A Few Items Worthy of Attention

I'm working on some posts of my own but thought I'd offer a couple of links in the meantime:

• An interesting collection of observations on Pakistan over at National Journal. I tend not to post on Pakisitan because a) I don't know much about it and b) we have two real Pakistan experts here at MEI, former Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin and Marvin Weinbaum. But given the current campaign and all the alarm about the Taliban being close to Islamabad, I think the observations collected by National Journal are a good offsetting balance. I particularly think Paul Pillar's are worthy of note. There's cause for concern but let's not write the obituary for Pakistan yet.
• Why did Muqtada al-Sadr go to Turkey? Marc Lynch reflected on it yesterday without reaching a firm conclusion, but it's obviously a sign that Sadr's extended absence from the Iraqi scene may be coming to an end as the US presence starts to wind down.

More to come in a little while.