Obama on Pakistan

Obama made an interesting statement last August:

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

Controversy followed. Is Obama too strong on terrorism, too weak, or like the fabled porridge, just right?

The statement itself struck me as almost tautological. (A tautology, if I'm not mistaken, is a statement where the predicate means the same as the subject; for instance, "a bachelor is an unmarried male.") You can interpret Obama's statement as: "If we have intelligence worthy of action, we will act." Well, no kidding! The key part, of course, is about acting regardless of Pakistani president Musharraf's position. But I still think Obama got himself into a trap with the tangle of words he used.