Keeping Our Eye Off the Ball

American media woke up to the story of Pakistan momentarily, when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. But, just as quickly, Pakistan disappeared from the U.S. media radar screen. This week, the NYT led its Tuesday front page with a story both stunning and obvious to Pakistan-watchers -- that former intelligence agents of that country were now admitting that the ISI, the nation's powerful intel agency, had lost control of the jihadist militants it had long been supporting and financing. Yet the other media, which normally and almost slavishly use the NYT's news agenda to set their own, ignored the story.

Since 2001, when the administration and the media colluded in a single-minded focus on Iraq, Pakistan has lingered at the outer edges of American awareness, even though that country did indisputably meet the three criteria President Bush invoked for the invasion of Iraq (support for terrorists, invasion of a neighbor, possession of WMDs).

It's hard to keep your eye on Pakistan, I guess, when at least one network (NBC) "covered" Bhutto's killing via a correspondent just a few thousand miles away in London. But the NYT story this week made it abundantly clear that the country's intelligence establishment has, as its critics have long said, had close supportive ties with jihadist militants on its own soil as well as in Afghanistan, and that that relationship, very much like the one the U.S. had with such groups during the 1980s Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, has begun to backfire with ominous implications for the future. Better to concentrate on the polls in Nevada and tax cuts in Washington.