Recently in Pakistan Category

"'If you think of this as sort of a combination of [the hunt for] Eric Rudolph, who was the Olympic bomber, and the movie 'Deliverance,' multiplied by a factor of 10, that's really what you're focusing on in trying to find bin Laden,' said Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan." Also high on the foreign policy to-do list for President-elect Obama: bringing the war on terror back to Osama bin Laden.

Alas, despite Dubya's occasional bouts of half-hearted bluster, it seems the bin Laden trail may well have gone ice-cold over the past few years, while we've been focused on Iraq. "Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, told CNN he's talked to 'a dozen CIA guys who've been on the hunt for him, and half of them told me they assumed he was dead, the other half said they assumed he was alive, but the key word here is assume. They don't know.'...[Commander of special operations at Tora Bora Dalton] Fury says the best route for the president-elect to take would be to change the dialogue about bin Laden...He believes taunting the al Qaeda leader may force him to prove he's relevant and, in the process, lead the United States right to him."

Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007. It seems all too many christmases of late has been marked by grim news on the global front, from the devastating tsunami to the botched Saddam execution. This year, obviously, it was the assassination of the former prime minister who, while no angel, nevertheless embodied for many hopes for a stable, democratic Pakistan. Her murder -- in the military stronghold of Rawalpindi, no less -- further destabilizes a nuclear-armed nation already teetering on the brink, and roils significantly the Dubya administration's fatally flawed approach to the country. Let's just hope Bhutto isn't remembered as the next Franz Ferdinand.

"'The train is derailed and off the tracks,' said Stephen P. Cohen, author of 'The Idea of Pakistan.' 'We have to give ourselves a share of the responsibility for this. We placed all of our chips on Musharraf.' At this point, Cohen added: 'I don't think there is anything we can do. We are not big players in this anymore.'" Dubya diplomacy takes another huge hit as a power-hungry President Musharraf declares martial law in Pakistan to ensure his continued reign, sparking nationwide protests and leaving the Bushies between a rock and a hard place. "One adviser traveling with Rice saw a silver lining in the rapid turn of events. 'Thank heavens for small favors,' the official said. Compared to Pakistan, 'Iraq looks pretty good.'" Oh, joy.

Update: Slate's Fred Kaplan weighs in. "The state of emergency in Pakistan signals yet another low point in President George W. Bush's foreign policy -- a stark demonstration of his paltry influence and his bankrupt principles. More than that, the crackdown locks us in a crisis -- a potentially dangerous dynamic -- from which there appears to be no escape route...The Bush foreign policy was neither shrewd enough to play self-interested power politics nor truly principled enough to enforce its ideals."

"There's a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bush administration's present jam throughout the Middle East and in other danger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealing with Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria or Iran (namely, it's an evil regime, and we don't speak with evil regimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered and spilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would have died, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scary territory." In light of yesterday's foiled plot, Slate's Fred Kaplan points out one of the critical flaws of Dubya Diplomacy (which, thankfully, the British do not share.)