"Honesty is the least bad option for the Obama administration. He should address the concerns, and acknowledge that the deployment is not going as he had hoped. That way, he can begin to lay out the groundwork for how he is going to turn this around, and take the American people with him. Or, even better, how he is going to facilitate power-sharing with the least extreme Taliban, and bring American troops home, before the situation gets any worse."

"The actions of President Hamid Karzai are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from a man set on undermining Afghanistan's democracy and institutions, and concentrating power in his own hands."

"For the last eight years, U.S. taxpayers' money has funded hardly any bona fide counterterrorism successes, but quite a bit of corruption in the Pakistani Army and intelligence services. The money has enriched individuals at the expense of the proper functioning of the country's institutions. It has provided habitual kleptocrats with further incentives to skim off the top. Despite the U.S. goal of encouraging democratization, assistance to Pakistan has actually weakened the country's civilian government. And perhaps worst of all, it has hindered Pakistan's ability to fight terrorists."

The United States must not provide Pakistani institutions with incentives to act counter to U.S. foreign policy objectives in the future. It has done so in the past. But until the spring of 2009, no comprehensive overview of the full funding to Pakistan was possible as the figures were kept secret. Those figures, as well as a full analysis of what is known about how they were spent, can now be evaluated. The available information paints a picture of a systemic lack of supervision in the provision of aid to Pakistan, often lax U.S. oversight, and the incentivization of U.S. taxpayer–funded corruption in the Pakistani military and security services. The author believes that this is the first attempt to present an overview of U.S. aid to Pakistan since 2001, evaluate it, and present recommendations on how to ensure that mistakes are not repeated and lessons are learned.

"...[T]he best solution is a federal system of boroughs similar to the states of the US, and a unified Jerusalem authority, similar to the US federal government.

The borders of the municipality of Jerusalem would include everything that it does now and also nearby Palestinian cities such as Abu Dis. Some boroughs would naturally be majority Palestinian, others naturally majority Jewish, but free and fair borough elections would ensure proportionate representation on each."

"Former two-time President and chairman of the powerful Assembly of Experts President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani began to openly criticise the line being taken by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini. Khameini had said that discussion about the legitimacy of the election result should stop, as the result had been blessed by God. This week Rafsanjani said that discussion about the legitimacy of the election result should continue. He said that both words in the 'Islamic Republic' were important, and doubts had not yet been satisfied. He quoted Ayatollah Khomeini in ways that seemed to support the opposition's right to demonstrate. And he said that protesters who have been arrested should be released from prison. He supported greater media freedom."

"People who think that Sharia law threatens UK law tend to confuse UK law and non-legally binding arbitration, which settle disputes outside the legal system....We live under the rule of law, there can only be one set of laws, and that is British law. Not least because our experience with Unity Family has shown that incorrect rulings by some of these so-called Sharia councils go against the fundamental ethos of Islam, and are often more suitable to Pakistani mores. We must reject calls to allow Sharia rulings to be formally recognised in British law under the 1996 Arbitration Act."

"The Defence Secretary, John Hutton, has argued that the war in Afghanistan was important because the country had provided Al-Qa’ida with territory in which to train and plan attacks, and that Pakistan mattered because the Taliban were directed and supplied from across its 1,500 mile open border. Whilst that was the accepted picture, few gave any credence to the idea that Pakistan posed a bigger security challenge to the world than Afghanistan. Now, that very idea has been voiced by the top US diplomat in Kabul. According to this new understanding, allied strategy must engage with Pakistan's fate as a matter of urgency."