SCREW the Economy, SCREW Iraq..."Bush's Pakistan policy top priority for 2008"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

NOTE: The quoted content of my subject line is from CNN's home page (http://www.cnn.com/).



http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/29/henry.us.pakistan/index.html

Analysis: Bush's Pakistan policy -- forget 'Plan B,' time for 'Plan C'

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- What's next for the U.S. in Pakistan? Unrest continues for a second day in Karachi, Pakistan, Saturday after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. That's the burning question President Bush must contemplate as he tries to get some down time for the New Year's holiday. He has a slew of foreign policy challenges to confront in 2008 -- ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea to name just a few.

Perhaps none is as pressing on January 1 as the unfolding crisis in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The stakes for the U.S. are enormous, from the fear of Pakistan's nuclear weapons getting into the hands of extremists to questions about whether President Pervez Musharraf is focused hard enough on the war on terror and hunting down Osama bin Laden.

The Bush administration finds itself in a box after sticking so long with the policy of standing by Musharraf's side at all costs, and it has little choice but to stay with him now, otherwise the White House would run the risk of making Pakistan even less stable.

So do not expect Bush's policy to shift much at all, despite questions about whether Musharraf has misused billions of dollars in U.S. aid intended to fight terror. "He has been an absolute reliable partner in dealing with extremists and radicals," Bush told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in November. But with Musharraf's grip on his government slipping, the Bush administration had recently turned to what you might call "Pan B," a potential power-sharing pact between Bhutto and Musharraf.