I would have put the word "allies" in quotes except State Department guidelines won't allow it.

Yes they are our allies, by gum, and even though they collude with terrorists to kill American citizens and soldiers, that's only because we don't understand them. Using terrorist groups as an arm of state policy is normal. Don't all allies do this kind of thing? And releasing the bodygaurd of your ally's most hated enemy is none of our damn business.

Telegraph:

Amin al-Haq, who escaped from Afghanistan with the al-Qaeda leader in 2001 and went on to become a key financial aide, was detained in Lahore three years ago by Pakistan's intelligence agency.

A senior security source in the north-western Pakistani town of Peshawar, where he had been held, said the Inter-Services Intelligence agency had passed al-Haq on to the police before he was released earlier this month.

"Amin al-Haq had been arrested mistakenly, therefore, the police failed to prove any charge of his association with Osama bin Laden and the court set him free," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Pakistan has a poor track record of convicting terrorists, blamed in part on an ill-equipped police force and an overstretched judicial service.

However, critics accuse elements of the security services of turning a blind eye to extremist groups.

I have a piece up at FrontPage.com this morning about the recent flap over outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen's comments about the Haqqani terrorist network being a "veritable arm" of the Pakistani intelligence service. I quote an unamed State Department flunkie saying that Mullen's remarks allowed for a "misperception" in Washington about Pakistan:

What "misperceptions" could there be? An arm of the Pakistani government is colluding with terrorists to kill Americans. To most, that would seem a straightforward problem with which our government should be dealing. David Goldman (aka "Spengler"), writing on his blog at PJ Media, quotes another unnamed diplomat saying, "The administration has long sought to pressure Pakistan, but to do so in a nuanced way that does not sever the U.S. relationship with a country that American officials see as crucial to winning the war in Afghanistan and maintaining long-term stability in the region."

Goldman adds:

The Pakistanis, in short, continue to murder Americans with impunity by threatening us with their own failure. It's the geopolitical equivalent of the scene in Blazing Saddles in which the black sheriff intimidates a lynch mob by holding a gun to his own head and threatening to shoot himself.

Allies don't murder your citizens or soldiers. Period. And releasing a man who plotted mass murder against an ally's citizens won't win Pakistan any favors from us either.