The bipartisan war on Pakistan

As the U.S. government's cronies on Wall Street press for taxpayers to pay inflated prices for their worthless assets, gone little noticed is that the United States and Pakistani militaries have, you know, been shooting at each other all week.

As the LA Times reports:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Pakistani forces exchanged gunfire Thursday along the Afghan border, as simmering tensions over American incursions into Pakistan reached full boil.

The incident began, U.S. officials said, when forces from a Pakistani outpost fired on two Kiowa OH-58 reconnaissance helicopters. That touched off a five-minute small-arms fight when a ground unit made up of Afghan and U.S. forces returned fire, U.S. military officials said.

Of course, only in America could an incipient war with an unstable nuclear power be dwarfed in media coverage by the release of a new Google-powered cell phone, but so it goes.

Worth noting, however, is that the U.S. policy of violating Pakistan's sovereignty to kill innocent civilians -- excuse me, "suspected Taliban" -- was first proposed by the progressive, vehemently anti-war Barack Obama, and only belatedly endorsed by the Bush administration.

As Obama adviser Susan Rice noted the other day, the Bush administration's attacks on Pakistan's Pashtun tribal areas is "the kind of policy we have to pursue and continue". Indeed, to the Obama campaign the Bush administration's policy of violating Pakistan's sovereignty -- practically inviting another military coup -- is just a "baby step in the right direction" that silly old peacenik John McCain has been all too slow to support.

Lovely. No wonder McCain is trying to pull out of tomorrow's "debate" -- after portraying Obama as a terrorist-sympathizing, crypto-Marxist McGovernite for the past few months, what could he say when the guy beats him at his own militaristic game?