Today's news

The assassination of Pakistans' once-and-perhaps-future prime minister Benazir Bhutto is a dark thing.

It is a sad thing - her candidacy and the support for it hinted at progress in Pakistan. The country could define "fragmented," but there was real support, groundswell support, for a woman of education and prestige to help push all of Pakistan further into the modern era and onto the world economic stage.

There are forces of darkness in Pakistan - it's where the Taliban came from. The area called Waziristan - you'll find it labeled "Northwest Tribal Area - Ungoverned" on many maps - is probably where Bin Laden lurks, and it's been no-man's land for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and the "dictatorship" of Pervez Musharraf is not a sure thing - he walks a fine line to maintain control of a military and security service with Taliban sympathizers in its ranks.

It is a country vital not only for its support of our country's agenda in the region, but the security of which is vital to the safety of the world.

It will be touch-and-go for some time there. It will be a challenge to read between the wallowing, wailing lines of the media to try to see what is really happening there, but I think it's worth paying attention to.

Any developments there could also, incidentally, make the discussions among all our aspiring commanders-in-chief very interesting.