This is Joe Klein of Time magazine writing in his blog, Swampland on Pakistan's capitulation in Swat Valley:

This is terrible news. The Pakistani government has essentially given control of the Swat Valley to the Taliban. It means that the Taliban are now 100 miles from Islamabad and the military center of Rawalpindi. It also means that Pakistan's Northwest Province is well on its way to becoming what Afghanistan used to be--a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and related terrorists.

As if this happened yesterday or as if the Pakistani government had much of a choice in matter. The Pakistani government did not give "control" of Swat to the Taliban, the Taliban took control of Swat months ago. This is just the best deal the Pakistani authorities could strike with the Tehrik-e-Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi which is the group that controls the Swat Valley. It's de jure recognition of a de facto condition. As for the rest of that inane paragraph, elements of the Taliban are in Islamabad. Check the local madrassas. You'll find them there. That last sentence is simply laughable. Time pays for this? Where has Joe Klein been? Pakistan has been a sanctuary for "Al-Qaeda and related terrorists" for over two decades. 

Then there is David Sanger whose new book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power which I have just finished reading. Over all, it is a great book. Mr. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, has access to policy makers I wish I had. His insights are invaluable and he's generally an excellent reporter. He didn't win two Pulitzer Prizes for nothing. Yet in the chapter on Iran, Mr. Sanger can't figure out why Iran even want nuclear power. After all, Iran is a member of OPEC. He repeats the Bush question:

Why would a country with huge oil reserves want to spend billions on nuclear power?

Iran does hold 9% of the world's oil reserves, the world's second largest, and 15% of its natural gas reserves but Iran peaked its oil production in 1974 and its annual production has been declining ever since. Today Iran's production is just two thirds of the oil production it had before the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 and no matter what Iran does will its oil production ever reach its 1974 levels, short of finding a some undiscovered pool oil by some miracle. Moreover that 1974 date is critical because that's also the date the US began talks on selling the Shah nuclear power technology so it seems that Iran's quest for nuclear power did pass the muster of necessity and prudent economic planning during the Ford Administration. Their need for nuclear power is a separate issue from enrichment issues but that process has been so mismanaged by the foreign policy "experts" of the Bush Administration that Iran's ability to enrich is now a matter of when not if.

More on the history of Iran's Nuclear Energy Program from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.