James Joyner on Afghanistan

James Joyner says what everyone but the wingnuts know, the war in Afghanistan is over and could never have been won.

That the war in Afghanistan has been unwinnable has been obvious to most outside analysts since well before the so-called surge of 2009. Now, the United States government has finally admitted the obvious in deeds if not words. 

Following the murder of six NATO troops in yet another "green on blue" attack in which Afghan soldiers supposedly fighting on our side killed NATO troops, the coalition has all but ended combined operations with Afghan army and police forces at the tactical level, requiring general officer approval for exceptions.

While spokesmen insisted that "we're not walking away" from the training and advisory mission that is the ostensible reason for continued Western presence in Afghanistan eleven years into the fight there, that statement rings hollow. As American Security Project Central and South Asia specialist Joshua Foust puts it, "The training mission is the foundation of the current strategy. Without that mission, the strategy collapses. The war is adrift, and it's hard to see how anyone can avoid a complete disaster at this point."

This mis-adventure was never winnable.  The people of Afghanistan hate the NATO forces and they hate their own corrupt government.  while over 2,000 American lives have been lost the NATO forceshave killed far more women and children.  Is it any wonder they hate us?  Our effort there depends on Pakistan which has demonstrated it is some less than a friend.

James then makes the same point BJ did yesterday.

Speaking of campaigns, one wonders what it will take for the debacle in Afghanistan, which has claimed 2,121 American lives, 257 so far this year, to become part of the discussion between the men vying for the post of commander-in-chief. Perhaps Mitt Romney, who has had one debacle after another on the campaign trail the past few days, will seize the opening to announce his support for rapid withdrawal.
More likely, however, both he and President Obama will continue to pretend that American soldiers and marines aren't dying in Afghanistan for a cause that's long since been lost.

Romney is a puppet to the neoconservatives so he can't support any withdrawal.

Not Really Anything New

Pakistan to Talk With Militants, New Leaders Say

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Faced with a sharp escalation of suicide bombings in urban areas, the leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government say they will negotiate with the militants believed to be orchestrating the attacks, and will use military force only as a last resort.

That talk has alarmed American officials, who fear it reflects a softening stance toward the militants just as President Pervez Musharraf has given the Bush administration a freer hand to strike at militants using pilotless Predator drones.

Many Pakistanis, however, are convinced that the surge in suicide bombings — 17 in the first 10 weeks of 2008 — is retaliation for three Predator strikes since the beginning of the year. The spike in attacks, combined with the crushing defeat of Mr. Musharraf’s party in February parliamentary elections, has brought demands for change in his American-backed policies.

Speaking in separate interviews, the leaders of Pakistan’s new government coalition — Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N — tried to strike a more independent stance from Washington and repackage the conflict in a more palatable way for Pakistanis.

They said they were determined to set a different course from that of President Musharraf, who has received generous military financial help of more than $10 billion from Washington for his support.

Musharraf"s "support" in the war on terror was always largely an illusion. His government has been talking to the Taliban and al-Qaeda all along. Musharraf has said just enough of the right words to keep the money flowing in from the Bush administration. The only change is that the new leaders are less willing to say the right words.

Benazir Bhutto and the WOT

I was directed to this by Andrew C McCarty in the NRO by a commentor in the post below. Now I don't often agree with Mr McCarthy there are some things I think he gets right.

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.

The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.

The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.

In that real Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s murder is not shocking. There, it was a matter of when, not if.

And it's hard to disagree with this:

The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.

Here is where he makes the standard wingnut mistake:

We don’t have the political will to fight the war on terror every place where jihadists work feverishly to kill Americans. And, given the refusal of the richest, most spendthrift government in American history to grow our military to an appropriate war footing, we may not have the resources to do it.

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

Shortly after 911 another person I rarely agree with, Pat Buchanan said something that I did agree with, "they (the jihadists) don't hate us because of who we are they hate us because of where we are. Osama bin Laden himself made it clear that the major reason for attacks on the US was the presence of US military forces in Saudi Arabia. US forces are not in the middle east to protect the US or it's citizens - they are there to protect the interests of multinational corporations. It's certainly not about bringing Democracy to the region. The Bush/Cheney administration's original goal for Iraq was to replace the tyrant, Saddam, with a US friendly tyrant, Chalabi. Since he turned out to be an Iranian spy perhaps it's best that didn't work out.

The best way to protect the US from the Jihadists in the middle east is to get our military out. It's time that the US military be used to protect the US not the interests of Exxon-Mobile and the other multinational corporations. In 2007 46 percent of the Pakistanis supported bin Laden. I would guess it was significantly less in 2001.

The wingers are enraged that Ron Paul would say;

Ron Paul blames the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on the “interventionist” policy of the United States, and says Al Qaeda is justified in being “annoyed” at us.

I don't agree with Dr Paul on much either but he sure gets that one right.

I don't know

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated in Pakistan

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 27 -- Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday at a political rally, two months after returning from exile to attempt a political comeback.

Now I don't have a clue what this will lead to. It will further destabilize a country that is already unstable. Al Qaeda is taking credit but Musharraf is being blamed.

I also don't have a clue as to how this will impact US politics. Joe Scarborough thinks he knows - it will help Rudy the fascist but as Greg Sargent points out:

As Atrios says, the logic is very tortured here indeed. But it's actually worse than that. This rank bit of punditry serves as yet another reminder of just how gullible the pundit corps in general has been about Rudy's candidacy, on two levels: First, the near wholesale acceptance of the idea that Rudy's mayoralty counts as counter-terrorism experience; and second, the presumption that he automatically has a political advantage on terrorism over his rivals.

The Republicans themselves don't even see Rudy as being that strong on security.

When will they ever learn?

Will they ever learn that when you give guns to people who hate you they will eventually use them to kill you?
U.S. Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

Now I seem to recall that we supported the Mujahedeen next door in Afghanistan to fight our enemies, the Russians. Of course the result of that was al-Qaeda. Now we are going to support Pakistani tribesman to fight our enemy, al-Qaeda. The tribesman will be happy to accept our help but are probably more sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Just as crazy as the rest of them

One of the major arguments against the continued occupation of Iraq has been that it has so stretched the military that the US could not respond to an additional crisis. Well that crisis may be at hand in the form of a nuclear Pakistan. In an Op-Ed today, Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem, Frederick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon prove they are just as delusional and bat shit crazy as the rest of the neocons. Yes they even seem to have an imaginary army to work with.
Matthew Yglesias and Max Bergmann do a really good job of sorting out the insanity.

Iran Redux

I have been critical of David Ignatius in the past but today he's right on the money with his comparison of 1970s Iran and present day Pakistan.
In Pakistan, Echoes of Iran

JERUSALEM -- As we struggle to make sense of the current political crisis in Pakistan, it's useful to think back nearly 30 years to the wave of protests that toppled the shah of Iran and culminated in the Islamic Republic -- a revolutionary earthquake whose tremors are still shaking the Middle East.

The shah was America's friend, just like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He was our staunch ally against the bogeyman of that time, the Soviet Union, just as Musharraf has been America's partner in fighting al-Qaeda. The shah ignored America's admonitions to clean up his undemocratic regime, just as Musharraf has. And as the shah's troubles deepened, the United States hoped that moderate opposition leaders would keep the country safe from Muslim zealots, just as we are now hoping in Pakistan.

And yet the Iranian explosion came -- a firestorm of rage that immolated any attempt at moderation or compromise. A similar process of upheaval has begun in Pakistan -- with one terrifying difference: Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

The Iran analogy was made forcefully two weeks ago by Gary Sick, a Columbia professor who helped oversee Iran policy for the Carter administration during the time of the revolution. "There was no Plan B," Sick wrote in an online posting. He sees the same dynamic at work in Pakistan. "We have bet the farm on one man -- in this case Pervez Musharraf -- and we have no fall-back position, no alternative strategy in the event that does not work."

One of the legacies of the Bush administration will be there was never a plan B. We have seen it in Iraq and now we see it in Pakistan. Can we look back 30 years to look at what we could have done differently in Iran to get an idea of what we should do or have done in Pakistan?

So ask yourself: What Iran policy would have made sense, in hindsight, given the ruinous consequences of the Iranian revolution? Should the United States have encouraged the shah to crack down harder against protesters and ride out the storm, as some hard-liners urged at the time? Or should it have moved more quickly to encourage a change of regime, after it became obvious the shah couldn't or wouldn't reform?

Even now, almost 30 years later, it's hard to know what we should have done. And perhaps that's the point.

There is probably nothing that can be done now.

The abiding truth, about Iran then and Pakistan now, is that outsiders don't understand the forces at work in these societies well enough to try to manipulate events. The disaster of Iran happened partly because of American meddling -- in installing the shah in the first place and then enabling his autocratic rule. Pakistan, too, has suffered over the years from too much U.S. intervention.

Pakistanis are in the streets this week protesting Musharraf's gross assault on democracy. I hope they succeed in creating a Pakistan that is more free and democratic. I pray that the reformers can work with the Pakistani military to suppress al-Qaeda and Taliban movements that would destroy any semblance of democracy in that country.

But changing Pakistan is a job for Pakistanis, and history suggests that the more we meddle, the more likely we are to get things wrong.

Pakistan is on the edge of chaos in large part because of US involvement and more will simply make it worse. It appears the Bush administration is going to do nothing - for once they may be doing the right thing. But I hope they know where the nukes are. A nuclear Pakistan is scary enough, a nuclear Taliban/al-Qaeda is a nightmare.

With Friends Like These

Or Who's The Enemy Again?
The Bush administration continues to say that Iran is the center of the "axis of evil". In reality of course it's the Bush family friends, the Saudis who are the Hub of the axis of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror
The desert kingdom supplies the cash and the killers

Yet wealthy Saudis remain the chief financiers of worldwide terror networks. “If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” said Stuart Levey, the US Treasury official in charge of tracking terror financing.

Extremist clerics provide a stream of recruits to some of the world’s nastiest trouble spots.

An analysis by NBC News suggested that the Saudis make up 55% of foreign fighters in Iraq. They are also among the most uncompromising and militant.

Half the foreign fighters held by the US at Camp Cropper near Baghdad are Saudis. They are kept in yellow jumpsuits in a separate, windowless compound after they attempted to impose sharia on the other detainees and preached an extreme form of Wahhabist Islam.

In recent months, Saudi religious scholars have caused consternation in Iraq and Iran by issuing fatwas calling for the destruction of the great Shi’ite shrines in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, some of which have already been bombed. And while prominent members of the ruling al-Saud dynasty regularly express their abhorrence of terrorism, leading figures within the kingdom who advocate extremism are tolerated.

Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan, the chief justice, who oversees terrorist trials, was recorded on tape in a mosque in 2004, encouraging young men to fight in Iraq. “Entering Iraq has become risky now,” he cautioned. “It requires avoiding those evil satellites and those drone aircraft, which own every corner of the skies over Iraq. If someone knows that he is capable of entering Iraq in order to join the fight, and if his intention is to raise up the word of God, then he is free to do so.”

The Saudis have done little to stop this.

According to Levey, not one person identified by America or the United Nations as a terrorist financier has been prosecuted by Saudi authorities.

On the other side of the arch villain Iran things are not to rosy either.
Musharraf Leaves White House in Lurch

For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

So a country that already has nukes it teetering on chaos and their is the very real risk that really crazy people will get the bomb.

Good job George, Dick and Condi!!!

Musharraf does what Cheney (and Rudy) dream of

Musharraf Declares State of Emergency

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 3 — The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency on Saturday night, suspending the country’s Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.

The move appeared to be an effort by General Musharraf to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the country’s Supreme Court, civilian political parties and hard-line Islamists. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was expected to rule within days on the legality of General Musharraf’s re-election last month as the country’s president, which opposition groups have said was improper.

The emergency declaration was in direct defiance of repeated calls this week from senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not to do so. A day earlier, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, Admiral William J. Fallon, told General Musharraf and his top generals in a meeting here that declaring emergency rule would jeopardize the extensive American financial support for the Pakistani military.

How long can Musharraf hang on and how long before the country splinters. Musharraf is under attack by both the Islamic extremists and the secular pro Democracy crowd. His only support is the military and that is full of Taliban supporters. I hope that the US and the west know where the nukes are - that is the real mushroom cloud threat not Iran. Just one more example of how the insane Bush/Cheney neocon policy has made the world a more dangerous place.

Losing the WOT

While the Bush administration continues to spin it's wheels in the sands of Iraq and threaten Iran the real war against the real enemy, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan.
Pakistan Seen Losing Fight Against Taliban And Al-Qaeda

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Pakistan's government is losing its war against emboldened insurgent forces, giving al-Qaeda and the Taliban more territory in which to operate and allowing the groups to plot increasingly ambitious attacks, according to Pakistani and Western security officials.

The depth of the problem has become clear only in recent months, as regional peace deals have collapsed and the government has deferred developing a new strategy to defeat insurgents until Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can resolve a political crisis that threatens his presidency.

Meanwhile, radical Islamic fighters who were evicted from Afghanistan by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion have intensified a ruthless campaign that has consumed Pakistan's tribal areas and now affects its major cities. Military officials say the insurgents have enhanced their ability to threaten not only Pakistan but the United States and Europe as well.

"They've had a chance to regroup and reorganize," said a Western military official in Pakistan. "They're well equipped. They're clearly getting training from somewhere. And they're using more and more advanced tactics."

Pakistan's military, on the other hand, is considering pulling back from the fight -- at least partially -- in the face of mounting losses, the official said.

While the Iraq war creates more enemies daily the real 9/11 enemy is regrouping and becoming an even greater threat to the US and the world. The occupation of Iraq and the saber rattling towards Iran are not only foolish but treasonous.

So How Goes That Global War On Terror

We saw yesterday that General Pretaeus would not or could not answer John Warner's question "Do you feel that [Iraq war] is making America safer"? . Of course it hasn't, in fact it has made us less safe by creating new recruits for the group that was actually responsible for 911 ans inflaming much of the Muslim world. One indication of that can be found here:
Poll: Bin Laden tops Musharraf in Pakistan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- a key U.S. ally -- is less popular in his own country than al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to a poll of Pakistanis conducted last month by an anti-terrorism organization.

Additionally, nearly three-fourths of poll respondents said they oppose U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, according to results from the poll conducted by the independent polling organization Terror Free Tomorrow.

"We have conducted 23 polls all over the Muslim world, and this is the most disturbing one we have conducted," said Ken Ballen, the group's head. "Pakistan is the one Muslim nation that has nuclear weapons, and the people who want to use them against us -- like the Taliban and al Qaeda -- are more popular there than our allies like Musharraf."

The poll was conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow by D3 Systems of Vienna, Virginia., and the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion. Interviews were conducted August 18-29, face-to-face with 1,044 Pakistanis across 105 urban and rural sampling points in all four provinces across the nation. Households were randomly selected.

According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent.

Al-Qaeda may have decentralized but it is stronger and more dangerous than ever. Worldwide terrorist attacks have increased significantly since the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And what about those good Bush friends, the Saudis.
U.S.: Saudis Still Filling Al Qaeda's Coffers

Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda.

"If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News.

Despite some efforts as a U.S. ally in the war on terror, Levey says Saudi Arabia has dropped the ball. Not one person identified by the United States and the United Nations as a terror financier has been prosecuted by the Saudis, Levey says.

The invasion of Iraq was never about making the US or the world safe. It was always about Dick Cheney's lust for hegemony over the oil rich middle east.

Who's a threat?

As Glenn Greenwald points out the psychopathic neocons are demanding that we bomb Iran. Meanwhile our current "friends" in Pakistan are doing this:
Pakistan scholars honour Bin Laden

A LEADING group of Pakistani Islamic scholars today awarded its highest honour to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, saying it was in reaction to Britain's knighthood for Salman Rushdie.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani minister who caused outrage by remarking that the award given to the Satanic Verses author justified suicide attacks announced that he was set to visit Britain next month.

The Pakistani Ulema Council, a private body that claims to be the biggest of its kind in the country with 2000 scholars, said it had given Bin Laden the title “Saifullah”, or Sword of Allah.

And they are also doing this:
New Photos Show Secret Pakistan Plutonium Plant; Fear of More Weapons Being Made

A satellite photograph obtained by ABC News reveals Pakistan is nearing completion of a third, previously unknown plutonium production reactor, suggesting Pakistan may be planning to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal.

"With large stocks of plutonium, Pakistan can build a new generation of lighter, more powerful weapons that can more easily be launched via missiles and can cause far more damage," said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which, along with Digital Globe, provided the satellite image to ABC News.

Now explain to me how a country that is the home to the men who attacked this country on 9/11 and already has nukes is not a greater threat than Iran.

Thanks to Cernig for the mention

The Saga Of Mid East Incompetence

As we have mentioned here before we are mired in a Middle East quagmire because there was no one in the Bush/Cheney cabal who actually knew anything about the Middle East. With that in mind this should come as no surprise.
Embassy Staff In Baghdad Inadequate, Rice Is Told

Ryan C. Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, bluntly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a cable dated May 31 that the embassy in Baghdad -- the largest and most expensive U.S. embassy -- lacks enough well-qualified staff members and that its security rules are too restrictive for Foreign Service officers to do their jobs.

[......]

You could use a well-managed political section of 50 people" who know what they are doing, the official said, but Crocker does not have it because many staffers assigned to the embassy are "too young for the job," or are not qualified and are "trying to save their careers" by taking an urgent assignment in Iraq.

That's bad but it gets even worse. Pakistan is coming apart at the seams.
America's Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames

LAHORE, Pakistan Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy.

And who's handling Pakistan on the American side? None other than the insane - delusional - incompetent Vice President and his band of Orcs.

The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office. Anne W. Patterson, the new U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, is an expert on Latin American "drugs and thugs"; Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, is a former department spokesman who served three tours in Hong Kong and China but never was posted in South Asia. "They know nothing of Pakistan," a former senior U.S. diplomat said.

Current and past U.S. officials tell me that Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney's office. The vice president, they say, is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any U.S. criticism of him. This all fits; in recent months, I'm told, Pakistani opposition politicians visiting Washington have been ushered in to meet Cheney's aides, rather than taken to the State Department.

This has both the CIA and DOD concerned.

With Cheney in charge and Rice in eclipse, rumblings of alarm can be heard at the Defense Department and the CIA. While neither agency is usually directly concerned with decision-making on Pakistan, both boast officers with far greater expertise than the White House and State Department crew. These officers, many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played -- helping the United States go after al-Qaeda while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the CIA have been privately expressing concern about the lack of an alternative to blind support for Musharraf. Ironically, both departments have historically supported military rulers in Pakistan. They seem to have learned their lesson. It's a pity that those calling the shots have not.

What is at stake? Quite simply, the danger of a civil war or the country unraveling even more dramatically than it did when it lost Bangladesh in 1971.

Can the US or the world survive another 18 months of Bush/Cheney incompetence?

When bad people do even worse things

The Bush administration's so called "ally" in the so called "War on Terror", Pakistan, is in a melt down mode. Cernig at NewsHoggers has the details.

• Pakistan Political Violence - At Least 32 Dead
• Pakistan On Brink Of Disaster

The Crisis Worth Watching

The ever alert Cernig at his well named blog NewsHog once again reminds us of a crisis we should be watching but aren't - Pakistan. Go check out
Pakistan - The Crisis Worth Watching

The Peter Principle Administration

If there is anything more dangerous than an evil administration it's an evil and incompetent administration. Administration Peter Principle poster boy Alberto Gonzales is getting most of the attention today but there are plenty more in the State Department and at the Pentagon. Now we don't have a name associated with this newest bit of insanity but when it comes to stupid ideas this is right up there with attacking Iran.
US looks at plan to oust Musharraf

THE US has indicated for the first time that it might be willing to back plans by elite echelons of the military in Islamabad to oust Pervez Musharraf from power, as the Pakistani President was beset by major new difficulties over his attempts to sack the country's chief justice.
Reports yesterday quoting highly placed US diplomatic and intelligence officials - previously rusted on to the view that General Musharraf was an indispensable Western ally in the battle against terrorism - outlined a succession plan to replace him.
US officials told The New York Times the plan would see the Vice-Chief of the Army, Ahsan Saleem Hyat, take over from General Musharraf as head of the military and former banker Mohammedmian Soomro installed as president, with General Hyat wielding most of the power.

Now Pakistan is ripe for a takeover by al-Qaeda sympathizers anyway. Anything that further destablizes the country makes that even more likely. So, how does al-Qaeda with a nuke or three sound.

The US report suggests a growing disenchantment towards General Musharraf in Washington and indicates that the longstanding view that the alternative to his regime would be chaos and a takeover by extremist Islamic mullahs is no longer ascendant.

The US officials say hardline Islamists have usually not done well in elections in Pakistan and that if General Musharraf were removed, a doomsday scenario would not necessarily follow.

This is from the same people who brought you the "greeted with flowers" and the "war will pay for itself" scenarios in Iraq. The Peter Principle indeed.

Update
In the comments section my friend Cernig of NewsHog says he thinks I'm wrong on this. He says:

The mistake here is not allowing Musharaff to be deposed but allowing the military to continue its rule.

Yes, democratic governments in Pakistan have been notoriously corrupt but so have the military ones, they just cover it up better. The islamist parties have never polled well in Pakistan and in fact Musharaff relies on the Islamist parties for their support.

Add in the intelligence agency, the ISI, which controls and directs the Taliban and Al Qaeda and you have a scenario where if Pakistan ould give AQ a nuke they already would have done so.

Pakistan actually IS a place ripe for a return to democracy.

Well in fact he doesn't think I'm all that wrong and that the Peter Principle administration is making a mistake by letting the military stay in power. This history of this administration is one of making bad situations even worse. Yes, I agree Pakistan may be "ripe for Democracy" but it's unlikely that will happen in the turmoil following an overthrow of Musharraf. Much more likely would be the Taliban/al-Qaeda friendly ISI taking control.

Update
It looks like I may have been taken by Rupert Murdoch, Cernig has the details. In my defense it sounded like something stupid enough for the Bush/Cheney cabal to be considering.

Cheney - incompetent or insane

The headline reads:
Bush to Warn Pakistan to Act on Terror



And apparently he's going to leave it to the totally mad Lord of Darkness, Dick Cheney, to do it.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Pakistan on Monday to deliver what officials in Washington described as an unusually tough message Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda.

Mr. Cheney’s trip was shrouded in secrecy, and he was on the ground for only a few hours, sharing a private lunch with the Pakistani leader at his palace. Notably, Mr. Cheney traveled with the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Steve Kappes, an indication that the conversation with the Pakistani president likely included discussion of American intelligence agency contentions that Al Qaeda camps have been reconstituted along the border of Afghanistan.

The decision to send Mr. Cheney secretly to Pakistan came after the White House concluded that General Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Mr. Bush during a visit here in September. General Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country’s most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

This from Josh Marshall

Okay, it seems we need more updates on why Dick Cheney is too dangerously incompetent to have in any position of authority, let alone the vice presidency. You'll see for instance that this morning Cheney showed up in Islamabad warning President Musharraf that al Qaeda is "regrouping" along the Pakistani border. Musharraf must be a little confused since, didn't we sign off on the armistice his government signed with the jihadists and their protectors just a few months ago?

More to the point, last week Cheney claimed that Nancy Pelosi's position on Iraq would validate al Qaeda since al Qaeda's goal in Iraq is to show that our will can be broken. Reed Hundt chimed in and pointed out that it's far more likely that al Qaeda's goal is to bait us into ridiculous and unwinnable wars that will sap our military strength and financial power.

Sorry Josh, you've got it wrong, it's even worse. Dick Cheney is not too incompetent to be VP, he's to insane - mad - bonkers. Musharraf and the rest of the world knows it. Now Condi Rice is incompetent but Dick Cheney is bat shit crazy, a real life Dr Strangelove.