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Posted By: JimCrandell

Jeff,

While this is of course a great human tragedy, I think its far from clear that this is bad for America. Lets not forget that this is a nuclear dictatorship run by a small elite over a country it has little if any control over. Its an Islamic state that was likely and is likely to be prone to extremism.

The ray of hope is that this was seen as America's fight. Hopefully, this will make the Pakistani military take the radical Islamic threat more seriously and it will clamp down hard on violence. Its likely the U.S. saw the present civilian regime and a future Bhutto regime as unsustainable and was already in back channel discussions with the military.