The impending implosion of Pakistan.

Like several other Muslim nations, Pakistan has been convulsed with rioting in recent weeks, much of it supposedly triggered by the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed. William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, believes that the riots are actually directed against Pakistani President Musharraf "and his working relationship with America's President Bush."

Al-Qaeda grew out of Mujahedeen groups created and trained by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service (with CIA help) during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Many Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders (including, many analysts suspect, Osama bin Laden) were welcomed in Pakistan after the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, and Osama is a popular folk hero in many parts of the country. If Osama is still alive, or if a charismatic successor to him emerges, Pakistan may actually succumb to an al-Qaeda regime.

"If the riots continue and grow," predicts Lind, "the Pakistani forces responsible for containing them will at some point go over and join the rioters. Musharraf will try to get the last plane out; perhaps he will find Texas a congenial place of exile. If he doesn't make that plane, his head will serve as a football, and not just of the political variety."

"The fall of Pakistan to militant Islam will be a strategic disaster greater than anything possible in Iraq, even losing an army," Lind continues, adding detail to this nightmare scenario. "It will be a greater disaster than a war with Iran that costs us our army in Iraq. Osama and Co. will have nukes, missiles to deliver them, the best conventional armed forces in the Moslem world and an impregnable base for operations anywhere else."