If our Pakistan policy did not include the assumption Bhutto would be assassinated...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Policy must be built on probabilities. Bhutto was 90% assassinated the moment she returned to Pakistan. It's an obvious high-probability outcome. (And if it wasn't obvious, the fact that she couldn't make it home from the airport without 140 people being blown up was a clue.)

I have no fixed opinion on whether we were right to work for a Musharef/Bhutto power-sharing arrangement. It was probably a poor strategy because we cannot micromanage Pakistani politics, but I don't know that.

What I do know is that if we had a sensible policy, that policy had to be predicated on the assumption that a Bhutto assassination would not be a region-destabilizing event. Right or wrong, that assumption is built into any policy that involves Bhutto returning to Pakistan.

If that underlying assumption was not understood by everyone involved then, once again, our policy was one of hope. Throw all the cards in the air and hope they land in the form of a house.

You have to think several moves ahead and never act based on hope.

I have no idea what our Pakistan policy even is. But if it didn't include the assumption that Bhutto would be assassinated at some point, then it was no policy at all.

Which would be in keeping with the general tenor of all policy the last 7 years.

[madrchsod]

1. our policy toward pakistan is and always will be

who ever is in the best interest of the united states. when the bhutto criminal organization was in power we worked with them now it`s musharef`s crew of gangsters. she was forgiven of her sins ,lived a very nice life in the country of Dubai-Citibank but as soon as she stepped foot in pakistan she was a marked woman.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. We must always act based on hope,

but never act based solely on hope.

Fate favors the prepared.