We all know that the CIA and the US warmongers are devoid of all morality. The stupidity of the wars and the killing involved are ample evidence for that. So this is not all that surprising. What is a wee bit shocking is how little the US cares about its moral image or lack thereof and how comfortable it seems to be with a reputation around the world more like that of the Nazis than that of the US of old. Most Americans seem to have lost any sense of moral shame or concern about how others see them. Rather like the Nazis, I would say.

"Everyone in the world knows how much health-care matters. Seriously, even evil terrorist masterminds know it's important to vaccinate their kids."

I guess that basically negates and exonerates them from all other human welfare liabilities they may have been a party to, right? We are all righteous in our own minds, including in the mind of the author in this article. The world is a complex place of potentially questionable decisions made as a means to an end, but let's not oversimplify this operation. There was a greater good in this operation, one of catharsis. We live in a world where symbols and emotions matter too.

Hmmmm--outrage from people who think it's OK to cut off people's hands, advocate "honor killing", behead "non-believers" or shoot at foreign troops from inside a mosque.

I was pretty outraged when passenger planes full of innocent people were flown into our skyscrapers and the Pentagon. Where was the outrage from the Arab world on that fateful day?

I don't sense that this was a "fake" vaccine program. They gave the real vaccines to children that needed it. Nothing fake about that. Would those children have gotten the vaccines w/o this program? No.

I'm not happy about the alterior motives, but giving real vaccines to children that need them is a good thing.

I think the more interesting issue is that we tend to think of lack of vaccinations as something that afflicts the poor in poor & rich countries.

This program could only have had any hope of working if RICH kids in poor countries would NOT otherwise get their vaccines. Think about that.

Well if this is really true and we cannot be 100% sure yet the US will have to face the music. Morally however if the US had continued the medical program and done all the injections is there a problem? I do not think there is really as no harm done to innocent people (in fact quite a lot of good). Yes of course you should not go around doing intelligence missions in foriegn countries but if that country is housing your No 1 enemy whilst claiming not to what choice do you have? No choice.

Should have finished medical program though.

Pakistan is hostile to western civilization and to the US in particular. I personally do not care about helping Pakistani civilians, though I would care very much about hurting them. These children were not harmed in any way, in fact they were given some small protection against Hep B that they would not have had otherwise. This seems like a clever if rather awkward attempt to locate Bin Laden.

This Public Health sabotage is not surprising. After all, so-called “Defense” is about inflicting Public unhealth, Public antihealth.

The needs, tactics and goals of peaceful people and those of warmongers are antithetical and mutually exclusive without exception. This historic antinomy has been much more widespread, persistent and powerful that the trivial ones between Left and Right, religious and secular, corporate-enslaved and “developing,” etc., etc. We keep jabbering about this or that conflict of the latter sort without a hope of solving it, since we refuse to put our finger on the underlying conflict that cuts invisibly at right angles across those secondary ones.

The underlying conflict has always been between conscience-driven peace lovers (usually marginalized despite their absolute logic and overwhelming numbers) and sociopathic killing experts (almost always imperial-robed despite their chaos thinking and trivial real strength, terror-based). That primal conflict has cut across every artificial divide of nation, ideology, class, race, religion: you are free to name your favorite and waste your time on it.

Rousseau and Robespierre were wrong. Washington and Bolivar were wrong. Marx and Lenin were wrong. Wrong all the post-colonial revolutionaries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Look and their results: al that revolutionary dialectic, struggle and sacrifice for nothing.

Every peace-driven revolution in world history has been coopted from within and/or defeated from without by sociopathic weapons experts and twisted back onto the path of weapon development. Human civilization has undergone five thousand years of Darwinian evolution for deadlier and deadlier weapon states. This is why we can kill the entire world population ten times over within a week or two, and simultaneously cannot feed and care adequately for the poorest third of the world population or sustainably for the other two-thirds. Get a clue.

Draw what conclusions and solutions you will. Pick you side of this conflict and make your stand. Good luck.

Cynical in a very stupid way; is all I can say to this article. Instead of praising the Elite team who risked their life to kill the deadliest terrorist leader of the past half century, you keep pointing fingers at the westerners who pay their tax to keep their land and hopefully other's lands safe. Comparing Health care in Pakistan and that of in the United States, is like comparing dust with Silicon Chips.

This article focuses on fictional health care that "Would have" been ideal, if the attack on the compound didnt take place.. How naive is that!

You seem to be supporting people who hate america and the free world, and blood thirsty criminals, who suppress and brainwash people by saying that the "People have beaten up medical workers because of the attack" ... That's because of lack of logical thinking and education in them. Who would not do the same if they have been indoctrinated from Childhood about a barbaric cult and a book written 1300 years ago?

I respect Foreign Policy magazine. Please refrain from hiring authors like this because this article seems to be like an embarrassment to the magazine itself..

Me thinks, Marine Sniper would have a better understanding of vaccination if he recalls what his forbears did to the Red Indians. Please leave Muslims alone. By the way where did your ancestors come from to defile this beautiful land. Where they red Indians?

How could they possibly have believed they would catch bin Laden with this program--if you're the world's most wanted person, you don't send your kids to a public vaccination program. You hire a private doctor to administer the vaccines. Although why would the kids need the vaccines if they never left the compound? The idiocy of this operation is beyond belief...and now the former director of the CIA is our Defense Secretary!

Remove the garbage comments? They just clog up the page.

For some reason ALANNA SHAIKH failed to mention the most outrageous examples of using medical staff for military purposes. Both Hamas and Hizbolah are routinely using the Red Crescent ambulances to move troops and equipment on the battle in order to avoid being targeted. Is this omission just an oversight? I doubt it!

If the need for medical care provides an incentive for evil people to stop being evil, that's a good thing.

“A shot in the Back “ by ALANNA SHAIKH is a good proof for all decent people in this world, how far USA would go to infringe the sovereignty of other countries, in this case Pakistan.

Even more shocking is the stupid and ultra-nationalistic knee jerk reaction from many readers of this blog. I did not know that Americans who read FP have such a low level reasoning.

To me and millions of enraged Pakistanis, the whole CIA operation to kill Osama – even if one believes the USA version – smells fishy, but to cheat innocent people in Abbottabad with fake vaccination program goes beyond all civilized manner. Granted that Osama was a nasty person and his organization have killed 3000 Americans, but it is time to remember that he also is guilty of killing far more Muslims in many countries. USA is no better than Osama because USA has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, in many Muslim countries and other developing areas.

Is it then fair that USA has open ended license to kill all over the world and no international court accuses it for crimes against humanity and do not prosecute its leaders? No wonder, west is not trusted and even disliked by the rest of the planet.
Kind regards

Give me a break!!

Remember how many innocent lives were lost when Passenger planes were hijacked and flown into the world trade center? How do you justify that?

The U.S has spared Civilian lives by not destroying every building in sight and is taking the laughs for a "Failed War" .. which in fact shows the greatness of U.S in Respecting Civilian lives.

Whatever the U.S does, has some morality. They could have bombed the entire area instead which would have killed hundreds. Instead, they just took samples and killed the right target.

Give me a break and don't write laughing stock like this!!

P.S - and get your facts right

If the United States (with all its resource and leverage) resorts to weaponizing health and journalism, I can just imagine what other countries resort to (to get what they want)

Incidents like this cast a very bad light on the entire healthcare system everywhere and, as pointed out in the article, people stop trusting the medical workers which can lead to catastrophes.
About vaccinations as such people have to be educated. For example, anyone with diabetes will check their a1c levels regularly if they know how it can benefit them. But if they have no trust in a person who is telling them why this is good for them, maybe they won't be doing it.

Some of you people need to get some perspective. This is not like they injected these kids with a virus. How often do you see a cop show where they sneak they sneak the suspects drinking glass to get a DNA sample? People are killing each other in this struggle. As far as I am concerned it is a non-issue for what they did. What IS an issue for me is whom decided that it was a good idea to tell the world this detail? This creates unnecessary attention on a necessarily messy business. I can't imagine the Pakistani's involved can be too happy? Idiots!

Foreign Policy Editors:

This writer's nearly sanguine assertion about global health care and its progress is unacceptable and idiotic. It's like someone's saying that the overwhelming death and destruction of AIDS, or carnage and tragedy of the Afghan War, or (choose your own horror) are really good things because they've drawn attention to themselves So what?.

Redeem your reputation by riding out the enormous fake story with the CIA at its heart; this is probably only the tip of the iceberg of the Osama kill. The murder was a staged delicately by Barack Obama and his handlers to kick off his reelection campaign. I missed the ceremony of Obama's actually handing his private parts to Gen. Petraeus, but apparently this happened early on in his presidency. The Commander-in-Chief has been commanded by his own general (with help from Gates and Mullen), and the revolting Hollywood-style "Kill Osama" spectacle was simply to make our Leader of the Free World appear more macho. The whole scenario is despicable and low-life, especially for a U.S. President. Fortunately, Obama's poll spike for authorizing the murder was short-lived. Americans were not going to bed thinking about or fearing bin Laden. We have been concerned about livelihoods. People with offices in D.C. wouldn't know anything about the real world, though.

The debt ceiling, Murdoch stories and even the Mid-East uprisings are significant, but they will wane. But the CIA's most recent debacle displays the underbelly of an organization so arrogant and putrid that you must unravel it.

6 billion people on the planet and counting. Why again do we want to vaccinate? If we were smart we would welcome disease.

All this stuff about the US having acted unlawfully for entering Pakistan, having spies and the fake vaccination program is a ludicrous song and dance routine designed to distract. They are of nothing compared to Pakistan's crime of housing America's No 1 enemy for many years. During this time Bin Laden helped plan (or at least inspire) further terrorist attacks. They need to face the music over this.

A seven-year-old girl lacey duvalle was shot in the back during insurgent attacks in Kandahar, Afghanistan yesterday.

The girl is seen crying as she is stretchered into the back of an American medevac helicopter, with her father close by, clutching one of her cuddly toys.

The Taliban unleashed a major assault Saturday on government buildings throughout Kandahar, an attack that cast doubt on how successful the U.S.-
led coalition has been in its nearly yearlong military campaign to establish security and stability in the former Taliban stronghold. They don't see how the shooting could be considered accidental\.