The planning for 9/11 was done in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, it now transpires.

Here’s the report that reveals the facts of the matter:

A trial under way in Chicago could be the next nail in the coffin of Washington’s unholy alliance with Islamabad, which looks more like a state sponsor of terror.

The federal case involves terror suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American who says he was recruited by Pakistani intelligence (known as the ISI) to help attack India’s business hub.

In graphic testimony, he has revealed ISI’s role in the murder of 163 people — including six Americans — in the Mumbai terror attack of 2008.

Headley, who pleaded guilty last year to casing targets in Mumbai and European cities, detailed meetings he had with the Pakistani military and ISI officials. He’s fingered a Pakistani intelligence officer, a former Pakistani army major and a navy frogman among key players behind the Mumbai massacre. He’s also testified that ISI hooked him up with al-Qaida in Pakistan.

FBI agents and U.S. attorneys prosecuting the case find him credible. Among corroborating evidence: emails between him and his ISI handlers.

Headley swears that Mumbai was “ISI jihad.” But there may have been another ISI jihad — 9/11. Scattered throughout the 9/11 Commission Report is overwhelming evidence the 9/11 operation was rehearsed in Pakistani safe houses and financed through Pakistani money-transfer networks.

“Almost all the 9/11 attackers traveled the north-south nexus of Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi,” the report said. In fact, the hijackers met with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi, where the 9/11 mastermind instructed them on Western culture and travel.

He showed them movies depicting hijackings. He passed out brochures for flight schools, and phone directories for San Diego and other U.S. cities. He used game software to increase their familiarity of jetliner models and functions, and advised watching the cockpit door during takeoff and landing.

“To house his students,” the report said, “KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) rented a safe house in Karachi with money provided by (Osama) bin Laden.” KSM and other key plotters — including Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi — found refuge in Pakistani cities after the Twin Tower/Pentagon slaughter. Residual funds for the operation were wired back to Pakistan.

In short, the 9/11 plot was hatched in Pakistan. So it only follows that the man who gave the final order to attack us on 9/11 — bin Laden — was found hiding not far from Islamabad, right under the nose of the Pakistani military.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the ISI introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Afghanistan. Then, years later, they warned him U.S. missiles were heading his way. The rockets missed bin Laden, but killed ISI personnel. What were they doing there? Training jihadists at bin Laden’s camps to fight as proxies against India in the war over Kashmir.

The panel found that al-Qaida terrorists have been marshaling war against the U.S. from inside Pakistan since 1993.

On Jan. 25, 1993, Mir Amal Kansi, a terrorist from Pakistan, shot and killed two CIA employees at Langley. Kansi returned to a hero’s welcome in Pakistan. Only a month afterward came the World Trade Center bombing, which was hatched by Ramzi Yousef, who fled back to Karachi where he and his uncle KSM went back to the drawing board.

After 9/11, U.S. intelligence found KSM living in a villa in Rawalpindi — headquarters of the Pakistani army.

In preparing the 9/11 attack, al-Qaida enjoyed “the operational space” within Pakistan’s cities to gather and sift recruits and to indoctrinate them, according to the 9/11 report, which was published in 2003.

“It built up logistical networks running through Pakistan,” it said. “Within Pakistan’s borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of al-Qaida terrorists, many Taliban fighters and — perhaps — Osama bin Laden,” the report added.

How right it was. Bin Laden’s deputies are more than likely holed up there as well. We’ll find them — if the CIA and Special Forces are allowed to keep up the hunt.

Can this possibly mean that the war in Afghanistan, now obviously pointless, was never necessary?

And is American tax-payers’ money, given to Pakistan to buy its alliance, used there to train terrorists to attack America?

Seems so.

There is no longer any question of whether an American victory in Afghanistan is possible. It is not.

It becomes plainer every day that what lies ahead is defeat.

The only uncertainty is whether America – aka “the coalition forces” – will manage withdrawal without the appearance of ignominy.

After an initial victory the war has dragged on for eight years. In that time the mightiest military power on earth has been unable to defeat a bunch of primitive, lightly-armed terrorists. Not because it couldn’t, but because it tied its own hands with unrealistic aims, political correctness, and, under Commander-in-Chief Obama, a preference for losing.

At Canada Free Press, Alan Caruba expresses a similar opinion. Here’s part of what he writes:

The war in Afghanistan has been going on for more than eight years as of this writing. Over that period of time I have been against it, for it, against it, for it, and now I return to what my instincts and experience told me all along. It’s over.

That war is lost. Once the Taliban acquired surface-to-air missiles, the primarily advantage our military had was removed. In the past month, the Taliban have shot down two of our helicopters. Any low-flying aircraft will be vulnerable along with all our front-line forces. …

You cannot win a counterinsurgency with local forces if:

you don’t have a significant portion of the population on your side and

those forces do not want to fight.

Afghans don’t like anyone who is not an Afghan and, in many cases, they do not like other Afghans from other tribes. …

The other factor that is a key to the situation is our “ally”, Pakistan. The U.S. has poured billions into Pakistan and they have been supporting the Taliban the whole time; more specifically, the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Agency [has been doing so]. …

An article in the UK’s Times was picked up by the Washington Post on June 14. The Times article was headlined “Pakistan puppet masters guide the Taliban killers.” It reported that “Pakistan’s own intelligence agency, the ISI, is said to be represented on the Taliban’s war council, the Quetta shura. Up to seven of the 15-man shura are believed to be ISI agents.”

The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, Amrullah Salah, recently resigned. He concluded that Afghan forces of the government under Hamid Karzai, the US hand-picked president of Afghanistan, would not and could not prevail. Afghanistan has never been a nation by any standard definition. It has always been a nation of tribes.

The Afghanistan conflict has cost the West billions and hundreds of lives. …

When word leaked about Obama’s “rules of engagement” in Afghanistan that essentially put every one of our soldiers and marines at risk, the die was cast.

The combined US-UK force failed to loosen the Taliban’s grip on Marjah, the most recent military engagement. The Afghan forces refused to fight much of the time. The Taliban continue to control the whole of southern Afghanistan.

The Kandahar offensive has been postponed. It was to be waged by American, British, Canadian, and Afghan forces. If that doesn’t tell you that the war in Afghanistan is over, nothing will.

If there is no will to wage war vigorously to bring about victory, nothing can be done for now. This is not to say we will not have to return at some time, but as long as President Obama is in office, that is not an option.

If ever America needs to go back and hit the Taliban again, it should do so swiftly, briefly, and decisively. Under the command of the present feeble, pro-Muslim, anti-American president, that would not be done.

Bearing out what we have said in the post immediately below about Muslims saying one thing to the West and another to their Muslim audience, today at Front Page Magazine, Michael van der Galien says this about a report written by Matt Walden, a fellow of Harvard, and issued by the London School of Economics:

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has “an official policy” of support for the Taliban. The ISI, the report says, “provides funding and training” for the extremist Muslim group in neighboring Afghanistan. It adds that the agency even “has representatives on the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, which is believed to meet in Pakistan.” …

“Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude,” the report says. Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari pretends to be enlightened, modern, a staunch ally of the West, and a supporter of the War on Terror, when dealing with Westerners. Not so, says Waldman in his report. The president apparently met with senior Taliban prisoners, promising them they would released as soon as possible, adding that they were only arrested because of American pressure.

“The Pakistan government’s apparent duplicity – and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment – could have enormous geopolitical implications. Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency.” …

If true, and there’s every reason to believe it is, the report spells tremendous trouble. It is virtually impossible for the West and Kabul to defeat the Taliban if these terrorists are backed by the ISI.