Say what you will about Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf being a power-crazed autocrat, an undemocratic military authoritarian who rules by force alone, a swaggering and pompous man who thinks nothing of suspending a nation's rule of law in order to reassert his own tenuous hold on political control.

You can call him a transparent, corrupt double-dealer who uses America's desperation in the War on Terror to bolster his personal status as an undeserving player on the world stage. But there's ...