found enough common ground to continue working together. The strong language being used and decisions being taken by Pakistani officials suggest it won’t be as easy this time around.

Prime Minister Gilani has already made clear that "business as usual will not be there." But U.S. officials and analysts express confidence that, with enough time and enough concessions, the two sides will ultimately be forced to find a way forward once again.

Pakistan relies on U.S. money and international support to bolster its economy, said Rizvi, and the U.S. relies on Pakistan's cooperation to stabilize Afghanistan.

"They will both realize that they need each other. They will have to tolerate each other," he said.

That may come at a price. Some believe the U.S. will have to take steps to pacify elements that have supported it in the past – issuing a public apology, or agreeing to not publicly rebuke Pakistan any longer, among other possibilities.

Despite ongoing investigations, Georgetown’s Fair believes both sides' dependence on one another means the focus will be on moving forward, not definitively determining the facts.

"There is no answer to this that's going to be helpful," says Fair. "I don't believe we're ever going to get to the bottom of what actually happened."

See a Photo Blog: Pakistan releases first images of border posts attacked by NATO

EDINBURG, Texas – While flying an afternoon patrol along the twists and turns of the Rio Grande, Lt. Johnny Prince, a veteran pilot for the Texas Department of Public Safety, spotted something suspicious: "Look here, we got a raft, a raft right here." 

Below him, in the middle of the river which separates Mexico from the United States was a group of men frantically paddling back to the southern riverbank, their attempt to reach the American side thwarted by the helicopter patrol.

Prince said he suspected the men were a team of drug cartel scouts who were planning to search the U.S. side of the river to make sure there were no law enforcement officers nearby.  If they determined the area was clear, he explained, they would then signal others to sneak a load of narcotics across the river in a raft.

Mike Avila, the helicopter's tactical flight officer, said that this was happening near an area nicknamed "Smugglers' Alley," because of all the illicit activity here.  Well-worn trails and a narrowing of the river have made this area a favorite for Mexican drug traffickers.

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‘That car's loaded to the gills’
Earlier that same day, Prince and Avila found themselves flying inland in hot pursuit of two vehicles –a car and a truck –loaded with Mexican marijuana.  As the vehicles sped through city streets on the American side of the river, Avila trained the helicopter’s high-powered camera on the fleeing smugglers and Prince called out their locations by radio to pursuing troopers on the ground.

One of the drivers sped along the wrong side of the road, then he raced through an intersection, almost striking two cars with his pickup truck.  "Oh no, oh no," groaned Prince.  Avila described another close call as the driver raced through a school zone before crashing into a building: "He nearly struck two school buses."

In both cases, the drivers – a man and a woman – were apprehended and troopers seized loads of marijuana from both their vehicles. Even from the sky, the pilots could see that one of the cars was carrying a lot of drug bundles.  "That car's loaded to the gills," said Prince. 

Increased aggression along a ‘porous’ border
For the helicopter teams, chasing smugglers along the Rio Grande in South Texas is virtually a daily occurrence. Pilots say they've seen the Mexican traffickers pushing larger amounts of illicit drugs into the United States over the last few years and have watched them become more menacing toward law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens.

"I've been working along the border for 14 years and in those 14 years I've seen the level of aggression increase exponentially.  The sheer volume of narcotics that's being pumped into our border has risen," said Capt. Stacy Holland, of the Texas Department of Public Safety Aircraft Section.

It's not unusual, Holland said, for smugglers to take only a couple of minutes to move more than a ton of marijuana across the river, up the U.S. side of the riverbank and into a vehicle which then heads north. "Our border is very open, our border is very porous," he said.

The pilots said they are convinced traffickers are much more likely now than they were a few years ago to confront U.S. law enforcement officials.  "We have video of them carrying AK-47's and side arms during these operations and they are not afraid to use them," said Holland. 

While flying in his helicopter, Prince has more than once been eye to eye with smugglers on the ground upset with his presence above.  "I've seen guns pointed at me, long guns.  I've seen rocks thrown at us.  One of the things they do is use sling shots with ball bearings in them," he said.  "A ball bearing with a good slingshot can do damage to this helicopter and that's been done."

Another serious concern is for the safety of Texas troopers and U.S. Border Patrol agents who have to tangle with the traffickers on the ground.  A particularly dangerous scenario involves agents coming upon a large group of smugglers loading a car with illegal drugs on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. 

"Usually there's only one or two officers that first arrive at the particular vehicle on the river and they are encountering 15 or 20 cartel members," said Prince.  "On the other side, you will see another 10 to 15 cartel members, and if you see them armed they are going to be trying to cover the guys on the U.S. side."

Splashdowns
A highly unusual technique used by Mexican smugglers to elude capture by American authorities involves them driving trucks loaded with drugs into the waters of the Rio Grande.  It happens after Border Patrol agents or Texas troopers spot a drug-laden vehicle on the U.S. side of the river and give chase. 

If the smugglers can't elude their pursuers – either by speeding up or by throwing spikes into the road to flatten the tires of the officers behind they – they will then head back to the same spot along the river where traffickers brought the drugs ashore after floating them across from Mexico.

"If the loads get compromised, they will drive around in the United States, in Texas here, until they get their recovery teams set up on the river, to return the drugs back to Mexico," said Prince. 

The Texas Department of Public Safety has shot numerous helicopter videos of Mexican smugglers paddling over to the American side of the river to await the arrival of the truck racing toward them.  When the truck reaches the riverbank, it keeps going – right into the water. 

"Bam! All units, we have a splashdown, a splashdown in the river," a pilot on one of the videos can be heard transmitting on the radio. 

Before the truck sinks, the driver climbs out through the window and the recovery teams move quickly to save as much of the drug load as possible, throwing the tightly-wrapped bales into rafts. 

"Ok, we've got rafts in the river, a bunch of people on the U.S. side; that thing is loaded," said a pilot watching from above in one video.  "Suspects are in the water, trying to unload the vehicle," said another pilot hovering over a different scene.

As soon as the rafts are filled with off-loaded drugs, the smugglers paddle back to the Mexican side of the river where they are safe from arrest by American authorities.  Sometimes, the traffickers are so brazen they will make obscene hand gestures toward U.S. agents watching from across the river, or from above in helicopters.

The agents' only recourse at that moment is to notify Mexican authorities and hope they arrive in time to apprehend the smugglers.  Or, they can hope to catch the loads of drugs next time, when inevitably they are floated back across the Rio Grande during another smuggling attempt – sometimes on the very same day the drugs are recovered after a splashdown.

No end in sight
The pilots who routinely fly along the Rio Grande said they see nothing that would suggest there is any let up in the amount of smuggling along the river.  In fact, they predict increased violence on U.S. soil.

"You get a lot more home invasions, a lot of crook on crook crimes, a lot of kidnappings, the cartels coming over here maybe trying to collect money and then retreating back over to Mexico," said Holland. 

Texas newspapers have reported recently on cartel shoot-outs in Houston and McAllen, the wounding of a deputy, the arrests of alleged cartel leaders in the Rio Grande Valley and the seizure of cartel property in the U.S.—along with the almost daily news of major drug seizures.

Statements by the Obama Administration and by some local officials that the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever are derided by many of the pilots.

"Our citizens in our border towns are caught in the crossfire, and I mean that in the most literal sense sometimes," said Holland.  "It's important that our citizens, not only in the state (of Texas), but in the United States are aware of how porous our border is and what the threats are, and could be."

More coverage from Mark Potter: Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear

See more of Mark Potter's reporting on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams Tuesday evening.

A U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing after coming under electronic attack from North Korea, Agence France Press reported Friday.

AFP, which reported that the jamming occurred in March during a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise, attributed the information to an unidentified aide to opposition lawmaker Ahn Kyu-Baek. The aide said the incident was disclosed in a report that Seoul's Defense Ministry submitted Thursday to of Parliament's Defense Committee.

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According to the aide, the U.S. aircraft was forced to land about 45 minutes after takeoff when jamming signals from the North Korean cities of Haeju and Kaesong disrupted its global positioning system (GPS) as it was taking part in the annual exercisel, Key Resolve, AFP said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the incident or comment from the Pentagon.

Stephen Colbert said it sounded like a “Carnival cruise ship.”
 
Jon Stewart likened it to the name of a bad “Yes” album.

And shortly after the first missiles were launched Saturday comedian Andy Borowitz asked, via Twitter, “Am I the only one who thinks Odyssey Dawn sounds like a stripper name?”

In the Pentagon, Operation Odyssey Dawn is the name of the U.S. military engagement in Libya.

The task of creating such names falls to the military command leading the initiative. In the case of Libya, that’s the United States Africa Command, one of the nine Unified Combatant Commands, and best known as AFRICOM.

Spokesman Eric Elliot laughed when he was reached by phone Tuesday in Stuttgart, Germany, where AFRICOM is based, and said the command had gotten a lot of questions about the name of the operation. He explained to there is nothing significant about the name at all and that it is actually meant to be completely random.  

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“The Joint Staff actually has a naming convention in place for naming exercises and operations. These are used for most of the day-to-day things we may be doing,” he said. “Each military command is given a series of letters that they can use for the first word of a name of an operation...The goal is to have a two-word nickname that is unclassified that can be used in an unclassified setting to describe something that is classified.”

Elliot explained that the naming convention is based on a series of letters assigned to different branches of the military.

“AFRICOM has been assigned, for the first word [that] the first two letters have to be between JS and JZ, NS and NZ, and OA and OF. So ‘Odyssey’ falls into the OA and OF category,” Elliot explained.
 
“So what they did was, they took the list, and they had done something with Js and Ns and so they went to O. They marked off all the words that had been used before and they chose ‘Odyssey.’” Once they have the first word, they can use anything for the second word. “They basically sit around and brainstorm something that sounds good with it,” Elliot said.

He added that, of course, there are certain criteria, “They can’t use anything that may have a trademark or a copyright, they can’t use anything that may be offensive, or has the potential to be misrepresented, and it can’t be something that would be overly aggressive.”

From there, the recommendation has to go through the chain of command at AFRICOM and gets the final stamp of approval at the Pentagon.

Not meant to convey the ‘Dawn of an Odyssey’
What about the irony that the term ‘Odyssey’ suggests a long saga, like Odysseus’ 10-year journey, the opposite of the message President Barack Obama is trying to convey about the mission?

Elliot said the name was meant to be “completely random. The goal is that if I go down the street in New York and say ‘Odyssey Dawn’ that it would not give any indication of what it is or where it is.” 

He did admit that the terminology has created some confusion. He said he’s gotten several calls from French journalists because when the words are translated, they get flip-flopped and become the “Dawn of an Odyssey” – exactly the opposite of the short, concise, precision military mission advocated by the United States. 

What do the folks at AFRICOM HQ who came up with the name think of all the jokes?

“Honestly I think they would be pretty flattered,” said Elliot. “They do a lot of these and most of them are small operations or small exercises – things that really don’t have much national or international limelight. I didn’t realize they are making fun of it on late night TV; I’ll have to tell the guys down the hall. We’ve all been overseas for so long…”

Related link from Parameters in 1995: The Art of Naming Operations