Three strikes & he’s out? By Cyril Almeida

Cyril writes about Zardari as if the co chairman of the hand-written will is a baseball slugger. Only Mother Time can deliver a verdict.

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There’s another reason for Asif to unleash against the Americans. The same NYT story on Bush’s secret authorisation of strikes inside Pakistan, also had a staggering allegation against Kayani: that he knew of the plot to bomb the Indian embassy in Kabul. In living memory, a Pakistan army chief has not been directly implicated by the Americans in a criminal plot.

This then is the scenario that Asif is confronted with: angry Americans who can only rattle the Pakistani cage so much; an army chief who is under American fire; and a failed American policy in Afghanistan. Why can’t Asif connect the dots? Figure out who’s your enemy, who’s your friend and when to take a hit for the team, friendly or otherwise. Asif should make the Americans squirm a little. The next time Patterson, Boucher, Negroponte — or even Bush — is on the phone, ask your secretary to tell them you’re on the phone with your daughter at college.

And get a better team. We were made to believe that Chaudhry Mukhtar was passed over for prime minister because he was too much of his own man. None of that is on display as defence minister. Mukhtar must still be sulking over being passed over because every time he opens his mouth someone somewhere in a uniform gets angry. Then there’s the oily Husain Haqqani. Listen to the man long enough and you’ll be confused: is he the Pakistani ambassador to the US or the US ambassador to Pakistan? So incompetent is Asif’s defence team that the intellectual nobody with the connections to die for, Rehman Malik, has come out the brightest of the lot. At least you have to hand it to the indefatigable Malik: he does try, even if he’s out of his depth.