ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - I asked Richard Holbrooke a question this week and his answer amazed me.

Mullen (left) and Holbrooke were at the off-camera briefing with journalists.

The Obama administration's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said U.S. military forces had a feeble understanding of the Taliban and other militants they were fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal region.

"I am very dissatisfied with the amount of knowledge that exists in Washington about our enemy," Holbrooke said. "I am deeply disturbed about our knowledge on this subject."

Holbrooke's comment came during an informal off-camera briefing with CNN and several other news agencies. A U.S. official hosted the event inside a private residence in Islamabad.

Holbrooke was in town to meet Pakistani leaders and bolster the strained relationship between Islamabad and Washington in the fight against extremists.

He also came to promote the Obama administration's new policy in the region, a policy designed to combine an aggressive military strategy with billions of dollars in economic aid.

About 25 of us sat around a plush living room. We had 30 minutes to ask questions. Admiral Mike Mullen was there too. He's the highest ranking U.S. military official.

These sessions are rare and very useful.

You don't get officials on camera but sometimes you get them to relax and open up on sensitive subjects.

With Holbrooke that's not always necessary. He has a reputation of telling it like it is.

That's exactly what he did when I asked him how well Washington understands the mindset of militants who welcome death, militants who are willing to wrap themselves with a vest packed with explosives and blow themselves up.

Holbrooke was blunt in his response. Washington's knowledge about the Taliban and what motivates them is not where it should be, he said. Clearly it was a rebuke of the Bush administration's strategy in the region.

Ever the optimist Holbrooke said the U.S. will do things better and learn more about the enemy.

Holbrooke said he was convinced that with more economic stability and security in the region fewer young men would join the Taliban.

Despite his optimism Holbrooke's answer raises a lot of troubling questions.

Washington doesn't know the Taliban? The enemy U.S. troops have been fighting for more than eight years? How do you beat the enemy if you don't even know them?

Without knowing the mindset of the enemy how can the U.S. be so sure that adding more troops in Afghanistan and targeting militants in Pakistan with U.S. missile strikes from unmanned predator drones is not spawning more extremists?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but if U.S. military leaders don't know the mindset of their enemy, then they don't know the answers either and I just don't find that very comforting.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Few people get to meet the leader of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Mehsud, so when Pakistani journalist Behroz Khan was invited to one of his rare press conferences last year, he admits his heart started thumping a little harder.

Baitullah Mehsud has claimed responsibility for many recent attacks in Pakistan.

"You know he's behind the deadliest attacks and these suicide bombers," Khan told CNN. "It is, I would say, a bit scary."

What Khan saw was not the long-bearded, menacing giant he expected. Khan said Mehsud was no more than 5 feet 4 inches tall (1.62 meters), portly, neatly dressed and a bit of a jokester.

"He seemed like a very normal person, cracking jokes and commenting on everything."

But no one was laughing in the U.S. this week when Mehsud vowed to launch an attack on Washington.

In a series of phone calls to the media, Mehsud also claimed responsibility for the recent suicide bombing of a police station in Islamabad and an attack on a police academy in Lahore.

The attacks were revenge, Mehsud said, for U.S. missile strikes on Pakistani soil. Mehsud's threat comes amid U.S. President Barack Obama's call for a crackdown on militants in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal region, Mehsud's home turf. U.S. intelligence officials also put a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head.

Mehsud's threat may be his answer to Washington, said terrorism analyst Muhammad Amir Rana. Rana is head of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank that monitors militant groups in Pakistan.

"I think he wanted to give the message that if you have the head money on me, I can take revenge," Rana said.

Rana said Washington's $5 million bounty entrenches Mehsud as Pakistan's most powerful militant commander and puts him on the world's most wanted list with names like Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

It was alongside Mullah Omar's Taliban fighters in Afghanistan where Mehsud established a reputation as a fierce fighter in the 1990s. Mullah Omar was so impressed with the high-school-dropout-turned-militant that he named him a regional commander in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal region, Rana said.

Like his mentor Omar, Mehsud demanded never to be photographed. South Waziristan became his stronghold, a place where Mehsud still offers shelter and training to jihadists and Al Qaeda groups fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Rana said.

Mehsud was declared the leader of the Pakistani Taliban in 2007. Last year, Time Magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world because of the vast network of militants he controls.

Today Mehsud is suspected of being the architect of some of Pakistan's deadliest suicide attacks and the mastermind behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Mehsud has denied involvement in the assassination. But Rana and U.S. intelligence officials said they have yet to see evidence that Mehsud is capable of striking beyond the Afghan-Pakistan region.

"Obviously he's challenging the U.S.," said Rana. "But that doesn't mean he'll go to Washington and do everything by himself."

Rana said Mehsud remains a major threat to Pakistan and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Journalist Behroz Khan said he doesn't think the joking militant leader he met was kidding when he claimed to have hundreds of suicide bombers and called them his atom bombs.

"He said the infidels have their own nuclear bombs so they are my atom bombs," Khan said.

BAJAUR AGENCY, Pakistan - He looked annoyed and carried an old AK-47 assault rifle. He walked up to me, looked me dead in the eyes and yelled: "Go! Just go!" This was my up-close look at what anti-American anger looks and feels like in Pakistan's lawless tribal region.

What military strategists in Washington should know is that the venom did not come from members of the Taliban or al Qaeda. It came from Pakistani tribesmen who had taken up arms and formed militias to fight against the Taliban, but equally willing to take on U.S. and NATO forces.

I saw hundreds of these militiamen during a rare trip for journalists to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area, or FATA, along the Afghan border. FATA is widely believed to be home to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

It's slightly bigger than the state of New Jersey and it's the focal point in the U.S.-led war on terror. In recent months Washington has turned up the heat on Pakistan and accused it of not doing enough against the Taliban and al Qaeda. This trip was an effort by the Pakistan Army to refute criticism and show the world it's making progress.

Part of the progress, according to the Pakistan Army, has been the emergence of armed militias who've vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with soldiers to fight the Taliban. The Pakistan Army says its partnership with these civilian forces is crucial in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

What jeopardizes the partnership, they say, are U.S. incursions onto Pakistani soil. In recent weeks suspected U.S. missile strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's tribal region have increased, so has anti-American outrage, even among those who are enemies of the Taliban. I asked some of the tribesmen who they hated more, the Taliban or U.S. forces? "To us, they¹re equal," they said.

I saw the anti-American outrage in the eyes of the armed militiaman who got in my face and asked me to leave. I kept calm and reached out my hand. He shook it and eked out a smile. For a moment I felt his anger was gone. But in Pakistan's tribal region there is a lot more anti-American outrage that remains, and few analysts believe U.S. military strategy in the region will succeed without doing something about it.