So Many Half-Truths, So Little Time...

Just because I want to keep track of this stuff, here are two more stories providing strong evidence of John McCain's growing problem with telling the truth. Both relate to Saturday's Saddleback Forum but are also anecdotes and excerpts he habitually brings up on the trail.

In the first question of the forum, he was asked to name three people he would "rely heavily on" for advice and counsel. One of the three he named was the great civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). McCain has no relationship with Lewis despite serving in Washington with him for 22 years.

Later, McCain told the story he often tells on the campaign trail, a little joke about how the federal government spent $3 million dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana. At the time, he never sought to remove the earmark appropriating money for the bear project, despite seeking to reduce funding for other projects in the same bill; and he voted for the final bill.

I think I need to start keeping a list.

...I suppose I could add the fact that he rejected calls for Pervez Musharraf's resignation in December 2007, while welcoming it today, but that's not an exaggeration or a lie. That's just piss-poor judgment, based on the biased notion that only a strongman can keep the brown people together. It's truly a colonial mindset for foreign policy where you install the dictator to keep the masses relatively stable. It's dumb thinking, and dangerous besides.

Interestingly Enough, The Vice President Is A Guy Named Ford

Pervez Musharraf, seeing the writing on the wall, resigns before impeachment.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf quit office on Monday to avoid impeachment charges, nearly nine years after the key U.S. ally in its campaign against terrorism took power in a coup.

Speculation the former army chief would resign had mounted since the fractious coalition government, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said this month it planned to impeach him.

"Whether I win or lose, the nation will lose," Musharraf, 65, said of the impeachment process in an hour-long televised address in which he passionately defended his record.

"The honor and dignity of the country will be affected and in my view, the honor of the office of president will also be affected."

It's always good when you quit your job and stocks jump up four percent. That's an ego-builder. This is also good for the soul:

Indeed, celebrations broke out across the country after the announcement, with people dancing and handing out sweets.

"Thank God he's resigned. The country will do much better now," said Mohammad Ilyas, 30, in Karachi.

I actually agree with the revelers. A Pakistan edging toward democracy, however slowly, will start to cut off extremism. If their government can successfully fight poverty, all the better (this is of course a long shot, but it's an area where the US can help). Musharraf's dictatorship and tight connections to both the seat of power and the military is a dangerous mix for a nuclear-armed country. Let's hope this is a better way forward.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman has a more cautious take:

Just because Musharraf is out doesn't mean things are going to get better. In fact, it's a mistake to view any country, but specifically Pakistan, as the product of a single strongman. To go back to something I wrote on Friday, the job of the next administration is to build ties with Pakistan -- the nuclear-armed South Asian power that, among other things, has an uninvited guest named Usama bin Laden -- that go beyond the contingency of the moment. It's inconceivable that the Bush administration could have surveyed the post-9/11 landscape, observed the centrality of Pakistan to the war on terror, and said, "You know what we should do? Base our ties to Pakistan on a mercurial dictator." The next administration may have to distance itself from the U.S. in order to underscore the end of the Musharraf era, and if so, that's a mistake the U.S. can ill-afford at a time of resurgent al-Qaeda in Pakistan and rising U.S. casualties in Afghanistan.

The ruling coalition has based most of their time in office so far on getting rid of Musharraf. With that mission accomplished, they have to actually govern a country which is very fractious. Good luck to them.

Less Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update?

This is very relieving if true.

Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, an important ally of the United States, is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment charges, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

His departure from office would be likely to unleash new instability in the country as the two main parties in the civilian government jockeyed for the division of power.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. The instability would have come if Musharraf tried to hold on to power despite overwhelming opposition against him. But clearly he didn't have the support of the military he once held (like in the successful 1999 coup), and so this was his only solution.

Significantly, US and British diplomats have been urging Musharraf to quit in recent days, perhaps understanding that there was no chance of him keeping power with all the forces aligned against him.

Anything that avoids a coup or civil war in Pakistan is a good thing. This is an unstable country with nuclear weapons - a constitutional crisis would be extremely worrying. Ultimately, this shows the bankruptcy of US-Pakistan relations in the Bush era. As Joe Biden is fond of saying, we didn't have a Pakistan policy, we had a Musharraf policy, and it stirred resentment among the public and led to this backlash. The US tried to engineer a power-sharing agreement between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto that left Bhutto dead and Musharraf disgraced. The new coalition government is going to have its struggles, but it will certainly better reflect the will of the Pakistani people more than American interests. And in the end, I would argue that would be a POSITIVE development for the United States. This would be a more honest partner for peace and democracy than a dictator like Musharraf, who was enabling terrorists and extremists in the border region anyway. Our lack of thumbs on the scale will aid us in the fight in Afghanistan, too, which is turning grisly.

SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan -- Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.

The soldiers -- two of them members of the National Guard from New York -- died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.

Horrifying, but the answer is full engagement with Pakistan's new government, promoting an actual semblance of a democracy, instead of holding on for dear life to a double-dealing dictator. A stable Pakistan is the eventual key to a stable Afghanistan where low-level development and an end to the narco-terrorist state can flourish.

This is ultimately good news, though I'm sure the spin in the Western media will be otherwise.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

The US military lost its 500th soldier in Afghanistan in July, nearly seven years after the initial invasion. The increasing deadliness of the war has finally moved it somewhat into the national consciousness, as Taliban remnants combined with tribal villagers have reformed to offer strong resistance to the Afghan government and coalition troops. Increasing use of roadside bombs and suicide attacks presage a new reality, with insurgents resisting a foreign occupation rather than extremists seeking to overturn the government.

The question is, where do we go from here. Bob Gates wants to throw $20 billion in aid at the problem, mostly to transform the Afghan military. Both Sen. Obama and, more recently, Sen. McCain have asked for additional US brigades to be deployed to the region, which smacks of posturing. Of course, it's very possible that Obama honestly believes that Afghanistan is the right war and Al Qaeda must be denied safe haven to project attacks at Americans and the West. Of course, the question is how to best achieve that objective.

Over the past few weeks, as progressives have driven a conversation on this policy, there have been some very good studies written about what to do over there. Two of the best are Rory Stewart's piece in TIME...

So what exactly should we do about Afghanistan now? First, the West should not increase troop numbers. In time, NATO allies, such as Germany and Holland, will probably want to draw down their numbers, and they should be allowed to do so. We face pressing challenges elsewhere. If we are worried about terrorism, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan; if we are worried about regional stability, then Egypt, Iran or even Lebanon is more important; if we are worried about poverty, Africa is more important. A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining. The Taliban, which was a largely discredited and backward movement, gains support by portraying itself as fighting for Islam and Afghanistan against a foreign military occupation.

Nor should we increase our involvement in government and the economy. The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the "front line in the war on terror" and that "failure is not an option" have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform. Increasing our commitment to Afghanistan gives us no leverage over the government.

Afghans increasingly blame us for the problems in the country: the evening news is dominated by stories of wasted development aid. The government claims that in 2007, $1.3 billion out of $3.5 billion of aid was spent on international consultants, some of whom received more than $1,000 a day and whose policy papers are often ignored by Afghan civil servants and are invisible to the population. Our lack of success despite our wealth and technology convinces ordinary Afghans to believe in conspiracy theories. Well-educated people have told me that the West is secretly backing the Taliban and that the U.S.'s main objective was to steal Afghanistan's emeralds, antiquities and uranium — and that we knew where Osama bin Laden was but had decided not to catch him.

A smarter strategy would focus on two elements: more effective aid and a more limited military objective. We should target development assistance in provinces where we have a track record of success. Our investment goes further in stable and welcoming places like Hazarajat than it can in hostile, insurgency-dominated areas like Kandahar and Helmand, where we have to spend millions on security and the locals do not contribute to the project and will not sustain it after our departure. We should focus on meeting the Afghan government's request for more investment in agricultural irrigation, energy and roads. And we should increase our support to the most effective departments, such as education, health and rural development; they are good for the reputation of the Afghan state and the West. Creating more educated, healthier women and men and better transport, communications and electrical infrastructure may be only part of the story, but they are essential for Afghanistan's economic future.

... and Vikram Singh in World Politics Review:

Afghanistan is in trouble but far from lost. Less than one-third of the country is really unstable and only about 10 percent of Afghan districts are under significant Taliban sway. But a surge of all types of effort -- military and civilian -- is needed to turn the tide. The mini-surge of 3,000 marines into the south and east of the country will soon draw to close after some success clearing insurgents, but the U.S. and its allies have little ability to hold and build those areas without capable Afghan security forces and Afghan and international civilians.

U.S. forces should only surge into Afghanistan with a workable and comprehensive strategy and the right civilian counterparts. The renewal of interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan offers a real opportunity. The presidential candidates -- or indeed President Bush in his remaining months -- should craft a strategy that ensures money and personnel for a civilian and military surge tailored to Afghanistan.

These two writers have little in common ideologically but they understand that a straight military solution is completely misguided. I think Stewart makes a lot more sense, having spent time in the country and having internalized its dynamics.

Of course, no discussion of Afghanistan can be divorced from Pakistan, where insurgents live and train and receive support from even the country's intelligence services. Robert Kaplan's piece in The Atlantic framed Pakistan's interest in Afghanistan in the proper context of a larger struggle with India. This also argues against additional troops, as the politics are far more substantial that two brigades can counteract. The new secular government has paid lip service to rooting Taliban sympathizers out of the ISI and against to prevent safe havens for insurgents along the border, but that is unlikely, to be honest.

The Bush administration and its allies are pressing Pakistan to end its support for Afghan insurgents linked to al Qaida, but Pakistani generals are unlikely to be swayed because they increasingly see their interests diverging from those of the United States, U.S. and foreign experts said [...]

"The fact that we're reduced to trying to send messages to the Pakistanis by putting stories in (newspapers) tells you we don't have any good options," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about South Asia. "It also suggests that the high-level, face-to-face contacts haven't worked so far. The trouble is, these kinds of public threats are likely to backfire."

For one thing, the Taliban and other groups allied with al Qaida could respond to any Pakistani crackdown by stepping up attacks inside Pakistan, which is battling Islamic extremist violence, U.S. officials and experts said.

Furthermore, they said, Pakistan's nearly dysfunctional, feud-riddled civilian government has little power over the Army and the ISI. The latest evidence was a botched attempt under U.S. pressure to put the agency under the Interior Ministry before Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani's three-day visit to Washington this week.

Pakistani generals and other leaders are also infuriated by President Bush's pursuit of a strategic relationship with India, their foe in three wars, as embodied by a U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation pact that won United Nations approval Friday, the U.S. officials and experts said.

"One thing we never understood is that India has always been the major threat for Pakistan," said former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain, now the president of the Middle East Institute.

That is an almost unthinkably stupid statement, but it does seem to underline our missteps in the region.

Now, the fractious government does seem to be coming together around impeaching Pervez Musharraf, but that could only increase tensions with the military and lead to internal chaos, at which point they would be little help on the border.

Brian Katulis from CAP is really knowledgeable on this stuff, so his report on Pakistan is worth reading. The region is incredibly complex, with interlocking battles and jockeying for power that can be exploited by extremist elements. Our goal is to suck out the ability for those extremists to prosper, to the extent that we can. Bombing civilians doesn't help. Neither does antagonizing the Waziris. We need to get this right, but it's very precarious.

Who Are We Fighting?

When I appear on Meet The Bloggers in a couple hours you can be sure I'm going to ask Rachel Maddow about this:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

This is just an extension of an earlier story about the CIA noting links between militants and the ISI, but this fills in the details. And it's absolutely frightening. I've called Pakistan the Most Dangerous Trouble Spot On Earth for the past couple years for good reason, and now to see their intelligence services act as an adjunct for the insurgency just puts a lot of this into perspective. (Of course, the Embassy bombing could also merely be an extension of the India-Pakistan cold war, using the Afghan rebels as a proxy. There have been clashes in Kashmir this week.)

Committing to a wider war in Afghanistan, where the public resists colonial efforts historically, entangles us in all sorts of regional political battles, and if you think you didn't know who your friends were in Iraq, wait until you get over there. This just has all the earmarks of a disaster. The Pakistani leadership doesn't even know how to deal with the ISI.

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power. In recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been concerned about India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan, including New Delhi’s close ties to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI.

Pakistan’s defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told a Pakistani television network on Wednesday that Mr. Bush asked senior Pakistani officials this week, “ ‘Who is in control of ISI?’ ” and asked about leaked information that tipped militants to surveillance efforts by Western intelligence services.

Pakistan’s new civilian government is wrestling with these very issues, and there is concern in Washington that the civilian leaders will be unable to end a longstanding relationship between members of the ISI and militants associated with Al Qaeda.

Let's remember that the ISI was strengthened when the country was under the control of Pervez Musharraf (then chief of staff of the army with jurisdiction over the military intelligence service), who we handed over billions of dollars in "aid" money with no paper trail and no accountability for where it was sent. Thus, like Juan Cole says, that money could easily be going to kill US, NATO and Afghan troops.

Oh, and the group of militants that the ISI used to carry out this attack are Pushtun guerrillas, not actually "Taliban" in the traditional sense. The shibboleths of "Taliban" and "Al Qaeda" don't quite fit here. This is a Pakistani push for regional dominance incorporating tribes and assorted fighters.

By the way, John McCain supported Musharraf. He saw him as a strong leader, typical of most American beliefs about the need for strongmen in the developing world. As Cole notes:

Musharraf's 'successful state' involved dismissing the Supreme Court, provoking massive and repeated demonstrations, violating the constitution, interfering with free and fair elections, and presiding over a virtual national meltdown on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto late last December. McCain appears to value nothing beyond sheer military might-- even if it has shady contacts to al-Qaeda!

When the newly elected civilian government of Pakistan tried to put the ISI under the civilian Ministry of the Interior last weekend, it was quickly reversed by the generals. The US government (and the candidates) should be supporting the elected civilian government in its efforts to get control of the ISI.

This news is not about Pakistan, since most Pakistanis dislike al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is not about the elected Pakistani government. It is not even about the Pakistani military, which has fought hard battles against the Pakistani Taliban and suffered hundreds of casualties in so doing. It is about corruption in the Pakistani officer corps and the penetration of pro- al-Qaeda elements in the ISI.

And we're being sucked into this slowly, bled dry and ultimately made the fool.

Tragedies In Asia

These natural disasters in nearby nations in Asia continue to have worse and worse effects. In Burma the death toll has risen to over 125,000 and the fear is that aid is trickling in so slowly, thanks to the paranoid military government, that a "second wave" of deaths from disease and starvation is imminent. In China, earthquake victims continue to be found, the death toll is approaching 15,000, and Chinese troops are desperately attempting to fill a crack in a large dam that, if breached, would overwhelm yet another city.

Amazingly enough, the quietest disaster happening in Asia could be the most far-reaching, as the second most-powerful party in the Pakistani government, Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, has vowed to quit the cabinet, which could lead to instability in the most dangerous trouble spot in the world. Sharif's issue is that the Pakistan People's Party has not yet moved to reinstate the judges fired by Pervez Musharraf, and that the ruling party is making poor use of their power. This could blow up in a hurry. And right now, it has to be on the back burner due to the mass loss of life to its north.

World Report

Every so often I look at the world, and make a report. This is that report.

• Zimbabwe is the biggest hell hole on Earth. Inflation is over 100,000% annually. You actually need a wheelbarrow to carry around money. And in a country dependent on international food aid, the ruling party of Robert Mugabe is using food aid as a weapon to force the public to vote for them. "No ZANU Card, No Mealie Meal," as Hilzoy puts it. I'm sickened. Among the many insufferable dictators around the globe, Mugabe may be the worst, and I would have little problem with a humanitarian intervention to force equal distribution of food aid.

• Speaking of dictators and Africa, a leader of the Janjaweed militia is finally admitting what everyone already knew, that he received his orders to rape and murder the Darfurians from the Sudanese government in Khartoum, as well as heavy weaponry. Even though this has been assumed, it's the first time a Janjaweed leader has gone public.

• So desperate to reach any kind of fig leaf of a deal in the Middle East that would signify something resembling a "legacy," the Bush Administration is now talking about allowing Hamas to participate in talks with Israel, using Egypt as an intermediary. This is mainly about negotiating a cease-fire, not some overarching agreement on Palestine. But the softening stance is probably a good thing in the long run.

• Speaking of Bush toning down his arrogant foreign policy, apparently they've discovered that nobody really likes Pervez Musharraf, and are stopping their praise of him, instead trying to cozy up to the opposition parties. Might be a little late for that, but of course we rarely learn out foreign policy lessons.

• So I guess a substantial number of our troops (at least a dozen) have been subject to accidental death by electrocution in Iraq, and Henry Waxman wants to get to the bottom of it. Support the troops, I believe, is the phrase. Man, they must be living in a pit over there, paid for by our tax dollars (funneled to unfeeeling corporations who do shoddy work, that is).

• The Islamists in Somalia, though defeated in last year's war, have not been vanquished, and in fact they beheaded three Somali soldiers, prompting the UN to raise alarms and plead for peace talks. Even the proxy wars Bush fights and wins are never actually won.

• There's some additional news from Tibet, where the authorities have arrested dozens inside the autonomous region and have acknowledged unrest outside the province, in other parts of China. Chinese police have shot Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province, wounding four. So far, the estimate from protests in Lhasa is 13 deaths, which is probably low. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama sits in exile in India, and relations between India and China may grow strained as a result. It's a bad situation, but pressure must continue to be put on the Chinese government to allow for independence or at least some peaceful solution.

• And finally, Doraemon is a Japanese ambassador. When I went to Bangkok a while ago, we saw this Doraemon piggy bank in the Thai version of a 7-11. The bank was free with a hot dog, and my friend didn't want the hot dog but was willing to pay the price for the bank. The clerk refused to give the bank without the hot dog. It was an amusing cultural misunderstanding that hopefully Doraemon, in his new diplomatic role, will help to prevent.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Pakistan has seen yet another deadly attack today.

Bombs exploded at a federal police building and in a residential area of the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more, police said.

The Federal Investigation Agency in downtown Lahore was devastated by a bomb planted near an elevator, said Mirza Mohammed Yasin, an FIA official in the capital, Islamabad. At least a dozen people died, said Mohammed Afzal, a Lahore police official.

Three more died in a second bombing at a house in an upscale residential area, Afzal said. It was not immediately clear who lived there.

The militants engages in these attacks are trying to influence the country in a way they couldn't at the ballot box. It's doubtless that their numbers are being fed by increasing uneasiness and anxiety with the economic situation in the country. As the US recession inevitably goes global, this will become yet another obstacle to global stability, particularly with respect to food and energy prices. We're going to see global poverty spike on a massive scale. Relating specifically to Pakistan, this was more likely the cause of Pervez Musharraf's electoral failure than any widespread yearning for freedom or democracy. People vote with their pocketbooks.

With consumer prices for basic goods hitting new highs in Pakistan, anxieties about the country's economy are also on the rise. After seeing five years of strong gains under the government of President Pervez Musharraf, officials are scaling back expectations for growth in the face of wrenching food and energy shortages.

The crisis has taken a severe toll on Musharraf politically -- public frustration with rising prices helped the opposition win big in parliamentary elections last month. Now those parties, the Pakistan People's Party and a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, must confront the unpleasant task of managing the crisis. Economists here say a surge of foreign investment and export growth are needed.

It's the poor and the middle class being affected. Which has led to this weak position for Musharraf, one that will be exploited by the incoming government, which plans to join forces to reinstate judges over Musharraf's protests. When or if this will happen is another story.

It is up to Mr. Musharraf to convene Parliament. On Friday, at a time when agreement between the two parties seemed somewhat distant, the president said he would call the Parliament in 10 days “if there was peace in the country.”

And again we see the attacks inside Pakistan as something Musharraf needs to survive politically. Could this be why the US government, which is nominally backing Musharraf's continued hold on power, is funding tribal militias who have questionable allegiances?

The outpost's defenders belonged to Pakistan's Frontier Corps, an 85,000-member tribal militia that, according to the latest Pentagon budget, is set to receive up to $75 million in training and equipment this year, the first injection of what could be more than $400 million to be delivered over the next several years. Beyond this, little is known about the plan, the details of which remain classified. As reported by the New York Times, a 40-page secret document called "Plan for Training the Frontier Corps" is currently being circulated at the U.S. Central Command, awaiting final approval by its commander, Admiral William J. Fallon, and other senior defense officials. The use of the Frontier Corps in the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan augurs a new approach to dealing with rising Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan's tribal region. Like U.S. plans to fund it, the Frontier Corps has largely escaped scrutiny, but there are questions about its allegiances, competence, and suitability to the proposed mission. Support for tribal militias has become a centerpiece of the U.S. strategy in Iraq, one that carries with it inherent risks in terms of inadvertently backing potential enemies in the pursuit of short-term security goals. Supporting the Frontier Corps is similarly dicey.

My feeling is that trying to pursue an "Anbar Awakening" inside the frontier areas is simply, in the short term, pushing the Taliban/militant forces deeper inside Pakistan. Where they plot and carry out more attacks, giving Musharraf more of a reason to crack down and maybe impose martial law again. I could be wrong, but it does seem that Musharraf and the militants are mutually sustaining. In the long term, bolstering the Frontier Corps seems to be to be lunacy, ripe for blowback, and simply horrendous policy.

World Report

Because, you know, why not:

• For those who thought that Turkey's military pullout from northern Iraq would be the end of that potentially chaotic front in the war, they've started bombing again, and I'm sure they won't hesitate to go right back into Kurdistan again if they see fit. In the same article comes news that the US has released two Shiite officials accused of killing and kidnapping Sunnis. This was the legal case that fell apart last week. Sunni groups are up in arms. We're still on very shaky ground over there.

• It's funny that the Pentagon keeps talking about China's military buildup as if it portends some horrible consequence for the world, when in actuality their military budget is a mere fraction of the US military budget. This of course raises the double standard where we only use our military for good but everyone else uses the military for EEE-VILLLL.

• While nobody's paying much attention, it turns out that Pakistan's opposition parties have been unable thus far to get together on a unity government. Meanwhile attacks by Islamists continue, and Musharraf is emboldened by stepping into the power vacuum. And of course, our backing of Musharraf is adding to the chaos.

• We really could see Zimbabweans finally turning against Mugabe at long last. That's really one of the most horrifying situations in the whole world. If the ZANU-PF party finally rebelled it would be good for the world.

• Finally, this is one of the strangest stories I've ever read.

The generals, to put it mildly, can't take a joke.

But the Moustache Brothers make their living mocking fools, including those who wear military uniforms. So they have drawn a battle line in this country's long struggle for democracy with a small stage that cuts across their cramped living room, site of the three-man comedy troupe's nightly performance.

The military regime silenced street protests last fall by arresting and, in some cases, shooting peaceful demonstrators. That has left dissidents such as comedians Lu Zaw, Lu Maw and the lead satirist of the family, Par Par Lay, to tend the embers of opposition by poking fun at the regime.

In the past, the junta that rules Myanmar -- also known as Burma -- has tried to shut them up too, hoping to intimidate them with prison terms, hard labor and torture. But the comedians are exploiting a loophole in a ban on their act by staying on the attack at home, in English, with biting humor that ridicules the junta as a bunch of bumbling thugs, thieves and spies.

Never underestimate the power of the court jester to cause radical change. The despot is always cut down to size when mocked. It's not for nothing that most military dictatorships tighten the communications apparatus first.

Tyrants

George Bush doesn't want anyone sitting around and taking pictures with tyrants:

Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, look at me, I’m now recognized by the President of the United States.

Except, of course, him. Bush has personally met with the leaders of human rights-abusing countries like Russia, China, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, the latter of whom likes to boil his political opponents alive. And he took pictures; they're at the link.

And not only has he taken pictures, he's openly supported such tyrants, even when it angers the population of that country.

The Bush administration’s continued backing of President Pervez Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters this month, is fueling a new level of frustration in Pakistan with the United States.

That support has rankled the public, politicians and journalists here, inciting deep anger at what is perceived as American meddling and the refusal of Washington to embrace the new, democratically elected government. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, said Thursday during a Senate panel hearing that the United States would maintain its close ties to Mr. Musharraf.

Pakistanis say the Bush administration is grossly misjudging the political mood in Pakistan and squandering an opportunity to win support from the Pakistani public for its fight against terrorism. The opposition parties that won the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections say they are moderate and pro-American. By working with them, analysts say, Washington could gain a vital, new ally.

Bush obviously feels very at home with tyrants, especially those who don't listen to their citizens, crush dissent and pursue their own agendas. Curious, no?

I guess Bush is also opposed to his looking in the mirror.

...incidentally, nothing can help Barack Obama more than having this President make political attacks against him. If I were Obama I'd run an ad just showing Bush making the attacks over and over. You could be looking at a landslide if Mr. 19% keeps this up.

World Report

From time to time I round up global events in a little ditty I like to call "World Report." I'm going to write it for you now.

• There's little in the way of actual news coming out of Cuba, where the transition from brother Fidel Castro to brother Raul appears to be fairly seamless. There's some great commentary around the Web, however. Steve Clemons calls the situation a "historic opportunity" to change American Cold War-era policies with Cuba, lift the embargo and move toward normalized relations. Tony Karon discussing, in a fascinating way, the allure of Castro to foreign leaders, as someone willing to stick it to the Americans. And both Matt Yglesias and ">Ezra Klein synthesize these two perspectives:

"for good reasons and for bad ones, the romance of thumbing one's nose at the USA has powerful and important resonance for a lot of people around the world. Under the circumstances, it rarely serves our interests to get into dramatic confrontations with leaders who are far too puny to objectively threaten our interests. After all, what significance would Castro have without his superpower adversary? US persecution of the Communist regime in Havana is really the only thing it has going for it."

A corollary to that point is that the more unpopular America is, the more political appeal opposing us will have. So the more we do to stoke anti-American sentiment, the more we strengthen the domestic political hands of the very leaders we oppose. It's a vicious circle, and one the Bush administration has been pursuing with all the zeal of a kid who just discovered ring-around-the-rosie.

• In Pakistan, the two leading opposition parties, Benazir Bhutto's former Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League-Q, will form a coalition government. This puts even more pressure on the Pervez Musharraf, who is trying to cling to power with an assist from the United States. Meanwhile, the opposition parties want to enter into dialogue with the militants who have been stepping up their attacks, in addition to restoring a free press and an independent judiciary.

• Angry crowds in Belgrade, Serbia attacked the US Embassy in protest of American recognition of an independent Kosovo. Riot police eventually secured the embassy. This bears watching.

• Where have I read a story like this before?

An exiled Iranian opposition group has claimed that Tehran was speeding up a program to develop nuclear weapons.

"The Iran regime entered a new phase in its nuclear project," Mohammad Mohaddessin, of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, said Wednesday.

So you have an exile group that wants to overthrow a Middle Eastern government, hyping fears about a nuclear arsenal in their home country.

And it starts with an "I".

• Oh yeah, that's it, Iraq!!! It's unclear whether or not our troops are going to be having to dodge a larger stream of bullets come Saturday, when the deadline for Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire is reached. The LA Times says that the truce may not be extended, because US forces haven't been cooperative, particularly by bombing Shiite outposts and arresting Mahdi Army members. But Reuters claims that Sadr will actually extend the truce for another six months. So we'll see.

At any rate, the fact that prospects in Iraq are so definitively tied to whether or not a militant who seeks our destruction keeps his fighters off the battlefield is ominous, to say the least. Russ Feingold says a bit more.

Since the beginning of this disastrous war, people have asked me repeatedly why we are in Iraq, instead of going after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. It's clear to many Americans that this war has warped our national security priorities. And top U.S. military commanders have started to acknowledge the same thing, indirectly, as they identify the serious threat to our security in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the strain that the war in Iraq is putting on our military force.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that an attack on the U.S. will most likely come from al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan. This solemn warning, from the senior ranking member of the Armed Forces, demands that we focus our energy and resources on eliminating this threat to our country. The resurgence of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a grave threat to our national security, yet our military is stretched so thin because of Iraq that we don't have enough resources to address it. As U.S. military General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, said, "The Army today is out of balance," and "We're deploying at unsustainable rates." [...]

The administration can't seem to get its national security priorities straight, even with the increasing threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. But Congress is to blame, too -- we've been sitting by and watching as the administration bungles our national security strategy. The administration has had blinders on for too long, focusing on Iraq at the expense of our overall security. We have to force them to take the blinders off and come up with a new strategy, one that focuses on going after the threats we face, not staying mired in the mistakes they've made.

I know that most Democrats in Congress have given up on changing course in Iraq, but Russ Feingold has a little more integrity than that.

McCain Has Issues Beyond Iseman

You know, before the whole Iseman and Maverick business, I was ready to note that John McCain's credentials on his signature issues, particularly national security and honesty, were beginning to come into question.

He put out a "no new taxes" pledge, and yet his health care plan seeks to "end the bias" toward employer-based health care by giving individuals a tax credit and treating employer-based benefits as taxable income. That would actually be a trillion-dollar tax increase, higher than any candidate has proposed this year. Empty words, useless platitudes.

He claims to be above reproach on the issue of torture, but after voting against banning torture in our intelligence agencies, he now has called on President Bush to veto the same intelligence authorization bill. Empty words, useless platitudes.

The supposedly reticent Obama campaign took McCain on directly on the issue of national security in a conference call.

Just got off a conference call with Susan Rice talking about the contrasts between her boy Barack Obama and John McCain on national security policy. One key point of emphasis was the strange notion coming from the McCain campaign that talking about focused counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan is irresponsible, whereas randomly threatening to start new wars is the height of good sense. As she put it "it's a strange contrast -- he says that somehow it's naive for a presidential candidate to outline how he would deal with that crucial national security challenge, but it's appropriate for him to joke about starting another war." A reporter from the Washington Times challenged her on the "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" business saying McCain was joking. Rice responds that "if he wants to say that he was joking and that's the kind of joke he thinks is funny, that's his perogative."

Even Joke Line is getting this message, that McCain looked soft on Al Qaeda by attacking Obama on targeted strikes in Pakistan, which is current US policy and has even yielded results. When Klein calls McCain a "loose cannon" on national security matters, that's not good for their camp.

Juan Cole also eviscerated McCain's tough talk on national security.

And I think there is good reason to ask whether McCain helped create al-Qaeda and the mess in Pakistan to begin with. It is time for someone to start holding the Cold Warriors who deployed a militant Muslim covert army against their leftist enemies accountable for the blow-back they created [...]

McCain appears never to have met a rightwing dictator he didn't like. McCain defends the dictator. Here is what McCain said about Musharraf late last December:

"Prior to Musharraf, Pakistan was a failed state," McCain said. "They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you're going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn't done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections."

So in the building confrontation between democratic parties and the military dictator who trashed the rule of law, which would McCain support? What kind of relations will a president McCain have with the new prime minister of Pakistan if McCain is on record supporting the dictatorship that preceded?

The potted history McCain offers is wrong, and it points to the deep problems of authoritarianism and admiration for dictatorship in McCain's political philosophy. Pakistan was not a failed state before 1999, and in fact most of its political problems derived from repeated military coups such as the one spearheaded by Musharraf, as well as from the US government giving the Pakistani military gobs of money and enormous stockpiles of weapons, and winking at its nuclear program. In fact by "US government" above, we really could just substitute "Senator John McCain."

He goes on with some very damaging stories about McCain and the Taliban, as well as former Pakistani dictator General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and the nuclear arsenal commenced on his watch. Our government is STILL making mistakes of this stripe, pressuring the new Pakistani government to retain Pervez Musharraf despite his thundering defeat in national elections, premised on the false belief that only a strongman can keep that country together (proven wrong by the election results).

Of course, this is all being swamped by the Iseman revelations, which the right and the broadcast media are pushing back against with all their might. Their myth of McCain as a straight-talking straight shooter is being threatened, and they must not let that happen. Of course, a few reality-based folks in the media see this for what it is:

"The press loves McCain. We're his base," MSNBC loudmouth Chris Matthews declared during the 2006 elections.

A new book, "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media" by David Brock and Paul Waldman, identifies Matthews as "the head of the McCain fan club among the establishment press" but says he has plenty of company [...]

Unending use of the phrase "maverick," and unceasing praise of McCain's "straight talk," have shaped a highly favorable public image ... at a time when ratings for his fellow members of Congress are in the drink [...]

Still, the national press corps' "big feet" owe it to the country to put aside their pack mentality and subject McCain to the same critical scrutiny as other presidential hopefuls.

A year ago, on "Hardball," Matthews asked about Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations: "What have you done to deserve this job?"

The program's guest allowed that this was a "tough question" facing the full field of candidates.

"Not so much for McCain," Matthews interrupted. "He has deserved the presidency. Whether he should be president or not, it's up to the voters."

It's a different standard.

Now this is a major challenge for that media trying to coat McCain with teflon. Since he may have to stay in the public financing system for the primary, and subsequently may have only $13 million to use between now and the Republican National Convention, McCain may have to rely on free media. They've been very reliable so far. But if this scandal goes drip-drip-drip, and particularly the corruption angle plays out, with news of favors for lobbyists, he's going to have an impossible time righting the ship.

UPDATE: By the way Matt Browner Hamlin has the most complete coverage of the Iseman story I've seen. I guess the media is pulling an "OH NOES NOT OUR MAVERICKZ!" on it.

The 2008 Election Just Turned

Three major developments globally have the potential to really change the dynamic in the Presidential election. Fidel Castro's resignation, the declaration of independence in Kosovo, and the resounding defeat of General-Dictator Pervez Musharraf's party in elections in Pakistan, are major, world-changing events that could be extremely positive for the world and the people in those nations, or profoundly destabilizing, over the next several years. Will Castro's exit usher in political and economic reforms? Will the counter-productive embargo finally be lifted? Or will US policy toward Cuba remain in its 50-year stasis, and will more sinister possibilities reveal themselves? Will Kosovo receive their independence and spark other democratic movements in the region, or will Serbia and Russia start another war in the Balkans? Will the opposition movements force Musharraf from power in Pakistan, or will the military render the will of the people moot, and will the society remain under martial law or worse? These are important political questions, and the next President will have an opportunity to really alter the global landscape, with smarts and savvy and the use of soft-power diplomacy.

Whether you see now as a time to stick with someone with the experience to make these tough and delicate decisions, or to go with someone with a different mindset on foreign policy, this is certainly a momentous occasion. And certainly, contrasting the two candidates we have left on the Democratic side to Bush's third term proxy John McCain, the difference is stark. Here's an example of what can be done right now, in this case with respect to Pakistan.

Now that Musharraf is for all practical purposes about to be dispensed with, the Bush administration needs to take a new approach.

A good start would be to adopt Sen. Joseph Biden's proposal to triple U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion per year. A second step should be to acknowledge that flooding military aid into the country -- to the tune of $10 billion since the beginning of the Bush presidency -- has done more harm than good. In this administration -- if possible -- and certainly in the next, the United States needs to shift from "democracy promotion" to "democracy support." Instead of trying to impose pro-U.S. regimes by force, U.S. policy should involve supporting indigenous democratic forces with non-military assistance, taking its cues from the needs of these movements rather than trying to manipulate the results.

These really are the fundamental questions. Are we going to stick with a foreign policy of the neoconservative consensus, with bullying and unilateralism and warmongering, are we going to attempt to better our position in the world through cooperation and mutual support.

When you shrug off the posturing and the day to day of the campaign, these are the stakes.

UPDATE: The initial statements of the leading candidates on Castro's resignation does not make me particularly hopeful, though there are some vague claims about reaching out and talking on the condition that Cuba takes legitimate steps to reform, particularly by releasing political prisoners. Sadly, our Cuba policy is still tied to electoral politics, particularly with respect to Florida.

Color Me Surprised

Either we had a fair election in Pakistan, or Dictator Musharraf is so reviled that the results couldn't be countermanded:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him [...]

The results were interpreted here as a repudiation of Mr. Musharraf as well as the Bush administration, which has staunchly backed Mr. Musharraf for more than six years as its best bet in the campaign against the Islamic militants in Pakistan. American officials will have little choice now but to seek alternative allies from among the new political forces emerging from the vote.

It's amazing how you impose martial law and remove the independent judiciary and all of a sudden people get their back up.

Based on unofficial results, the Pakistan Peoples Party (the party of the late Benazir Bhutto) would have 110 seats in the National Assembly (out of 272), the Pakistan Muslim League-N (the party of Nawaz Sharif) would have 100, and Musharraf's party (the Pakistan Muslim League-Q) would have just 20 or 30 seats. Turnout was low, as voters feared violence, but the violence was also mercifully low.

The question of course is whether or not the opposition parties will attempt to remove Musharraf, and if so what resistance they will get from the military, and how the Bush Administration will react. Of course, with Musharraf losing badly the Administration looks even sillier for hitching their wagons to his star. In fact, it was likely that the main effect of that hitching was this crushing electoral defeat. If Musharraf leaves the country, as appears possible, the possibility exists for a leader in Pakistan hostile to American interests. All because, as Joe Biden is fond of saying, we don't have a Pakistan policy, we have a Musharraf policy.

Meanwhile, the Islamist parties lost in the areas around the tribal region where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are prominent. This, of course, is probably because they don't need the validation of the vote to rule when they have the machine gun.

Still, this is quite hopeful, that a dictator was so fully rejected that he could not even hold back the challenge to his own power. Between this and Kosovo's independence being recognized by the US and other leading European countries, I'm almost hopeful about democracy.

A Couple Horrible South Asian Bombings You Should Know About

The looming Pakistani election (it'll start in a matter of hours) has provoked renewed violence, with 37 dead as a suicide bomber ran his car into a Pakistan People's Party (Bhutto's party) rally and blew himself up. This is part of the parallel conflicts in Pakistan; the Islamists hate the PPP, but the PPP's main rival is really Musharraf, who is desperate to hold on to power, even though we've deluded ourselves into thinking that Musharraf is going after the Islamists. It's extremely complicated.

Meanwhile, today saw the worst suicide bombing in Afghanistan since 2001:

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a large crowd gathered at a dogfighting festival just outside this city in southern Afghanistan, killing some 80 people and wounding nearly 100 more in the country’s worst single bombing since 2001.

According to witnesses and officials, the bomber killed a local police chief, Abdul Hakim Jan, a number of his guards and scores of villagers attending the event in the district of Argandab, just north of Kandahar city.

The governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khaled, said the dead numbered 80 and the wounded over 90. A spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Kabul, Dr. Abdullah Fahim, said the Kandahar hospital had received 67 bodies. But some families had taken bodies straight home for burial from the scene of the blast, he said.

The Taliban is claiming that they didn't even do this, and the implications of that are staggering. Could there be other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan with this kind of capacity.

Very sad.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

So Joe Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are headed to Pakistan to observe Monday's elections. Surely the dictator who suspended the Constitution long enough to throw out the entire judiciary will now ensure that the polls are free of fraud and vote tampering. After all, THREE US Senators are going to monitor a country of 164 million!

The first thing that Biden and Kerry and Hagel might want to do is schedule a meeting with Human Rights Watch:

A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan's top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

"They will massively rig to get their own people to win," Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. "If you get a ticket from these guys, take it."

I mean, it is physical evidence, and all. And certainly there's motive; the opposition party has vowed to impeach Musharraf if they get into power. Do you really think a dictator would let that happen?

Another thing the Senators should do is schedule their outbound flight now. Because it might be tough to get out of Dodge after the election:

Awan's comments came a day after Musharraf warned his opponents not to immediately claim fraud and stage demonstrations after the vote.

Another opposition party, headed by ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, rejected Musharraf's warning, saying it would stage nationwide protests if it believes the election was manipulated.

"We know Musharraf wants to rig the elections," said Sadiq ul-Farooq, a senior member of Sharif's party. "If he did it, we will force him to quit through street protests."

Monday should be fun. If your idea of fun is millions pouring onto the streets in riots and martial law and an unstable nation with a significant Islamist population and nuclear weapons.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

After a long series detailing the challenges in Pakistan, McClatchy out and out says that it is the central front in the war on terror.

A new generation of "very battle-hardened" young Islamic militants is destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan, and the country's U.S.-backed military is nowhere near ready to conduct major operations against it, senior American intelligence officials said Friday.

The militants have expanded their violent campaign from Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas to "Pakistan proper" and they killed more people last year than they did in all the years from 2001 to 2006 combined, said the officials, speaking in testimony to Congress and in interviews.

The officials also acknowledged that al Qaida, which cooperates with the homegrown Pakistani militants and with the Taliban, who're battling Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government, is planning more attacks on the West in the haven it's re-established along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The assessments raise new questions about the wisdom of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq before American-led forces had defeated al Qaida in Afghanistan. Speaking Friday in Germany, Defense Secretary Robert Gates also conceded that European nations critical of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq are reluctant to support its efforts to secure Afghanistan.

Pakistan's government is newly aware of the threats, but despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid, its army remains unable to conduct the sophisticated counter-insurgency campaign that Washington wants, the officials said.

Afghanistan has slipped to the background of the events of the day, but it's not only slipping away, the militants who are fighting effectively there are also growing strong enough to mount an insurgency inside Pakistan. We hitched ourselves to a dictator hungry for his own power and more concerned with making a deal with the Taliban for political expediency than taking them on. And just recently, Pervez Musharraf has brokered another deal that does not only destabilize his own country, but Afghanistan as well.

The announcement of a cease-fire just a few weeks into a determined military operation against one of Pakistan’s most wanted men, the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, has once again raised questions about the Pakistani government’s commitment to combating militancy in the country’s tribal areas.

Pakistani analysts said they feared that the cease-fire was reminiscent of past deals that allowed the militants to regroup and fortify their stronghold, turning the tribal areas into a veritable ministate for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. United States officials have long voiced reservations that any further deals with the militants would be counterproductive.

Spokesmen for Mr. Mehsud, who Pakistani and American officials say is linked to Al Qaeda and the attack that killed the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, announced the cease-fire last week. The government has not confirmed it, and a military spokesman said military operations against Mr. Mehsud and his followers, estimated in the thousands, were continuing.

But two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, said a cease-fire was in place.

Why would anyone be surprised by this. Musharraf will hook up with anyone as long as they allow him to control the country with an iron fist.

This is fast going the way of Iraq, an intractable situation where the President's bungling has gotten us into a situation it will be almost impossible for the next President to extricate him or herself from. Why anyone would want that job at this point is beyond me.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Tim Johnson and some others at McClatchy Newspapers have been telling a little story over the last week or so about Pakistan, the state of things in the unsteady tribal regions, and the upcoming elections. It's some great in-depth reporting, and it reveals just what a state that country is in.

First of all, this upcoming election is a joke. The government has banned international observers from conducting exit polls of the vote count, in defiance of Bush Administration requests. In most countries, the exit poll is a key tool for observers to determine the adequacy of the vote (but not here; of course, since we have no federal standard, most international observers wouldn't even monitor a national election in the United States). The courts will have no jurisdiction over electoral disputes; instead a handpicked Federal Election Commission will be the ruling body. Of course, there is no real independent judiciary in Pakistan anymore as it is. And the Bush Administration isn't likely to push for one, either.

The Bush administration has signaled that it will continue to tolerate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on his country's judiciary at least until after a Feb. 18 national election.

Calling Musharraf an indispensable ally, U.S. officials have largely declined to criticize his ouster of top judges and said that questions about restoring the courts' independence should be put on hold until after the election.

Pakistani analysts said that muzzling the courts might help the embattled and increasingly unpopular leader remain in power, and administration officials told Congress this week that nothing should be done to press Musharraf on the judiciary until after the election.

"They need to have an independent judiciary, but I can't see them doing it till after the election, with all the players, including the new players," said Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher, the State Department's point man on Pakistan.

Asked if he considered Musharraf indispensable to the United States, Boucher replied, "I do."

This is of course perfectly consistent, since the Administration doesn't have much use or desire for an independent judiciary in this country. Musharraf, in the meantime, is running what amounts to a political campaign to discredit the former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, whose ouster sparked the reformer movement and prefigured the imposition of martial law:

Meanwhile, the vendetta between Musharraf and Chaudhry is intensifying. Aides who accompanied Musharraf on a trip to Europe gave journalists a seven-page dossier that charged that Chaudhry displayed "bizarre behavior" on the bench, demanded luxury cars with police escorts, humiliated underlings, denied a guest the use of a bathroom and submitted dubious medical claims.

Among those medical claims, the dossier said, were charges for "a gadget to test diabetes, contact lens solution, face masks, creams, toothpaste (and) acne lotions."

This is what Musharraf is spending his time with, while in the meantime, the Pakistani factions of the Taliban are growing stronger. They've moved out of the border regions and into Peshawar.

A disparate group of tribal armed militant groups, some of them linked to al Qaida, announced the formation of an alliance last month called The Taliban Movement of Pakistan. The 40-man leadership is from seven tribal agencies and eight bordering districts, underscoring the movement's reach. The group is thought to have 5,000 to 10,000 fighters and is growing steadily as it gains momentum.

U.S. officials are deeply concerned that the insurgency is becoming bolder and expanding faster than had been anticipated, a State Department official said.

"The feeling is that we are not dealing with a terrorist group here, but an insurrectionist movement," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "That's an elevation without question from what we've been dealing with."

There are now ties between the leadership of this insurrection and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. This new leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is apparently consolidating forces and creating a movement in the border areas. There's a bit more here.

Could this be why we suddenly took out yet another #3 of Al Qaeda in Pakistan? (By the way, it's extremely interesting that happened just after Pervez Musharraf appeared to rebuff US appeals for a greater CIA presence in the country. Perhaps Musharraf gave up some intelligence and allowed a drone plane over as a make-good). Is this to send a message to Mehsud as much as trying to stop someone who is accused of promoting attacks on Pakistan's neighbor, Afghanistan?

Of course, we know that Afghanistan is starting to spin out of control, and no, this isn't proof that the Taliban has lost. Usually, when the country becomes a failed state, it kind of means the opposite.

The independent study finds that the Taliban, which two years ago was largely viewed as a defeated movement, has been able to infiltrate and control sizable parts of southern and southeastern Afghanistan, leading to widespread disillusionment among Afghans with the mission.

"The prospect of again losing significant parts of Afghanistan to the forces of Islamic extremists has moved from the improbable to the possible," the study says, warning that Afghanistan could revert to a "failed state."

The report is critical of nearly every governmental and international organization involved in Afghanistan, including the Bush administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling their efforts inadequate, poorly coordinated and occasionally self-defeating.

So we're losing ground in the entire region, actually, with allies who are both undemocratic and incompetent, and enemies who are gaining ground.

Welcome to foreign policy in the Age of Bush.

Forgotten Wars Update

When you combine Robert Gates calling for an additional 3,000 Marines in Afghanistan to this suicide bombing at a Kabul luxury hotel (which targeted the Norwegian foreign minister), I think it's fair to say that things are slipping for American interests in South Asia. I could add in the continued attacks in Pakistan, as well as new evidence about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto that makes it look like a coordinated plot which the Musharraf government may have known more about than they have let on. The next President really has a mess on his hands in that part of the world, almost to the extent that you can trick yourself into thinking Bush is setting deliberate booby traps to ensure that the next leader is disliked almost as much as he is.

Busharraf

Dick Cheney's man in Islamabad on Benazir Bhutto's death:

The night of the assassination, Musharraf believes Bhutto broke a basic rule of security in a crowded charged political rally: to be particularly careful when leaving.

"She should have just gone and moved fast, gone and waved, yes. But if you're standing and -- because you are vulnerable. You're vulnerable and people are charging," Musharraf says. "And all the film that you see, people are charging. Now, when people are there by the hundreds swarming around you, this man is one of them. Who can check these people at that stage?"

"And the mistake she made, if I understand you correctly, was stopping?" Logan asks.

"Yes. But then the mistake was not that," Musharraf says. "I mean, God was kind -- she went into the car in spite of the fact that she was waving and all that. She did go into the car. Now is the point. Why did she stand outside the car?"

"Why did she stand up in the hatch?" Logan asks.

"Entirely. Who's to blame?" Musharraf replies.

Asked who is to blame, Musharraf says, "Only she."

"So Benazir Bhutto, in your words, should bear some responsibility for what took place for her own death?" Logan asks.

"For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers," Musharraf says.

"Don't you think it will make her supporters crazy to hear you say that?" Logan asks.

"Well, I don't think so. I mean, that's the fact. She shouldn't have stood up," Musharraf says.

It's all her fault, I guess, for getting in the way of that gunman's bullet and that bomb. She clearly didn't listen to her betters.

Why does this remind me of nothing so much as this?

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "

"What was her answer?" I wonder.

"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

Man, do these authoritarians have a lot in common. I guess this is why we just sent Pakistan 18 new F-16s.

Also, in addition to the coldness and the cruelty, neither of them can find Osama bin Laden.

(By the way, don't be surprised if Fourthbranch takes advantage of the chaos to get the CIA into Waziristan. I don't know if this is because of legacy or a 2008 strategy or what, but it's about 7 years too late.)