Pakistan next to be liberated by democracy?
Topic: General News.

What was I saying about Pakistan just a few days ago? [Below] If any regime is in the most danger of being overthrown by this massive overreaction to the Muhammad cartoons, it's Pervez Musharraf's. There has been days and days of violence all over the country and today Lahore saw the worst of it.

W. is supossed to be visiting Pakistan next month to put in a good word for good old Pervez, but he might not be there by the time Potus hits the runway. I'm not saying the Pakistani authorities aren't used to protests like this, but the rampant poverty, the poor response to the earthquake and the ongoing war in Afghanistan---just ramping up for the summer---along with the "outrage" over the Danish carttons, all makes the situation very dicey. If Musharraf dose go let's hope its not OBL taking over, because, remember, they have the Islamic bomb.

Katrina and Cheney:

The administration has launched a shock and awe campaign to convince everyone that critics of their handling of hurricane Katrina are all full of it. Heimat Security director Frances Townsend said, "I reject outright the suggestion that president Bush was anything less than fully involved, "with the governemnt response to Katrina. That might not be the tact they want to take in defending the administration, because that means to me that he knew exactly what was going on and blew it. It would be a better strategy to blame Michael Brown who Townsend said "had become bitter...trying to find someone else, anyone else to blame."

Does she mean just like the Cheney cabal is doing right now by blaming Harry Whittington? (Man, he's going to be able to call in some big time favors when this is all over!) It wasn't Dick's fault he swung around and pulled the trigger before looking, it was Whittington's fault for not knowing to keep his head down around Cheney. The Inquirer this morning says the "NRA drills member on three fundamental safety rules:Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot, and always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use. Hunters add a fourth commandment: Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it. "This means observing your prospective area of fire before you shoot," the NRA says on its Web site and in its promotional pamphlets. "Never fire in a direction in which there are people or any other potential for mishap. Think first. Shoot second." Wish he had followed those rules before going into Iraq.

Eventhough the White House rejects any "suggestion that president Bush was anything less than fully involved," in knowing about the Cheney shooting, the WaPo says the White House "deferred to Cheney on providing information to the public" and then he very properly deferred to a private citizen and who took "14 hours after the shooting to disclose it publicly."

As to why it took so long for the public to become informed about this, the story is that Cheney was more concerned about making sure his victim was OK...and then later that day..."The rest of the party had dinner." Katharine Armstrong said: "The last thing that was on our mind was the media. We were thinking about Harry." (riiiiight!)

The WaPo: "In a telephone interview, Armstrong said that she, her mother and her sister, Sara Storey Armstrong Hixon, decided on Sunday morning after breakfast to report the shooting accident to the media. 'It was my family's own volition, and the vice president agreed. We felt -- my family felt and we conferred as a family -- that the information needed to go public. It was our idea,' Armstrong said."

Well, that was nice of them to let everyone know the vice-president shot someone, I certainly wouldn't expect the government to ruffle these fine people's feathers by jumping the gun, so to speak, that would be uncouth.

New plan for Hamas:

TheNYT reports today that, "The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats."

That's a great plan! Defund the PA and make things so painful for the Palestinian people that they will overthrow their own leaders. That strategy worked real well in Haiti, I don't see any danger of things going badly in the Middle East. And it's not like Hamas isn't going to turn us and Israel into the bad guys and prop themselves up by blaming us for everything that goes wrong, just like Castro does. So all in all, a really good way for us to distance ourselves from criticsm that we're nothing more than Israeli puppets.

Khalil Shikaki, a pollster and the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in an interview for the Times story says that because "Fatah ran a lousy campaign...Israel and Washington want to do it over...The Palestinian Authority could collapse in six months." Not that's the way to show the world you're serious about spreading democracy.

Iraq do-over:

I heard Brig. Gen. William McCoy, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraqa say today on NPR's Morning Edition that the U.S. never intended to rebuild Iraq, the plan was really just to give them a leg up. So, that explains why we've squandered how many billions of dollars over there?

James Glanz has written a number of articles for the NYT pointing out all the flaws in the US plan for rebuilding Iraq and to say we really meant just to help them out a little bit is quite an admission of lowered expectations.