Musharraf Suspends Paki Constitution, Fires Judges, Jails Opponents...

...and has lawyers beaten with riot sticks [must...resist...obvious...joke]. In other words, our ally in Pakistan is reasserting his 1999 coup d'état, faced with Pakistani supreme court judges who wanted to invalidate his election as president.

Unfortunately, much of Musharraf's opposition is not coming from enlightened democratic idealists.

Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest and most influential Islamic group, wants to usher in an era of strict sharia law, and has been linked to bin Laden supporters and terrorist training camps. Pakistani government officials have accused the group of harboring most of the terrorists hiding out in Pakistan. They oppose Musharraf primarily because he has sided with the United States against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

On the other hand, we have the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose tenets are Islam, democracy, and socialism, which is led by Benazir Bhutto, who is the "life chairperson."

And then there's that nuclear arsenal.