http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007 12/grading_the_candidates_on_paki.html

Democrats Receiving an "A"

Like McCain, Hillary Clinton highlighted her personal relationship with Bhutto and appeared "presidential" in her response. Her call for an investigation played well with Democrats.

Joe Biden has been stressing the problems in Pakistan for weeks and spoke intelligently about the consequences.

Democrats receiving a "B"

Bill Richardson has also been touting the unrest in Pakistan recently but sounded a little off key calling for Musharraf to step down.

Democrats receiving a "C"

Senator Obama sounded the right notes of regret and warning of the danger but then inexplicably tried to tie the assassination to Clinton's vote authorizing force against Iraq - something he was ridiculed for by some. Not a death blow to his campaign but it once again plays to Hillary's theme of experience.

John Edwards spoke well initially and then pulled the grandstanding stunt of calling Musharraf urging him not to crackdown. Why Musharraf took the call is a mystery and Edwards making it in the first place did not sit well with the White House and could be seen as injecting partisan politics into a dangerous situation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122802445. html

The Pakistan Test
Some presidential candidates show they can respond quickly to a foreign policy crisis. Some flunk or foul.

THE ASSASSINATION of Benazir Bhutto presented U.S. presidential candidates with a test: Could they respond cogently and clearly to a sudden foreign policy crisis? Within hours some revealing results were in. One candidate, Democrat John Edwards, passed with flying colors. Another, Republican Mike Huckabee, flunked abysmally. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain were serious and substantive. And Barack Obama -- the Democratic candidate who claims to represent a new, more elevated brand of politics -- committed an ugly foul.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain also endorsed Pakistan's continued democratization. Each cited an acquaintance with Ms. Bhutto or Mr. Musharraf and opportunistically trumpeted their foreign policy experience -- but both also offered some cogent analysis. Ms. Clinton rightly cited "the failure of the Musharraf regime either to deal with terrorism or to build democracy," adding that "it's time that the United States sided with civil society in Pakistan."

Mr. Obama similarly began by offering bland condolences to Pakistanis and noting that "I've been saying for some time that we've got a very big problem there."
Then Mr. Obama committed his foul -- a far-fetched attempt to connect the killing of Ms. Bhutto with Ms. Clinton's vote on the war in Iraq. After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."
When questioned later about his spokesman's remarks, Mr. Obama stiffly defended them -- while still failing to offer any substantive response to the ongoing crisis. Is this Mr. Obama's way of rejecting "the same Washington game" he lambasted earlier in the day? If so, his game doesn't look very new, or attractive.

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/p ost?q=YWE0OWZkZGMzMjJmOWY3MTU1YWE4YTA1M 2QxZDkzMzg

Team Obama Tussles With Team Hillary Over Bhutto

Evidence that Team Obama is losing their cool

If the U.S. had not invaded Iraq, Benazir Bhutto would be alive today? Please.

The threat of militant Islamist extremism in Pakistan predates the Iraq war by more than a decade; Axelrod ought to take in a screening of "Charlie Wilson's War." The threat grew, and developed, and incubated, independent of U.S. policy for decades. It is naive folly to believe that if the U.S. had just had the right foreign policy, we could prevent some extremist from conducting an assassination.

To the best of our knowledge, the U.S. has not taken military action in Pakistan, beyond the rare hellfire missile launched from an unmanned drone. It's not like our forces in Iraq would be fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq. (Right? Or would President Obama have announced the invasion of Pakistan in 2003?) We don't know the exact who and how and where on this asssassination plot, but the trail has yet to lead outside of Pakistan. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that there is anything the U.S. could have done to prevent this.

I find it odd to be out defending Hillary Clinton like this, but the Obama camp has deployed a desperate flailing argument that suggests they have absolutely no familiarity with threats from within Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/pol itics/29memo.html

For the presidential candidates, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has emerged as a ghoulish sort of test: a chance to project leadership and competence -- or not -- on a fast-moving and nuanced foreign policy issue.

Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, spent the day asserting their own personal expertise: their private conversations with Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf, their visits to Pakistan and their concerns about fallout affecting the nation's nuclear arsenal to the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

While there were some stabs at substance -- Mrs. Clinton called for an independent investigation into Ms. Bhutto's death, and Mr. Richardson called for cutting off all aid to Pakistan -- most of the candidates concentrated on projecting the aura of a steady hand in a crisis.

Senator Barack Obama tried to sound like both a leader and a candidate on Pakistan on Friday. At one point, he said he would suspend some military aid to Pakistan if the government did not hold free elections and clamp down on terrorist groups. At another point, though, he suggested that the war in Iraq -- which his rivals Mrs. Clinton, John Edwards and others had voted for -- had "resulted in us taking our eye off the ball" in pursuing Al Qaeda and bringing stability to the region.