Bush Threatens Attacks In Pakistan

Islamabad, Pakistan — An ambush of a military convoy that killed 17 troops near the Afghan border Wednesday pushed the death toll in a series of attacks to at least 101 Pakistanis in the past five days — and brought President Pervez Musharraf, according to a local newspaper headline, to a "Moment of Truth."

    The Bush administration, after publicly demanding that Musharraf rein in militants linked to al Qaida, on Wednesday threatened to launch attacks into Pakistani territory if it sees fit.

    "We certainly do not rule out options, and we retain the option especially of striking actionable targets," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "But it is clearly of the utmost importance to go in there and deal with the problem in the tribal areas."

The Shrub is trying to collect war like some people collect snow globes or cats. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan. The only one on his list he hasn't threatened so far is North Korea. And that's only because he knows that Kim is crazier than he is, or even Cheney.

The ironic stupidity of this is that Bush has been ignoring Pakistan for years, and that's where our resources should have gone – if anywhere – in late summer of 2001. The only military action that was even arguably justified was to hunt down Bin Laden. Bush promised to hunt 'em down, run 'em to ground, lasso 'em up, move 'em out and corral 'em, etc. But instead, he made wars in irrelevant places, and opened a great faucet of blood on the earth.