Pakistan

Our country has many problems. To list a few there are all the homes in the Midwest recently destroyed from all the tornadoes. Also, what about the future of Social Security and Medicare? How about all the homeless and hungry in our own country? How can we possibly find funding to help solve all these problems? Here's a better question: How can our president and Congress, in good conscience, keep sending $3.2 billion each year to Pakistan? I don't even know where they find this much money especially when all I read about is how the American public will need to bear the brunt of some historic budget cuts.

As a teenager in the mid-1990s, he moved with his parents to the United States from Pakistan. The family sought and received political asylum. They settled in Baltimore County and operated a gas station. The boy attended Owings Mills High School. His cricket skills helped him excel at baseball, the quintessential American game. "He always seemed like such a nice young man," said the chair of the English department. The nice young man graduated in 1999. He picked up a job as a data administrator with the Maryland Office of Planning.

Only in America would a president respond to the public celebrating over the killing of Osama bin Laden with the sports cliche he used: "We don't need to spike the football. " But millions of Americans who have their eyes glued on gridirons across the country on weekend television knew at once what he meant — that there was no need to cheer the event as if the home team had just scored the winning touchdown. President Barack Obama uttered the advice in announcing that no photographs or video would be released of bin Laden's corpse, or its disposal into the Arabian Sea, to prove that he really was dead and gone.

Distracted by the deadly violence in Mali and Algeria, no one seems to be paying adequate attention to the tragicomedy under way in Pakistan. This matters because recent events demonstrate without equivocation that Pakistan is an utterly failed state -- but one that possesses nuclear weapons. The country is tumbling down the abyss. Where else could a fundamentalist Muslim cleric who lives in Canada draw tens of thousands of fans to a rally calling for dissolution of the government -- speaking from inside a shipping container with a bulletproof window?

K -With images of bearded men forcing bombs upon brainwashed youths and delirious women shouting crazy things at their trials, it is hard to imagine that Pakistan is a country that celebrates a largely Western holiday such as Valentine's Day. In fact, the holiday is probably as big an event in Pakistan as it is in the United States. In a society that does not condone premarital relationships, let alone the expression of affection among these couples, it is interesting to see how Valentine's Day has made its way into Pakistani society.

My opinion of President Obama rose when he ordered the successful raid to eliminate the mass murderer Osama bin Laden. Now if our government would only take the next reasonable step and also eliminate the $3.2 billion in aid that we send to Pakistan, I would really be impressed! How ludicrous for Pakistan to claim that they didn't know bin Laden had been sheltered in their country for years! They are obviously trying to play both ends against the middle, trying to appease the Taliban while taking money from America, and why not?

THE 1999 coup that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power in Pakistan was good for the country. Mr. Musharraf proved himself to be an intelligent leader, and his popularity, particularly among the educated middle classes fed up with corruption and religious pandering by the country's traditional politicians, soared. He put Pakistan on the right side of world events after Sept. 11. This makes his insistence on holding a referendum -- extending his grip on the presidency by five years -- all the more troubling and disappointing.

TALK COMING OUT of Islamabad yesterday was of CBMs (confidence-building measures), not WMD, and in itself that's indisputably a very good thing for the nuclear powers of South Asia. In the immediate aftermath of yesterday's 65-minute meeting in Pakistan's capital between its prime minister, Pervez Musharraf, and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, there was a notably restrained tone. Given the bitter pressures from Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists within the two enemies of the last 50 years, downplaying the meeting as a cautious step in what at best would be a long and uncertain peace process seems more than reasonable.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistan has told U.S. military leaders it is willing to help train Afghan soldiers to fight Taliban forces, the country's army chief said Monday, a promising gesture by a government at times skeptical of Washington's strategy. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani sought to counter criticisms from the West that Pakistan is a reluctant ally when it comes to battling the Taliban in Afghanistan. The training of Afghanistan's national army and its police is seen as a vital cog in President Barack Obama's strategy to defeat the Taliban and ready the country for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Fair's fair. By any standard of equity, refusing a refund for undelivered goods that were paid for is grossly unjust. The United States has good reason to deny delivery of $1 billion in military equipment, including 28 F-16 jet fighters, to Pakistan. But it has no justification for holding onto the payment it received in advance, much less having the gall to charge Pakistan for storage of the sequestered jets. President Clinton is correct in deciding to give the money back or to return it in the form of services that will not reward Pakistan's obduracy about continuing its nuclear weapons program.

The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage girl, paid the price for the CIA's deceit: They were gunned down as they tried to give the polio vaccine to children living in the Pakistani city of Karachi and other areas. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, although the Pakistani Taliban has threatened vaccine workers in the past.

The attack by Taliban fighters this week on a major Pakistani air base where nuclear weapons allegedly were stored offered a dramatic example of what the U.S. fears most about its unstable, nuclear-armed ally. Though Pakistan claimed its forces repelled the attackers and denied that nuclear weapons were even present on the site, the incident inevitably revived long-standing U.S. concerns that terrorists could get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction. The attack on the Minhas air force base and aeronautical college in Kamra, 37 miles north of Islamabad, was carried out early Thursday morning by gunman armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

I am starting to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. On an international tour to three countries, he made news in two of them by dissing the London Olympics and infuriating the Palestinians. The poor guy -- for months, people have complained that he never says what he really believes. Now, he's in trouble for too boldly saying what he actually thinks. First, during an interview with NBC News anchorman Brian Williams, Mr. Romney had this to say about prospects of success for the London games: "It's hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.

In response to a recent letter-writer claiming that the Navy SEALs, rather than President Obama, deserve the credit for killing Osama bin Laden, there are few sadder things than watching Republicans try to play down the facts ("SEALs, not Obama, deserve credit for bin Laden death," May 9). Here are the facts: President Obama is commander-in-chief whether his opponents like it or not. He was the one - and the only one - responsible for ordering those SEALs into action. They did not make that decision on their own. He was the one in charge.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for cloudy skies, with a chance of showers this afternoon and a high temperature near 74 degrees. Tonight is expected to be cloudy, with a low temperature around 62 degrees. TRAFFIC Check our traffic updates for this morning's issues as you plan your commute. FROM THE WEEKEND... Animal advocates seek new pit bull legislation in special session : A group of animal activists is asking Gov. Martin O'Malley to quickly introduce legislation that would override a Maryland Court of Appeals decision deeming all pit bulls dangerous.

Back from a visit to Kabul, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger expressed confidence in relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan. It's Pakistan that concerns him. "A lot of terrorists are being trained and harbored in Pakistan," said Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. "That's a serious problem. " As if to underscore his concerns, a Rockville man who was kidnapped by al-Qaida in Pakistan last year said in a newly released video that his captors will kill him if the U.S. doesn't meet their demands.

One year after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs at his safe house in Pakistan, a substantially weakened al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to pose a threat to the West. The Pakistan-based group's leadership has been decimated by drone strikes and is no longer believed capable of directing spectacular operations on the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But that doesn't mean America and its allies can afford to let their guard down.

Watching Rick Santorum rise in the polls by positioning himself as the real Christian presidential candidate is like watching the sequel of a horror movie - one I literally lived through in the 1980s while growing up in Pakistan. There, another religious zealot, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, played the lead role of the real Muslim. The plot went like this: The clerics called for candidates with "true" Muslim values, the masses demanded a "Muslim candidate for a Muslim state," the leaders proved their "Muslimness" by quoting scripture and calling others lesser Muslims, and the candidate who was able to appease the clergy privately and please the masses publicly held on to power.