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Only CBS assigned a correspondent to Wednesday's testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on truce in Pakistan between government forces and Taliban guerrillas. Lara Logan quoted Madame Secretary as "slamming the peace deal Pakistan's government made with militants in the Swat Valley." Referring to the ambition of Sufi Muhammad, an Islamist leader, to expand a system of religious law across the entire country, Rodham Clinton warned: "We cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan." She presumably meant either that "we cannot understate" or "we must underscore."
Anyway, ABC's Martha Raddatz filled us in on conditions in the Swat Valley, which she visited 18 months ago. The Taliban now has "a solid safe haven," including the Buner District just 60 miles from Islamabad, where it has "imposed strict Islamic law, destroying schools and flogging people publicly for defying them" Unidentified "officials" told Raddatz that some of the $10bn paid to Islamabad by Washington under George Bush's administration as part of its War on Terrorism was actually passed on to the Taliban to pay them "to keep fighting the Americans so that the Pakistanis would continue to get US dollars."
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