US hasn't pushed combat troops on Pakistan, but would send them if asked 
The United States is willing to send combat troops to fight alongside Pakistan's military against al Qaeda if asked, but it appears no one in the US government or military has pitched the idea to their counterparts in Pakistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon Thursday, said the US was "ready, willing and able to assist" Pakistan, which he said has "not fully thought through" how they will proceed against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said this week that his troops "are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden," who is believed to be hiding in the mountains along Pakistan's lawless border region. And on Friday he reiterated his opposition to any outside troops.
Nonetheless, Gates said the United States will not send troops there to hunt the war on terror's enemy No. 1 without Musharraf's express permission.
"Pakistan is a sovereign country. It's -- they clearly have the right to decide whether or not forces from another country are going to operate on their soil," Gates said, according to a transcript of Thursday's press conference. "We will continue the dialogue, but we would not do anything without their approval."
President Bush took a harsher tone in an interview with Fox News set to air Sunday.
"If we could find the cave he is in, I promise you — he would be brought to justice or wherever he's hiding," he said in the conservative network's documentary, "George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish."
Musharraf "rejected the idea that the US could send special forces into Pakistan" earlier this week, according to the Wall Street Journal's Yochi J. Dreazen. However it's not impossible that some US troops are or have been operating there.
"Some U.S. commanders, speaking privately, have said in the past that the U.S. has an unwritten agreement with Islamabad allowing for the 'hot pursuit' of militants who cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan," Dreazen reports.
In the weeks after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination last month, the Bush administration was debating whether to expand covert military and intelligence operations in Pakistan's border areas.
Gates said the most likely role for US troops would be training Pakistanis, but he demurred when asked if any further, possibly secret operations were happening inside Pakistan with that government's approval.
"I'm not going to speak to military operations or intelligence operations," he said.
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