What The Bush Administration Forgot to Tell Americans to Fear

The Bush Administration has warned Americans about Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and his WMDs and, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his desire to wipe out Israel. But they somehow forgot to warn Americans that an unstable Pakistan, a nation already armed with 30 nuclear warheads could possibly be a much more serious threat than all of the above. And the Democrats haven't done any better.

The Administration has failed to explain how on the one hand they can be so committed to bringing "democracy" to Iraq and on the other hand openly ignore the military dictatorship in US ally Pakistan. In fact according to an article for Associated Press, Pakistan's recent state of emergency is targeting liberal activists and not islamic fundamentalist extremists.

The article by AP reporters Alisa Tang and Matthew Pennington states:

While pro-Taliban gunmen seized a border town Tuesday, President Pervez Musharraf pursued his crackdown on lawyers and liberal activists — underscoring the irony that it isn't extremists going to jail but secularists who are potential allies in the war on militancy.

The general's suspension of the constitution has given Pakistani authorities sweeping powers to detain without charge. Opposition groups reported at least 3,500 arrests over the preceding three days, many of them attorneys.

Pakistan's top human rights defender, Asma Jehangir, was watching Musharraf on television Saturday night explain his declaration of emergency rule as a necessary step in combatting extremism. As he spoke, police knocked at her door and announced she was under house arrest.

The next morning — just hours after hundreds of judges, lawyers and other activists were detained — Jehangir laughed bitterly when she read newspaper headlines: The government had granted amnesty to dozens of Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan's violence-plagued northwest.

In the following video clip, CBC News tries to explain to Canadian citizens why they should be very concerned about what is happening in Pakistan.

Keith Olbermann interviews Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Advisor for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs.