 The Obama administration has authorized an expansion of the CIA's predator-drone missile attacks in Pakistan, alongside the president's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. U.S. officials are considering increasing the airstrikes and extending them further south, beyond the current target areas in Waziristan and into the western province of Baluchistan for the first time. Obama's decision to increase the missile strikes against the Taliban, in a country in which the U.S. is not officially at war, is controversial. Most Pakistanis view the attacks by our country as a violation of their sovereignty, and their government opposes expanding them in the tribal areas, let alone spreading them to Baluchistan. In an interview with Der Spiegel this past week, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the drone attacks are quote, counterproductive in the sense that it is creating a lot of anti-American sentiment all over the country. According to Pakistani intelligence officials and witnesses interviewed by the Associated Press, since late January 2008, there have been 67 suspected U.S. missile strikes into Pakistan, killing 721 people, 556 of whom intelligence officials believe were militants. More CIA drone attacks have been conducted under President Obama than under President George W. Bush. A Gallup poll in Pakistan this past summer found only 9 percent of Pakistanis in favor of the attacks and 67 percent against, with a majority ranking the United States as a greater threat to Pakistan than its arch-rival India or the Pakistani Taliban.