"Hail Mary" in Pakistan

One day my interpreter told me a joke about Nigeria surpassing Pakistan in that year’s ranking of the world’s most corrupt nations.

“We bribed the Nigerians to go first.

Abu Muqawama readers may have noticed that Charlie's post yesterday was cross-posted on Wired's Danger Room. Considering how we're both fans of Noah and the work he does over on that site, we hope this will be but the first of many cross-posts.

Today, though, Abu Muqawama wanted to call special attention to an article Charlie linked to yesterday by Jeff Stein over at Congressional Quarterly. (Stein is the guy whose hobby is asking hapless congressmen whether or not they can tell the difference between a Sunni or a Shia.) In addition to the much-appreciated Flashman reference, it's a great article worth reading. (And when you're done there, move onto the bad news for the day.)

Many billions of dollars later, the situation is worse. And hundreds of millions more U.S. dollars are in the pipeline.

But the real Hail Mary play being called in the administration’s huddle is a plan to recruit tribal leaders in the frontier areas to go after bin Laden.

Does this make any sense? It seems like something Henry Paget Flashman, the roguish Victorian-era British military officer created by George MacDonald Fraser, who died Jan. 2, would think up.