BUSH, PAKISTAN, DISASTER, PELOSI, IMPEACHMENT...

On Tuesday I talked a little about a new book, coming out this week, DECEPTION: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons. One premise: not only did the U.S. know what Pakistan was up to, but that five U.S. presidents aided and abetted and willfully deceived the American public about the catastrophe being created in that unstable hellhole. Count backwards... then come forwards and keep in mind the stupidest, most ignorant, most willful, childish, irresponsible imbecile ever to get his hands on the levers of power has 15 more months-- 15 more months for what the NY Times reports one "senior administration official" said could be the "nightmare scenario" for the end of Bush's already disastrous term in office. (That's from tomorrow's Times,)

This morning's Times points out more American connivance in Pakistan, typically inept connivance that helped lead to the deaths of scores of Pakistanis yesterday as part of an assassination attempt against former (and possibly future) prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a convicted (by a Swiss court) money launderer with a long and an egregious history of incompetence and corruption, qualities the Bush Regime is overly comfortable with-- at home and abroad.

[T]he violence that greeted Ms. Bhutto on her return after eight years in exile and the finger-pointing between her camp and General Musharraf’s after the attack on her motorcade on Thursday has raised questions about whether the tenuous deal that the United States helped midwife can survive.

...Unresolved questions about the attack have added a new layer of distrust to relations between Ms. Bhutto and the government, as well as new uncertainties for the Bush administration policy.

On Friday, American officials acknowledged that there was no clear basis for confidence that the two leaders could work cooperatively. Now that Ms. Bhutto has returned to the country, they acknowledged that their control over events was limited, as Thursday’s bombing showed.

...“This backroom deal I think is going to explode in our face,” said Bruce Riedel, who advised three presidents on South Asian issues and is now at the Brookings Institution. “Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf detest each other, and the concept that they can somehow work collaboratively is a real stretch.”

Bhutto is widely viewed as the Bush Regime's pick to run the Pakistani show post-Musharraf. Want to take a guess how that's going down? No?... Then watch this graphic Pakistani report in Urdu or this shorter, cleaned up NBC News report:

Even some senior administration officials said privately and in a series of recent intelligence assessments that American influence over events in Pakistan was feared to be ebbing fast.

Some officials worry aloud that a year of unrest, violence and political intrigue in Pakistan may undercut Mr. Bush’s last chance to root out Osama bin Laden from the lawless territory where Al Qaeda has regrouped. Likewise, they fear, the unrest could cripple a renewed administration effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal, something that Bush administration officials worry about far more than they let on publicly.

And the same way that Bush deceived the American public about Pakistan's nuclear situation, he also deceived the public-- and possibly even himself-- about the strength of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their Pakistani (Pashtun) sympathizers/allies. "Bush and General Musharraf were publicly declaring that Al Qaeda’s ranks had been greatly weakened, and that the Taliban was a spent force" at the same time they were taking over effective control of the northwest part of the country. "Part of the problem of fashioning a forceful policy, critics like Mr. Markey say, was that the American approach to Pakistan was never sewn together as a whole. 'You had different parts of the U.S. government dealing with different problems,' said Mr. Markey, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations." Yes, welcome to the Bush Regime-- the same Regime which has never done anything right since taking power. They couldn't protect the country from bin-Laden on 9/11, after being warned; they have been incapable of-- or unwilling to-- restoring New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; they started an unjustified war which they have failed to win and have practically wrecked the economic backbone and social fabric of the country in the process-- not to mention driving America's status in the international community from top of the line to bottom of the barrel. And it could get worse because Nancy Pelosi has decided to take impeachment off the table. The Founding Fathers put it there for a reason, and George Bush is probably far worse than what they had in mind.