Those two countries are like two very-childish, emotionally-challenged third-graders who just cannot sit next to each other in a classroom. Their reasons for conflicting are nebulous; and the newsworthiness of their droning, hotheaded brinksmanship declines with each moronic counter-threat. Perhaps US papers don't run much about the situation because it does not fit the definition of "news" - something new. Just like mental patients aren't allowed to own guns here, those are two countries that shouldn't have nukes. At least Pres. Bush, the fed-up schoolmarm, is going to go stand between their desks. I hope he brings a pair of dunce caps.

One more thing, dude, while I'm riding the blog... The forementioned "news event" aside, you ask if the NYT doesn't report something, "does it really happen?" As a reader of several newspapers, coast-to-coast (mostly while in transit), I'd advise you that a lot of things happen that the NYT doesn't report. And, miraculously, they happen anyway. The NYT, as you're perhaps belatedly discovering, is not the journalistic icon of truth many people east of the Hudson think it is. In fact, it's hardly a newspaper at all. It's really a mouthpiece for a small group of NYC liberals who want us to see the world the way they do. That's why they don't report things other newspapers do. Like when, before the 2000 election, a Dept. of Justice official formally recommended a criminal investigation into Al Gore's '96 fundraising. The Times ignored it, of course, because such an investigation would have handed the election to W, whom they vigorously fought - in NEWS stories, nevermind editorials. If you read the NYT, you wouldn't know that the alleged racial profiling on the Jersey turnpike may not have happened at all. If you read the NYT, you wouldn't know that Hillary Clinton was so roundly booed by firefighters at the Benefit for NYC concert, her husband screamed in the face of the concert's hapless organizer. The list of examples are daily. Endless. Large and small. Travel around this country a bit, you'll discover the Times is widely quite disdained west of the Hudson. Five words of wisdom for those who rely on that paper for news: There's another world out there.

Very odd - why do you think the conflict is childish ? Or more so than that between the US and the USSR for world domination ? India had its parliament attacked by Pakistani backed militants, and (according to the the post 9/11 reasoning of our own President) deserves retribution. Pakistan is backing a bunch of guerilla fighters in a region of the world they feel has been unjustly seized by India. This is classic grievance stuff. Pakistan is acting like we did in Afghanistan (backing local resistance to an act perceived as injust), and India is acting like we did in Afghanistan (threatening to bomb the hell out of a country which shelters terrorists who have attacked the nation's capital and who've caused thousands of deaths along the way).

Can't see how this is any more childish than our own international behavior.

Well of course the Times isn't an objective source of news. (Like the Post is? Or the WSJ? Or USA Today?) All papers have an ideological bent of some kind, and it shows in their reporting as well as their editorials. Only the Internet, my friend, is truly objective. Well, not the whole thing. But Ishbaddidle is. Yup, we're the standard of journalistic truth, right here.

Actually, I used to read smartertimes, which was helpful in pointing out the ideological bent as well as factual errors in the NYT. But now they've gone and launched the Sun, so they don't do that no more.

Yes, there's another world out there. And mostly, in that world, people play soccer.

I'll redundantly and superscilliously and perscapaciously repeat my perspective, evidence sustained, that I know of no major city daily more editorially bent in its "hard" news coverage than the NYT. I know of no major paper in the U.S. that infuses its news articles with its editorial perspective more than the NYT. You add to this that the paper is considered by many (mostly east of the Hudson) to be the paragon of journalistic integrity, and you have a huge fissure between reputation and reality. I know many New Yorkers consider the NYT sacrosanct, but they need to get off their respective islands more often. Bottom line is, anyone who counts on the NYT as their principal source of news is missing more than people who count on other major dailies - like, God excuse my blasphemy! - the Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times, Arizona Republic, L.A. Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Denver Post, Newsday. These are papers that don't shove editorial content into hard news as much as the NYT does. I read the NYT on-and-off, but always with three assumptions in mind for each article: omission, distortion, and bias.

The good news is, the Times - supporters of Dinkins, Mark Green, Ruth Messinger, Al Gore, Mario Cuomo (and now Andrew), etc. - doesn't matter too much anymore, even on it's own home turf.

The Cold War was set in motion when WWII left two nations standing above the ash heap as the most militarily powerful on Earth. They subsequently attempted to contain each others' perceived expansionist tendencies with... expansionist tendencies. The resulting dynamic was a 40-year chess match, the board and pieces being proxy territories worldwide. The Cold War stayed cold because each nation played the game with strategies based on rational self-interest, with a complex set of checks and balances and interactions in place to keep the missiles pointed at each other tethered to their pads.

India and Pakistan are not playing through proxy territories, they're playing on each others' home turf. Their own populations are the front line - never the case in the Cold War. They have nuclear weapons, but they do not have the multi-layered internal and bilateral checks and balances the US and USSR had. They do not have the diplomatic, economic and social interaction the US and USSR had. And, their mutual animosity predates the current regimes and issues -making said animosity inherently irrational.

India and Pakistan are not thinking rationally, they're acting emotionally. They're not even thinking in terms of basic self-interest; they're willing to risk instant self-annihilation - for what? To know, after death, that the other side must be dead, too?

Just today, I think, as they stand on the brink of nuclear suicide, they have refused to talk to each other. This was never the case with the U.S. and the USSR. Your relativist comparison doesn't stand up to even a cursory historical study. So, India and Pakistan are two drunk morons sharing the same fleabag hotel room for years, unable to stop bickering until, perhaps, one or both of them are dead. Perhaps the best solution is that their former colonists reclaim them and start giving how-to-not-kill-yourselves tutorials. Clearly, as nuclear states, they're not ready for independence.