Bum's Rush

Yesterday I discussed my suspicion that ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha's hastily arranged trip to Washington was actually a last-ditch attempt ahead of the U.S.-India strategic dialogue on Monday to impress on the more impressionable members of Congress that Pakistan has greater strategic importance to the USA than India. Last night Reuters reported that Pasha's meeting at Langley "went very well" according to an unnamed U.S. official, who refused to give details beyond saying, "They agreed on a number of steps that will improve Pakistani and U.S. national security." The report ended with this note:

Pasha had also been expected to meet with the heads of congressional intelligence committees during his visit, but the meeting did not happen because of time constraints, a U.S. source familiar with the visit said.

As I mentioned in the update to yesterday's post, I guess this means the more impressionable members of Congress are not quite as impressionable as they used to be, or have less patience with twaddle since Abbottabad.

In other newsworthy speculations, I suspect State has finally managed to wrestle a muzzle on the Gray Lady; if so, then until she chews through the muzzle we won't have to hear any more howls from Islamabad that the New York Times is picking on Pakistan.

If other major U.S. news media and Washington policymakers had displayed a fraction of the gumption that the Times has done during the past year we'd be in much better shape than we are today regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that's not speculation.