WaPo’s Jeff Stein reports the Pakistani intelligence service has rushed Mullah Omar, spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban insurgency, to a hospital for heart surgery.
Now why would Pakistan, an ostensible U.S. ally on the proverbial “war on terror,” provide health care for the one-eyed Taliban leader who is wanted for acts of terrorism? Continue reading »

The persistent fantasy
Foreign Policy’s useful survey Who Wants to Bomb Iran? offers more evidence of one of the most peculiar fantasies in U.S. opinion making circles: that democratic forces in Iran would welcome–or not object to–a U.S/Israeli attack on their country’s nuclear facilities. The chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen is under no such illusions so the phenomenon is less a political danger than an interesting species of American provincialism which assumes the benevolence of U.S.-inflicted violence is apparent to its victims.
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