First the interesting, from Londonstani:
I think there is much more to this whole episode than whether or not you knew civilians were being killed in Afghanistan and former ISI officials were giving advice to insurgents in Afghanistan. This is about public opinion. Measuring what the public thinks and predicting how it might react to events is an imprecise science (much like the related fields of economics and sociology). But it's still very real. You might not know how it works but you can feel its effects when governments start clamping down on banks, launch military campaigns or pull troops out and come home.And when it comes to public opinion, lots of vagaries start making a huge difference - like how you found out. When George Galloway suggested that British MPs were greedy, people rolled their eyes, nodded or smiled. The general thought was, "yeah. But they are politicians, what do you expect?" However, once the British MPs expenses scandal hit the headlines with details of taxpayers coughing up for duckhouses and flatscreen televisions, the result was a national political crisis.
We'll follow subsequent polling on U.S. sentiment toward Afghanistan, but I wonder: is this, as Andrew Bast wrote today, a "Pentagon Papers" moment? I lean towards "no," but we'll see.
Now the debatable, from Stephen Hayes:
Taken together, and added to what we know about support for al Qaeda and its affiliates from the regimes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, these reports should deal a fatal blow to the stubborn claims that the jihadists at war with us operate without the backing of states. Unlikely.
So, which state is supporting the Pakistani Taliban's efforts to overthrow the Zardari government?
That aside, I think this is a bit of red herring. There are terrorists organization that are state proxies (Hezbollah) and there are terrorist organizations that take aid and comfort where they can get it but don't exist for the purpose of perpetuating the policies of a single state (al Qaeda). This strikes me as an important distinction and not one we should casually discard.
