Rice decries Pakistan crackdown she already approved?

According to the BBC, the US has allegedly "suspended defense co-operation talks with Pakistan set for this week and says it will review its multi-billion dollar aid programme." Does anyone really think that Bush's aid to Pakistan (which is mainly military aid) will get any reduction at all? They might reduce it by a token amount, but this administration is so wedded to Musharraf that it's hard to imagine any real cuts. Meanwhile, Rice has publicly denounced the state of emergency in Pakistan, calling for Musharraf to resign his army post and for a return to democratic civilian rule.

What is going on here? According to an anonymous "diplomatic source," the US has actually given the go-ahead for Musharraf to declare this state of emergency:

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?rep=2&aid=405607&sid=SAS&sname=

Even though it's not sourced, this does seem to make more sense than the Bushies actually doing a 180 by claiming to be against Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency and suddenly discovering that they favor democracy in Pakistan.

The actual domestic political reasons for Musharraf's action is straightforward: mainly, this is a move against the independence of the judiciary, because the Supreme Court was (and whatever the truth is, Musharraf certainly must believe) about to rule Musharraf's continued hold on power to be unconstitutional. What is truly puzzling to me--and I invite those of you with more knowledge of Pakistani politics/the US intelligence community/the Bush regime to chime in here--is why on earth is Rice being told to decry the suspension of the Pakistani Constitution. It's not as if this administration is afraid of looking hypocritical on the subject of democracy, nor do they now suddenly uphold constitutional government as a general principle, nor are they opposed to military crackdowns on dissent on principle, etc. It's not as if Bush needs Rice to give him political cover, as it's unlikely that the White House thinks their base cares about this issue anyway (they've long since given up the pretense that they care about anyone else).

Did they suddenly discover oil in Pakistan? Has Musharraf suddenly gone and done something that the CIA has not asked him to do? Are the Bushies afraid Musharraf's going to get bin Laden/dig up bin Laden's corpse/reveal whatever the actual truth about 9-11 is?


Why, oh why, are the Bushies so loudly denouncing policies by this regime, one for which they have always shown great love? Who told them to do this?

to invade Kuwait, and then used the invasion as a pretext for war. Perhaps the neocons want a war with Pakistan.

I was wondering if anyone else had that thought, too.

Of course, bin Laden is supposed to be in Pakistan, so there's no way we would actually invade. Can't actually have perpetual war with him captured (or proven not to be alive, as some would have it).

(rightly or wrongly) coherent. Nothing could be further from the truth. They run things from the gut and if one day their collective tummies are rumbling, we abandon our despotic ally. If on the next they're feeling hunky-dory, then they prop him up again.

There needs to be a new word to replace "incompetent" that means "incompetent squared" to describe this bunch.

If only consistently crazy.

You could be right. I could be giving them waaay to much credit in assuming their foreign policy has any logical motive at all, even if only a screwed up one.