DIVORCE COMING? – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  If this were a legal marriage, the lawyers and counselors would already be in the room.  The U.S. and Pakistan "enjoy" a relationship that seems to be going downhill fast.  We are not popular among the Pakistani people, who are informed by Islamists and an anti-American press.  This is not good, for Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Pakistani media aired the name of a man they said is the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief, prompting questions about whether the Pakistani government tried to out a CIA operative in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. is looking into the matter. There are no plans at this time to withdraw the station chief. If the government had attempted to publicize the name, that would be the second such outing in the past six months, a sign of how deeply U.S.-Pakistan relations have soured.

The CIA declined to comment. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency didn't respond to a request for comment.

Tensions, which have been building between the two countries for months, exploded after the bin Laden strike, which sharply embarrassed the Pakistani government. In another source of strain, the U.S. is pressing the Pakistanis for access to bin Laden's three wives, who are being held in Pakistani custody. The Pakistani government isn't complying with the request, a U.S. official said.

COMMENT:  Another source of friction is the U.S. drone strikes into Pakistan, which harbors a string of terrorist groups along its border with Afghanistan.  And still another source is America's generally good relationship with India, Pakistan's arch-enemy.

If Pakistan slips behind the Islamist curtain, the security of its nuclear arsenal – said to contain more than 100 weapons – will become critical.  If even a few of those weapons fall into the hands of terrorists, the world can be changed, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties. 

And this is what happens when we allow unstable countries like this to acquire nuclear weapons.  Those who minimize the nuclear threat from Iran, please notice.

May 9, 2011