Highly and deeply, says State

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the Middle East, called Mr. Musharraf’s move [in Pakistan] “highly regrettable,” while her spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said the United States was “deeply disturbed.”

(NYTimes)

And over at the White House some guy named Gordon D. Johndroe is in charge. “This action is very disappointing,” he said.

Somebody named Teresita Shaeffer from someplace called the Center for Strategic and International Studies opines:

"They can’t just decide they’re going to blow off the whole country of Pakistan, because it sits right next to Afghanistan, where there are some 26,000 U.S. and NATO troops.”...

...all looking for some guys who are in, well, Pakistan. I mean, if you blow off Pakistan, Bunky, you're never gonna find 'em.

Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff ...

...and go back to being his old, lovable self.

Musharraf himself, meanwhile, is channeling Abraham Lincoln...

...citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.

And in Karachi, reports The International News, most people "looked stupefied."

Welcome to the club.

(Three newspaper stories were killed in writing this post.)