For this reason, liberal Pakistanis who were sceptical of Mr Musharaf's other promises to improve Pakistani democracy, for example supported him.
As a policy briefing from the International Crisis Group has recently argued, Musharaf must be forced to resign and a new neutral caretaker government appointed.
Should the United States put Pakistan on notice that our continuing financial support and weapons deliveries depend on genuinely free elections, the military, if not Musharaf, may listen.
It is based on the false twin premise that Musharaf and the military are genuinely interested in assisting America in the war on terror and in restoring democracy in Pakistan .
To expect that Musharaf and the military would on their own accord choose democracy or seriously consider moving against the Islamists is to expect them to act against their own institutional interests.
To start with the latter, from President Bush on down, administration officials have never tired of singing paeans to the purported democratic intentions of Musharaf on the basis of empirical evidence that points to the exact opposite.
If President Musharaf has not been the perfect democrat, perhaps he has more than made up for that by being America's key "strategic ally in the war on terror, " as President Bush himself has repeatedly told us.
What we do know with considerable certainty is that Pakistan will have another round of phony elections on February 18 that will perpetuate General Musharaf's oppressive rule and continue the nuclear power's inexorable slide into violence and chaos.
Setting aside overthrowing the elected government in 1999 - for which Pakistan was kicked out of the British Commonwealth - Musharaf has on numerous occasions engaged in blatant electoral fraud, suspended the constitution twice, packed the Supreme Court and imposed martial law in total disregard of constitutional norms.
While the steps President Musharaf has taken to support the war effort have been impressive on the whole and hugely valuable to the campaign in Afghanistan, it is certainly possible -- if not highly probable -- that his Islamist-supporting intelligence service (known as the ISI) is still working at cross-purposes with both him and us.
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