ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As neighbors and reporters swarmed the streets around Osama bin Laden’s compound this week, men in sunglasses and white tunics lurked about on motorbikes. Residents presumed they were Pakistani intelligence agents, there to keep tabs on who spoke to whom. That counted as nothing unusual in a nation where the security establishment has cultivated an image as a nearly omnipresent force that is watchful above all of foreigners who go near military installations. Yet given the choice between pleading incompetence or complicity in bin Laden’s years-long stay in the garrison city of Abbottabad, Pakistani authorities have chosen the former. It is an explanation that strains credulity for many international observers, including U.S. policymakers, who have demanded an investigation into whether Pakistan sheltered the al-Qaeda leader. Read full article > >

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Pakistan seeks to manage image after bin Laden killing

Letters in response to Garrison Keillor’s review of “Autobiography of Mark Twain.”

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Letters: Ramblings With Twain