President “Bush refused to push [Pakistani President Purvez] Musharraf on the Taliban issue when Bush had visited Islamabad in March [2006], on his way back from a trip to India. ‘Nobody gave the Taliban much importance then,’ said a [anonymous] senior U.S. official [on March 5, 2007]. ‘To hunt the Taliban we would have to take away focus on al Qaeda, and that was not possible because al Qaeda posed the main threat to the U.S.’ ”
– Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, Page 369