Stalin was right about Beria.
The best thing for any military dictator to do is to quickly shoot the head of the Secret Police and put the head of Army Intelligence in his place. When the new guy appears to forget who put him there, loop back to initial line of this Do Until construct. The only way that a dictator can get out of this loop is when the Secret Police shoot him first, or a natural death intervenes.
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 2:01:44 PM

For Each Thug In INTELORG
     Shoot(Dead)
Next

or maybe...
while (!DeadYourself){
    KillGunnies();
}
Posted by Fred 2/16/2002 2:04:52 PM

Sub PakPres()
Dim Inpower as Boolean, Popularity as Double
Do while Inpower
If Popularity<0.6 then Call Blame_Indians()
If Popularity<0.5 then Call Arrest_Opposition()
If Popularity<0.4 then Call Kill_Rivals()
If Popularity Call Flee_to_Malaysia()
Inpower=False
End if
Loop
End sub

Posted by Mark B [markbyron.blogspot.com] 2/17/2002 2:56:46 AM

Achakzai is a few cards short of a deck. Betting on his staying out of the slammer in the near term is only a good bet due to more notorious fruitcakes running about shooting up the country and the police trying to find Pearl or his decomposing remains. Essentially he is trying to ignore the 300 pound gorilla of Pakistani politics, the Army, and he blathers about how the Durand Line may or may not be relevant any more. I'm sure that not only Karzai but also the Northern Alliance heavyweights would be amused as they share tea with the Indian intelligence babus in Kabul. The fact that the Dawn puts this guy on their online front page shows what passes for legitimate news in Pakistan these days.
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 6:55:28 PM

Arafat's probably just trolling for dinars to pay the bills. Fischer may just be dumb enough to grease Arafat's palm also, despite Arafat's nasty way of miming Herr Hitler's best lines at times.
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 2:23:29 PM

Interesting question is what will happen first:
a. The jehadis go back to business as usual and pull some dramatically stupid attack in India, and then Vajpayee sends the troops over the Paki border. Or,
b. Vajpayee feels like the Indian electorate wants action NOW and does a handful of cross border operations into Paki Kashmir.

In either case, I suspect with Afghan ops winding down and Central Asian bases being available, the only thing holding back the Indians is the nuke issue which is more diplomatic than military in significance. BTW, notice how the US and Russia have just inked two big arms sales deals with India? Musharraf got stiffed last week, and its the Army who is Musharraf's biggest mouth to feed.
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 2:50:38 PM

What you've picked up on are two problems the Indians have:
a. Kashmir isn't their only ethnic separatist problem, and New Delhi ain't gonna let Kashmir go as then Assam and Nagaland and perhaps some Tamil area starts getting some big idea that they want to separate also.
b. If you have all your troops on the Pakistani border, who's watching the Burmese loonies or the Bengal Muslims? I'm sure the Indian Army is pulling out their military records dating back to the Raj concerning putting out several fires at one time. Where's a Clive when you need one?
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 2:33:31 PM

These guys must be dumb as roaches taking a daylight stroll across the kitchen floor. Poonch is probably home to a division or two of Indian troops, and security is probably as tight as the nasty MPs can make it. Infiltrate generally implies avoiding centers of resistance, but these superheroes did the "hey diddle, diddle, up the middle" routine instead.
Posted by Tom Roberts 2/16/2002 2:58:24 PM