Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf says his nation is an irreplaceable ally in the war against Islamist terror.

Some British army officer's critical musings about Pakistan were leaked to the media this week on the eve of the visit by President Pervez Musharraf. Neither Pakistan nor the British government were amused.

Did the Danish cartoon controversy start a much needed dialogue between wider Danish society and the country's Muslim community? It may well have. However, 10 of the 12 cartoonists who took on the subject of depicting the prophet Muhammad still haven't appeared in public.

Bob Woodward has a new book out that paints an unflattering picture of Dubya's administration in the months after el presidente pronounced "mission accomplished" from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Some new laws criminalizing offending of the Iraqi government or its officials are lifted from deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's old penal code, reports the NYT.

People don't drink horse urine in Kazakhstan or hold a Running of the Jews as some movies would have you believe. However, it does have real problems with corruption and authoritarianism.

Don't expect to hear Dubya talk much about that unpleasant stuff following his state dinner for President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev on Friday.

The Republican-dominated Congress has given Dubya most of what he wanted in terms of a terror tribunal bill.

The NYT describes the whole thing as a cynical political excercise that will rank as a legal low point in the history of the United States.

Pissed off by a weekend leak (so to speak), Dubya ordered the declassification of a portion of a National Intelligence Estimate that had been the source of some troublesome news coverage in the previous 48 hours.

It's hard to see how the document buttresses his optimistic view of how the war on terror is going.

Here's the Washington Post's, BBC's and NYT's news coverage.

Here's the W-P's and NYT's analysis.

This Beeb story asks whether the new book by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, given that it's replete with allegations such as the United States threatening to bomb it back to the Stone Age, may ...   more »

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf will go down in the books as the first sitting world leader ever to appear on The Daily Show.

He was flogging his new memoirs, In The Line of Fire.

Here's an excerpt from the AP story on Yahoo! News:

To conclude the interview, Stewart put Musharraf on the "Seat of Heat," a new feature for the program in which red lights flash around the studio and the guest is asked a final question.

"George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden — be truthful — who would win a popular vote in Pakistan?" asked Stewart.

"I think they'll both lose miserably," replied Musharraf, an answer met with raucous laughter by the "Daily Show" audience.

The drive among the affluent to raise perfect little corporate robots isn't limited to any one continent or culture, as this NYT article shows.

Read this excerpt of an NYT yarn about a "Club Med for dogs."

Generally speaking, Bill Clinton is an in-control kinda guy. Which made his performance on Fox News Sunday all the more remarkable!

You can see some of the video at this CTV.ca story.

For a while there, a French newspaper had a world-beating scoop: Osama bin Laden died in Pakistan in August.

But by day's end, anybody from any government that should be in a position to know something backed away from the claim.

Questions:

It seems like only days ago that Dubya was telling Americans Iraq was the front line in the war on terror. Well, if it wasn't under Saddam, it sure as hell is now, says a new report.

The BBC's Damian Grammaticas seems to think so. He wrote a feature on the just-concluded battle of Panjwaii. He talked about the difficulty of the terrain, the natural advantages of the Taliban, and one officer's approval of the decision to send tanks over.