Acidus wrote:
] And. Yet. Bush. Does. Nothing.

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There are plenty of reasons to be pissed off at the Bush administration, but this isn't one of them. Bush is most certainly "doing something" about Pakistan.

Pakistan is an extremely unstable country operated by a very delicate balance. What do you suggest? We invade it and "liberate" it from its current government? Or maybe that we stop supporting the present regime and let internal forces work their magic? Pakistan is not Iraq. The people there are not going to up and start a Democracy. The only thing available there that could replace the current government is an extremely violent conservative islamic group. You treat Pakistan with anything other then kid gloves and you will have the Taliban with Nukes on very short order.

The fact is that the revelations about the sale of nuclear secrets are less then a month old. It certainly has impacted our take on the state, but strategies do not turn around in a month. The fact is that we've made it very clear, even before this revelation, that we are considering invading Pakistan, in order to find Bin Lauden, and the timeframe for pursuing that is very short. We will have troops on the ground within 2004 if Pakistan does not deal with the problem internally. This has been covered on MemeStreams. What else do you want?

Should Pakistan have been invaded prior to Iraq? I don't know the answer. What I do know is that these events play out for strategic, and not moral, reasons. You don't invade one country first because you think they are the "baddest." In spite of various difficulties Iraq was a much easier fish to fry then Pakistan will be, and having Saddam out of the way makes focusing on Pakistan a lot simpler. The U.S. does not have to worry about Iraq lobbing scud missiles at them, or providing other, more subtle kinds of opposition while they are engaged in other operations in the region.

RE: MSNBC - Pakistan sold nuclear materials to Iran, Libya