Pakistan/Musharraf: Bush in "watch and learn" mode

NY Tymes:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see "watch and learn" mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward. eagerness to learn the ins and outs of declaring martial law/national emergency.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: envious, with dreams of an American-backed American military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the Middle East, called Mr. Musharraf’s move “highly regrettable,” inspirational, while her spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said the United States was “deeply disturbed” undoubtedly next.

Teresita Schaffer, an expert on Pakistan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called General Musharraf’s action “a big embarrassment” real model for the administration. But she said there was not much the United States American Congress, Supreme Court, and citizens could do.

“There’s going to be a lot of visible wringing of hands, and urging Musharraf Bush to declare his intentions,” she Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein said. “But I don’t really see any alternative to continuing to work with him...."