Hillary Clinton displays ignorance of Pakistani elections

In an op-ed for the Middle East Times Thomas Houlahan, director of the Military Assessment Program at the Center for Security and Science marvels at Presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton display of ignorance regarding the upcoming elections in Pakistan. Clinton's remarks before CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer and later with ABC's George Stephanopoulos betrayed the Senator's lack of the most rudimentry knowledge of politics in the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth" according to Houlahan.

Houlahan writes that after returning from a brief television appearance regarding the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he tuned in to CNN to watch their coverage of the Bhutto assassination's aftermath. It was there that he saw the Senator denounce the Pakistani government of President Musharraf as lacking "any credibility at all". Mrs. Clinton went further in her comments stating that if president Musharraf wanted to run for election he should, "abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow."

Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton's illustration, Mr. Musharraf was already elected president of Pakistan back on October 6th by an overwhelming margin of the country's electorate. Benazir Bhutto before her assassination, was running for election as a member of Parliment and not president of Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf has in fact just started his five-year term as the president of that troubled country so he would be highly unlikely to run again after having served only three months in that position.

Mrs. Clinton who we are told is the "smartest woman in the world," accustomed to flying into the world's most dangerous hot spots with comedian "Sinbad" in tow repeated her assertion on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. The junior Senator from New York said that, "He (President Pervez Musharraf) could be the only person on the ballot. I don't think that's a real election."

Because Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos are in deep with the Democratic Party establishment, (Blitzer by virtue of his job with CNN, the Clinton News Network and Stephanopoulos from his prior work as Bill Clinton's deputy campaign manager for communications and later senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy) neither interviewer dared challenge Mrs. Clinton on her blunder. However had Mrs. Clinton been a Republican you could bet your last coffee and danish that both interviewers would have made much hay of her political faux pas and we'd be hearing about it for weeks!

So here we have "smartest woman in the world" aspiring to be the leader of the free world in the most powerful country on the face of the earth offering up uninformed opinions about the political situation of an allied nation that could soon become the front line on the war on terror. Is there any way we can get "Sinbad" to run in 2008?