ESCALATION IN PAKISTAN - AT 7:03 P.M. ET:  While the president of the United States arranges for wall space in the Oval Office to place his many awards and tributes, the real world boils.  There's been a clear escalation of violence in Pakistan in recent days while Washington tries to figure out a South Asia strategy that will make Obama look good and still not offend his legions of leftist groupies.

Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, may well become destabilized.  What will we be told by the administration then?  From the Washington Post:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 12 -- A suicide bomber apparently targeting Pakistani soldiers killed 41 people Monday in the most recent in a string of bloody attacks on high-profile targets.

The blast, which occurred near an army convoy at a security checkpoint, took place at a market in the northwestern district of Shangla and killed mostly civilians. The area is near the Swat Valley, an area where a brutal Taliban presence was flushed out by Pakistani troops earlier this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's bombing, whose force was multiplied when it also detonated explosives being carried in army vehicles, said Shangla Police Chief Jehanzeb Khan. It came a day after Pakistani commandos ended a 22-hour standoff with armed Islamist fighters who had taken 42 hostages at Pakistan's army headquarters.

COMMENT:  Secretary Clinton assured us yesterday that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is secure.  Tomorrow she's scheduled to announce that her husband is a virgin.

October 12, 2009