■"Aid Fails to Reach Thousands in Pakistan Quake Zone," by Carlotta Gall and David Rohde, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A12.

■"Asian Quake May Be Serious Blow To Islamic Groups Hostile to U.S.," by Zahid Hussain and Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2005, p. A15.

■"A World Turned Upside Down: The aftershocks of Pakistan's tremblor will be felt for years," op-ed by Russell Seitz, Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2005, p. A16.

■"Next: A War Against Nature," op-ed by Robert D. Kaplan, New York Times, 12 October 2005, p. A27.

Pakistan is way short on helos, and yet turns down India's offering of helos. Keep your eyes on that one as public frustration builds in country.

Who knows what happens when an immature nuclear power suffers such a System Perturbation? asks Mr. Seitz.

Who knows indeed.

Seems like the anti-American Kashmiri terror and insurgency groups suffered badly in the temblor, as this kind of quake is called. Seems like U.S. relations with the government can only improve with our big effort, and when we offer $50 million and India offers $116 million, you gotta believe that cross-border ties can only improve between Islamabad and New Delhi.

And Kaplan is right, this sort of event only highlights the long-time and rather huge and definitely hidden-from-view role of the U.S. military as the world's largest relief agency.

But Kaplan also engages in his usual queer hype, claiming that in the future more will die from natural disasters than ever before in history.

Actually, global deaths from natural disasters are down about 90% from the early years of the 20th century (Bjorn Lomborg, Skeptical Environmentalist), and there is no reason (nor statistics) to suggest that Kaplan's typical hyperbole is anything other than his usual bullshit about the future being so much worse than we can possibly imagine.

Still, Kaplan's bit about "the distinctions between war and relief, between domestic and foreign deployments, are breaking down." That part is way true.