Good news — for a change — from Pakistan: The suspected mastermind of the Mumbai Terror has been arrested in a raid, the Guardian (U.K.) and others report. And this happened inside Pakistan.

Here's how the Guardian tells it:

If these reports are true, then the arrest inside dangerously unstable Pakistan comes less than two weeks after the deadly November 26 attacks throughout India's version of New York City.

Compare that with 9/11. We're seven-plus years and counting and still no Osama bin Laden, who also was believed in hiding in either Afghanistan or Pakistan or both.

The best news about the arrest, if it's true and if Lakhvi really was the mastermind, is that Pakistan itself did the capturing. Maybe this will help ease the bitter fight between India and Pakistan, both of which have nuclear weapons.

Former strongman Pervez Musharraf and the scary Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan's CIA) long dragged their heels in the search for bin Laden.

Not so, apparently, regarding the Mumbai Terror ringleader. Of course, it wasn't ISI that did the capturing of the alleged Mumbai Terror ringleader. It was another Pakistan agency.

Only four days ago, the New York Times reported, in "Pakistan's Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege," that the ISI shared intelligence with Lashkar and even provided protection for it.

The ISI did the same for bin Laden's crew. And in fact, ISI official Mahmoud Ahmad — who later turned out to have been Mohammed Atta's bagman — was having breakfast in D.C. on the morning of 9/11 with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, the chairs of Intelligence committees of the House and Senate. (See my August 10, 2004, item "Food for Thought.")

After 9/11, the two Floridians headed the formal congressional inquiry. Their breakfast with the Pakistan security official who was a bagman for one of the hijackers didn't make it into their 858-page report.

With that background, Goss was perfect for the job of CIA director, and three years after 9/11, George W. Bush gave him that job.

But this morning, at least, the news concerning Pakistan is good. If true, then the longtime undeclared war between Pakistan and India could be somewhat lessened.

On the other hand, Kashmir has always been the flash point between India and Pakistan, and it remains so.

You can't spell "down" without "Dow."

The only good thing about this morning's scheduled meltdown meeting of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and John McCain is that it confirms that Bush will not be president for much longer — he's actually hosting his successors in the White House.

Otherwise, what the hell are these guys doing? This is not democracy.

Neither Obama nor McCain has won the presidency yet, and Bush is the lame duck. Even if Bush were capable, it's not in our interest for the three of them to reach a consensus unless it's conducted in a democratic process as a publicly hashed-out and argued bit of horse-trading (I'm not talking about a debate). Even then it wouldn't be democratic because we haven't elected any of these three guys to lead the country starting in January 2009.

Besides, you can hardly call this a meeting of the minds if one of the participants is Bush. The mindless, careless, disinterested front man hasn't been running the country — Dick Cheney has, with the help of three guys formerly on our payroll: Karl Rove, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Democracy is what's going on in Congress right now: messy, contentious, and often ugly, with alliances shifting and factions of Democrats and Republicans forming with each other and dissolving, instead of a strictly bipartisan war in which Republicans march in lockstep at the White House's bidding.

Democracy is also messy, ugly episodes like the Bonus Army, the economy-ravaged, broke World War I vets who camped out in protest in D.C. and clashed with the Army in 1932, during Depression I.

Is a Wall Street Executive Bonus army forming? Or is the government worried about the broke-ass rest of us descending on D.C.? The Register (U.K.) reports this morning, based on an Army Times story: "US Army unit deployed to home front: Nonlethal force for civil unrest." (For background on the grim 1932 clash, see NPR's 2005 video and story "Soldier Against Soldier: The Story of the Bonus Army.")

Still, there may be no need to rush into a massive bailout — as Press Clips reader John McGowan argues in a detailed comment attached to my Tuesday item "Krauts Sour on Wall Street Bailout."

Don't pay much attention to Bush's speech last night. He doesn't know shit about the economy — even with his daddy's help he couldn't make it in the oil bidness, and he became the Texas Rangers' owner without investing hardly any money at all. (The real owners brought him in so they could pimp for a new stadium at public expense, a previous example of his pimping for corporate welfare).

Now, he's performing as the front man for the GOP/Wall Street types who hunger for a quick dose of corporate welfare at our expense through a plan that would throw the rest of us onto the welfare rolls.

Yes, there is definitely pressure on the U.S. from other countries to be quick about a bailout plan ("Overnight Markets," Financial Times).

Although maybe there's not as much pressure from other countries as Hank Paulson and crew would have us believe: See this morning's Washington Post story "U.S. Appeals Abroad Fall Flat as Leaders See No Crisis at Home."

Still, there's no doubt that something does have to be done quickly, but maybe it doesn't have to be an entire, massive bailout right this second. Aren't there more intermediate steps that could calm things down without putting the average American in deeper hock for the unimaginable future?

But in this country, there's always such a rush by lobbyists that all important issues can't be fully hashed out. Remember that during the hubbub leading to the disastrous October 2002 Iraq war resolution, debate was sharply curtailed on the orders of the White House and the GOP leaders who controlled Congress.

And after the unjustified invasion, Democrats like Henry Waxman and Byron Dorgan were prevented from conducting hearings on how the Cheney-Rumsfeld regime was conducting the war. (See my April 2005 item "Fix Your Corrupt Regime" for details.)

Just one of many examples: In February 2005, Waxman pushed for a hearing on allegations of "waste, fraud and abuse in U.S. Government Contracting in Iraq." He was rebuffed and had to hold an unofficial hearing that, even though it revealed fascinating and major corruption including actual bundles of cash, had no official standing and, as a result, garnered little press coverage.

And now there's a real danger of another invasion: the possibility of a GOP-engineered October Surprise involving Pakistan that could scare voters into sticking with the Republicans and electing McCain. Scott Horton laid that out in Harper's the other day.

For guidance, however, look to the markets — the one stock exchange that hasn't yet melted down and isn't asking for a bailout: Intrade Prediction Market, where the current action on John Delaney's sophisticated and clever operation shows that the betting favors Obama.

I wrote about Intrade during the Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby meltdowns, but because our site is screwed up you may not be able to find those items. So here they are:

"Wolfowitz Out? Bet On It." (May 7, 2007)
"Wolfie's Stock Soars" (May 8, 2007)
" 'You're a Criminal!' " (June 6, 2007)

And now here's a collection of today's links from all over . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

McClatchy: 'Election officials telling college students they can't vote'

BBC: 'US rivals in economy crisis talks'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Naked man falls to his death after Tasered by cops in Brooklyn standoff'

Slate: 'Is Paulson's bailout bill unconstitutional?'

Dawn (Pakistan): 'We’re in a state of war: Asif'

N.Y. Times: 'Bush Aides Linked to Talks on Interrogations'

N.Y. Post: 'WALL STREET WHIZZES LOOK TO HEAD WEST'

BBC: 'What would financial Armageddon look like?'

N.Y. Daily News: 'This loss to Brewers could strand Mets in October'

N.Y. Post: 'PLAY TRIPPER: PAUL'S GAL SKIPS MTA VOTE FOR HIS ISRAEL JAUNT'

BBC: 'Q&A: US $700bn bail-out plan'

BBC: 'Japan offers solution to financial crisis'

Financial Times: 'Bail-out fears hit credit markets'

Financial Times: 'Banking after the bail-out'

Financial Times: 'Bail-out cost ‘impossible’ to estimate'

AME Info (Dubai): 'Jordan poised to enter nuclear age'

History was unmade this weekend in New York City: In the Bronx, the closing of the House That Ruth Built, and in lower Manhattan, the closing of the houses that ruthlessness built.

A double dose of tears for those Wall Street investment bankers in their skyboxes at Yankee Stadium.

A double dose of publicly subsidized bailouts for both the Yankees and the investment banks.

But first . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

MarketWatch: 'End of capitalism as we know it'

Telegraph (U.K.): 'Islamabad hotel blast 'was Pakistan's 9/11'

N.Y. Post: 'COPS: JEW GUYS NEED TO TALK!'

The Register (U.K.): 'Sockpuppeting civil servant Wikifiddles himself'

McClatchy: 'Congress' fiscal conservatives declare free market "dead" '

Jurist: 'Former Special Forces officer wins transgender discrimination lawsuit'

Financial Times (U.K.): 'Taxpayers shoulder trillion-dollar deficit'

N.Y. Times: 'Foreign Banks Hope Bailout Will Be Global'

Wall Street Journal: 'Goldman, Morgan Scrap Wall Street Model, Become Banks in Bid to Ride Out Crisis'

Financial Times (U.K.): 'Obama Targets Wall Street Greed'

Running down the press:

The closing of Yankee Stadium prompted a bevy of retired baseball players to hitch up their belts over their big bellies and weigh in, but the best quote in the past few days came from former Detroit Tigers pitcher Jim Bunning:

McClatchy's James Rosen, in his Friday story "Congress' fiscal conservatives declare free market 'dead,' " called that offering from the flame-throwing right-hander-turned-right-winger-Kentucky-senator a "knockdown pitch."

And that was before the monumental news over the weekend that Wall Street's investment bankers committed harakiri.

How did the press cover the news that Goldman sacks itself?

Sufferin' seppuku! Pretty darn well! And with surprisingly large doses of reality, like this piece from the Financial Times (U.K.): "Taxpayers shoulder trillion-dollar deficit." And this one from the Washington Post: "A Sense of Resentment Amid the 'For Sale' Signs."

If Barack Obama weren't black, he'd now be a shoo-in. After all, John McCain had pushed the GOP's scheme (hare-brained even before Wall Street's meltdown) to privatize Social Security. And the GOP (McCain included) has always preached deregulation. See this Wall Street Journal story for details: "Crisis Draws Attention to McCain Social Security Plan." And then look at this one from the Financial Times (U.K.): "Obama targets Wall Street greed."

If we had a parliamentary democracy, McCain and Obama would be duking it out on the floor of Congress, and not only would the fur fly but there would actually be meat on the killing floor. Instead, we'll have to put up with the lame-ass, tame-ass TV "debates" moderated, massaged, and manipulated by the mainstream media. But the first debate, Friday, ought to be more interesting in light of Wall Street's collapse.

In any case, New York's days as the world's financial capital may be numbered, but ruthlessness hasn't disappeared. Wall Street's self-destruction heralds the true end of U.S. domination of the financial world. That's probably true, but the private-equity folks who control billions of dollars will find other ways to pick at our carcasses.

Last week at least, the private-equity types were licking their chops. In Friday's edition of Private Equity Online, a handmaiden to the vultures smugly wrote:

"Core principle," my dying ass. Drool and slobber are their principles. The newsletter's anonymous author gets down to it:

Some of the private-equity scumbags (my word, not theirs) have already started infiltrating the "normal world" — at the request (insert shudder here) of Hank Paulson's rescue team:

And who knows where the lobbying for further corporate welfare will lead? Check out this morning's Times harbinger, "Big Financiers Start Lobbying for Wider Aid":

So don't start singing "The Internationale" just yet.

Go ahead, though, and download the global lefty anthem here, in any of 80 or so languages, including Billy Bragg's and Pete Seeger's versions. Or Maxx Klaxon's version.

If you can find it, you can even hum along to Tuli Kupferberg's "The New Internationale," which encourages we "prisoners of stagnation" to arise.

The rest of the world rushes to Wall Street to try to clean up the vomit and wipe Hank Greenberg's brow, but first . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Gulf News (Dubai): 'Traffic violators pardoned if they offer body organs'

Wall Street Journal: 'Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight'

N.Y. Times: 'Administration Trying for Spy Satellites Again'

N.Y. Post: 'CONDOMS MAKE NYC RUBBER LAND'

CNBC: 'Morgan Stanley Is in Talks with China for Fresh Funds'

L.A. Times: 'Insurgents in Afghanistan show strength, sophistication'

China Daily: '3 Chinese banks hold $297m in Lehman debt - report'

SmashHits.com: 'Speeding bus kills 14 in India'

MarketWatch: 'Media's Wimpy Wall Street Coverage'

Forum 18: 'BELARUS: Orthodox complain of KGB intimidation at village funeral'

Running down the press:

As other countries' banks join hands, sing "Kumbaya," and try to bail out our financial system (WSJ: "Central Banks Take Coordinated Action"), don't you worry about us New Yorkers. We're going to bounce back.

We're still No. 1 in the stuff that counts. Take a look at David Seifman's piece in this morning's N.Y. Post:

Sadly, few of them went to investment bankers and lawyers, ensuring that we'll continue to be overpopulated with both species and thus always in danger of future Wall Street meltdowns.

The actual truth is that Wall Street hasn't been dominant for quite some time. In fact, many of its denizens are downright submissive, as the Daily News tells us:

Give me those goddamn whips, and I'll show you how to flay the backsides of those downtown bankers.

Financial Times (U.K.): 'Housing data reinforce threat to US growth'

And a bottom of th' mornin' to you from London:

Daniel Pimlott's story notes that this may not be such bad news for the long run:

Well, that's good: One way out of this crisis is for the price of houses to stay too high to afford. And there's more of the same kind of supposedly good news:

Yes, more money for the mortgage bankers and investment houses to play with. That's the kind of thing it will take to lift us out of this crisis. No joke, it really is.

N.Y. Post: 'PEDAL TO THE METALS: FLIGHT TO SAFETY BOOSTS GOLD, SILVER & OIL'

Paul Tharp's solid story early this morning notes:

Tharp recognizes that the rise in oil prices is a really slippery slope:

McClatchy: 'Pakistan reportedly opens fire on U.S. forces in tribal area'

The only thing that may re-fill the wallets of Wall Street's bankers is another full-scale war from which to profit. They may get their wish, if things don't calm down a little in South Asia:

Sex and money — is there anything else? How about sex, money, and movies? Turn to the Post's Page Six for, among other gossip, "NAUGHTY PRODUCT PLUGS":

BBC: 'India drug firm turns to Giuliani'

Too rich. Our ex-mayor is now trying to help people acquire drugs:

Running down the press:

You'll be deluged all day with stories about Ground Zero, where Barack Obama and John McCain will duke it out in the tragic death cage.

As the BBC notes with a straight face:

Yes, no politicking going on there.

Google News: 'Lipstick politics: The big diversion'

In a hopeful sign for fans of artificial intelligence, the algorithms show a glimmer of irony this morning.

At one point, the above headline (from the Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog in D.C.) zoomed to the top of the page, the lede item of 2,233 lipstick/pig/Palin/Obama related items.

The irony? News orgs and everyone else hunger so much for a spot on the Google News page that they will think this story continues to be important and thus will stay diverted.

Meanwhile, on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, the Bush regime is now diverting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan — troops it never should have diverted in 2003 from Afghanistan to Iraq.

As for the Tribune story itself? Mark Silva's item is lame:

Me and everyone else used that pun yesterday.

CBS: 'Poll: Most Say U.S. Prepared For Attacks'

The rest of this meaningless poll (which gets weight because news orgs give it weight) notes, in part:

I guess this means that there won't be a sudden push to abolish term limits (like the trend the Times spotted) for presidents. Talk about worries lessening: Bush is unlikely to ever again win the presidency.

McClatchy: '9/11 seven years later: U.S. 'safe,' South Asia in turmoil'

In one of the better 9/11 stories this morning, Jonathan S. Landay and Saeed Shah remind us that there's a big ol' planet outside the U.S. borders:

Taking their cue from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen's assessment yesterday — "I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan" — they run with it:

Daily News: 'Remember towering spirit in 9/11 aftermath'

Tendentious and predictable, courtesy of super-self-serious columnist Michael Daly:

Emma Lazarus he ain't.

New York Review of Books: 'The Battle for a Country's Soul'

Forget about today's coverage. On this 9/11, the best reflection — one with real meat — remains Jane Mayer's think piece in the NYRB's previous issue:

One more passage from Mayer's look back, which is every bit as patriotic and stirring as the feeble attempts by Daly and others — and without the schmaltz and jingoism:

Times: 'Pressure Builds as Lehman Faces Mounting Losses'

As it usually does, the paper of record takes the angle of the pressure on the suffering bank instead of the broader, more logical angle of the pressure of the bank's looming collapse on the rest of the world's economy. The Times lede:

You have to go overseas to get to the real news: what impact this collapse is having on the rest of the planet outside Lehman's Seventh Avenue HQ. Try this one from the Financial Times in London: "Lehman survival strategy fails to lift markets."

Daily News: 'Biden blunder: Joe says maybe Hillary Clinton would make better VP'

Joe Biden is already giving us an example of how he just can't keep his big yap shut — even when he's responding to praise.

No one wants a veep who's not confident in himself or herself, but Biden just couldn't let a compliment pass.

OK, OK, we get the point: You're trying to pander to women to counter the presence of a woman on the GOP ticket.

Shut the fuck up already with the "I'm not worthy" bit. How will you try to show, in this popularity contest, that Sarah Palin's not worthy if you say that about yourself? Suitors — successful ones — don't act that way.

And notice that Biden even said it "testily" instead of graciously. The guy is more competent than he sounds, but you wouldn't know it. Trouble is brewing for the Demo ticket, because it's sound, not substance, that bites.

Post: 'QNS. POL CAUGHT IN STING: FBI NABS "$500,000 GRAFT" ASSEMBLYMAN'

Good one from Fred Dicker and his colleagues:

An FBI agent going undercover on the Capitol floor. Send that man to Congress!

Running down the press:

Times: 'G.O.P. Tries to Upstage Democrats'

Stop the servers! Atop the front page is this hard-hitting piece by Jim Rutenberg about how the Elephants are breaking "new ground" by trying to trample the Donkeys' un-sexy show. The paper that thinks it's the historical record once again ignores history:

This is not new ground; the paper doesn't even mention that shortly before the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC, the nation's security guard, Tom Ridge, raised the terror alert level to red in NYC, Newark, and D.C.

As I noted at the time ("The Attack Starts," August 2, 2004), Howard Dean opined a "political motivation for terror alert," as CNN put it, and he was shelled for it.

This morning's story by Rutenberg is a non-story. He quotes GOP political operatives about how pleased they are that their political-operative work is working. And that's it.

On a side note, Ridge's warning actually was prescient: He included a specific note of worry that Citigroup's NYC headquarters could be destroyed. Four years later, Citigroup's subprime performance — massive firings and a stock-market plummet — is indeed a disaster site. Self-imposed.

Post: 'TED GETS PARTY STARTED'

The Demo-hating Murdoch rag gets it right with a good lede on the Kennedy saga that all the papers covered:

Much more interesting than the Times version.

And the Post splashes a story about actual monkey-wrenching: the sore-loser Clintons' determination to upstage Obama ("ANGER AT HILL'S DEM PARTY FOULS").

That's more of a threat to the Democrats than the GOP's attempts — if you don't count the free publicity that Rutenberg gave the Republicans.

Hillary and Bill are unlikely to even budge the needle of the grace-o-meter this week.

Post: 'FISH-KILLING INDIAN PT. RULED AN ECO-DANGER'

In actual terror news, the tab gives good play — which the Times wouldn't do for a wire-service story — to Jim Fitzgerald's AP piece:

Post: 'DRUGLORD OF MANY FACES'

Here's a gangster moniker we haven't heard before:

But the paper's most e-mailed story this morning? Some real news from Saturday:

Daily News: 'Michelle Obama: My husband shares same beliefs you have'

Oh, brother. The Denver convention's non-news gets off to a great start:

Speaking of monkey-wrenching the Dems, the following item made the home page of Google News last night: 'McCain and Jay Leno Joke About His Age'

And you wonder why news orgs all over the world clamber to land a precious spot on Google's home page for news. That frenzied pandering by news org overseers is more of a threat to journalism than the increasingly useless printing presses that papers are stuck with.

The L.A. Times is one of those huge daily ailies, but at least it proclaims in a subhead that the Dems are seriously targeting McCain's turkey neck:

Good thing that Leno's show is taped early. By the time it aired, the elderly GOP nominee's innards were struggling to digest his early-bird meal and he was probably already in bed.

Still sleepless with worry, however, were millions of other Americans. Another piece in this morning's L.A. Times:

Wrongly slapping on an anecdotal lede about a renter named Ruth Cordoba, the paper tells an interesting story once you get past that:

Good thing there aren't many low-income renters here in New York City.

Start booking those tickets to Europe. From this morning's BBC:

Bad memories for those Denver conventioneers whose last names aren't Clinton. Drizzling on the parade — Denver typically experiences showers just about every summer afternoon — is Slate's Jack Shafer:

Red alert! Red alert! And this is no joke. From the Washington Post's front page:

Don't look for this on the Times's front page.

While the Times and others talk about how the Obamas and Ted Kennedy are rousing the faithful, Drudge points to an actual faith-based story out of Denver by the AP's Eric Gorski:

As usual, the smart, sober news source that is McClatchy's web wire service gets serious about real news at the convention, reporting Monday:

Giving equal time, McClatchy also carries this important tidbit, via the Miami Herald, about an always pivotal state where GOP operative Kathleen Harris chest-bumped the Dems in 2000:

Bad news for GOP? Fla.'s Hispanic voters no longer Cuban

After the seemingly obligatory anecdotal, "human-interest" lede, Casey Woods writes:

Always in partial meltdown, Pakistan is oozing more bad news right now than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Take one day's worth of news from Dawn, the biggest English-language newspaper in the planet's sixth most populous country.

You thought that things couldn't get worse, what with 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq. Now the drumbeat in recent days is that Afghanistan is a sorer sore spot than Iraq, what with the Taliban regaining control over more and more of Afghanistan from Hamid Karzai, who couldn't survive without U.S. backing.

It's already apparent that Afghanistan is becoming even more of a quagmire than Iraq, and even Barry Obama is saying so. This from Agence France Presse:

Sorry — make that very sorry — Pakistan has overtaken both. Iraq and Afghanistan each has about 25 million people; Pakistan's population is 166 million, and it has nuclear weapons. And it has numerous fighter jets, eagerly brokered by the Bush regime. And it has an assassinated opposition pol (Benazir Bhutto) and a dictator (Pervez Musharraf).

The only hopeful note is that, in Pakistan, lawyers are prone to kill other lawyers.

Anyway, here are just a few headlines from Karachi-based Dawn's front page today:

For once, Rice is telling the truth.

But other Bush regime officials are trying to keep a stiff upper lip. Here's another headline from this morning's Dawn:

Well, we should know about Pakistan's intentions. After all, on the morning of 9/11, Porter Goss, then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and later Bush's CIA director, was having breakfast in view of the Pentagon with a Pakistan intelligence official who turned out to be hijacker Mohammed Atta's bagman.

And then Osama bin Laden went into hiding in Pakistan and then we scaled back our search for him to invade Iraq and then — the rest is hysteria.

Bad news on the global terror front: Unstable Pakistan will become even more shaky when its former leader (and Musharraf's enemy) returns home this week.

As Benazir Bhutto prepares to return to Pakistan later this week from her Dubai exile and becomes a target of strongman prick Pervez Musharraf's assassins, we can only recall how tragic it was for the U.S. to pull back from that volatile region more than five years ago.

Back in 2002, the Bush-Cheney regime abandoned the full-fledged hunt for Osama bin Laden and duped Congress and the country into invading Iraq.

Pakistan was where it was at. Bin Laden was hiding there and in neighboring Afghanistan. As the Soviets found out, you can't fight rebels in Afghanistan without somehow, some way also fighting them as they scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they have even government support.

Officials of Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI — widely credited with co-opting the Taliban and, along with the Saudis and Reagan administration, arming them — were sympathetic to bin Laden as long as he didn't destabilize their own country.

Recall that Porter Goss and Bob Graham, chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, were having breakfast on the morning of 9/11 with Mahmood Ahmed, the Pakistani ISI official who later turned out to be hijacker Mohammed Atta's bagman. It was also Ahmed who had sent $100,000 to Atta on orders from the guy who later kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. You can't make this shit up.

Yes, we left Pakistan in 2002. Big mistake.

We invaded Iraq. Bigger mistake.

We inflamed the Shia-Sunni schism in Iraq, widening everywhere else that ancient rift between Islam's main sects. Take Pakistan. Unlike in Iraq, the Sunnis are the majority. Please remember that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and despotic monarchy Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sunni fanatics.

There has long been sectarian violence in Pakistan — see this October 2004 BBC backgrounder. Add to that the return to the country of Benazir Bhutto, whose daddy, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's prime minister in the '70s before he was executed by the country's military. Later, Benazir Bhutto — nearly a dead ringer for Andrea Martin/Edith Prickley's version of another South Asia strongwoman, Indira Ghandi — became prime minister, and then she was driven from Pakistan amid corruption charges.

Pakistan was a bigger threat to world stability after 9-11 than Iraq was. Yes, Iraq was a bigger threat to Israel and always a danger to Kuwait, but Pakistan's instability was a much more dangerous threat to the U.S., no matter what the Bush regime's propagandists have drummed into our heads.

Now's the perfect time to recall that the hunt by Musharraf and the ISI for bin Laden was half-hearted at best. Our reaction has been to step up arm sales to Musharraf, as I noted in April 2005.

Don't be surprised if that well-armed Pakistan government sends more Lockheed fighter jets swooping down on Bhutto than it sent to look for bin Laden.