Today's Must Read

Everything you need to know about Pervez Musharraf's weekend declaration of martial law -- or, in his felicitous words, his placement of the Pakistani constitution in "abeyance"-- prominent journalist Ahmed Rashid tells you:

The other prime targets [of the declaration] were not the extremists terrorizing major swaths of northern Pakistan but the country's democratic, secular elite. Dozens of judges, lawyers and human rights workers have been arrested. Others have gone into hiding. Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's leading human rights activist, is under house arrest. She appealed yesterday for the Bush administration "to stop all support of the unstable dictator as his lust for power is bringing the country close to a worse form of civil strife."

So will the Bush administration listen to Jahangir, who's precisely the sort of person President Bush promised to support in his second inaugural? No, reports The New York Times.

Though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon implored Musharraf not to declare martial law, Islamabad sees itself as having a free hand now that it's defied the administration. Says Musharraf's mouthpiece Tariq Azim Khan, "They would rather have a stable Pakistan ? albeit with some restrictive norms ? than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists. ... Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose."

Consider Rice's statement yesterday to a Fox News interviewer in Jerusalem:

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