winterbadger | More praise and assistance for another of our undemocratic "allies"

The US Secretary of State Colin Powell says Washington will elevate its military ties with Pakistan, making it a major ally outside of Nato.

So we're rewarding a government that came to power in a military coup and a country that is one of the foremost proliferators of WMD technology in the world. A dictator who can't even control his own country and is running in fear from radical fundamentalist Islamic forces that want to turn one of the more advanced countries in south Asia back to medievalism. All so as to "make it easier for Islamabad to acquire the arms it needs to compete with India in conventional weapons"? But there's no way that Pakistan (pop. 153 million) can ever effectively compete with India (pop. 1 billion) in conventional terms; three successive wars have proven that.

Pakistan: another of our partners in peace. What's next? Myanmar? Sudan? Zimbabwe?