For all President Bush's high-minded talk of spreading democracy abroad, which is necessary-- according to his reading of scripture, is because "freedom is a gift from an Almighty to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth"-- he certainly has a novel interpretation of exactly what this supposedly sacrosanct gift of the Divine means:

Exclusive: U.S. urges Pakistanis to keep Musharraf, despite election defeat

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers 

Wed Feb 20, 6:45 PM ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department , with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

"This is dangerous," said the diplomat.

The officials spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss internal government debates.

The effort to persuade Pakistan's newly elected parliament not to reinstate the judges could be perceived in Pakistan as a U.S. attempt to keep Musharraf in power after voters overwhelmingly rejected his Pakistan Muslim League-Q political party.

"There is going to be an uprising against the people who were elected" should opposition parties agree to the plan, warned Athar Minallah, the lawyer of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry , whom Musharraf has under house arrest.

A close aide to Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League-N party won the second highest number of seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, said the former prime minister is under growing Western pressure to drop his demands for Musharraf's immediate resignation and the reinstatement of Chaudhry.

"The suggestion has been there from Western countries for some time," said the aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We are not willing to compromise on our stance. It would be against the interests of the Pakistani people."

There may also be personal reasons for Sharif's demands: He was ousted as prime minister when Musharraf led a 1999 coup against him.

The Bush administration has long praised Musharraf as an "indispensable" ally against al Qaida and Islamic radicals waging a guerrilla war and suicide bombing campaign from the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Bush, traveling in Africa, on Wednesday expressed appreciation for Musharraf.

"It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States , and I certainly hope so," he said at a news conference in Ghana .

But many Pakistanis consider Musharraf a U.S. puppet for stepping up counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas that have claimed the lives of women and children.

Experts cite that cooperation as a key reason for the devastating losses suffered by Musharraf's political allies, who retained only 38 of 132 National Assembly seats.

The party backed Musharraf's ouster of Chief Justice Chaudhry , the arrests of thousands of critics, the muzzling of the independent press and a state of emergency last year.

Amazing, really.  The man who has made "spreading democracy" the supposed cornerstone of his foreign policy is urging the government and people of Pakistan to, for all intents and purposes, ignore the results of the election they just had, and keep the dictator-- who they just ousted with overwhelming numbers-- in power.

Need anyone anymore evidence to prove to them that Bush's claims of wanting to foster "democracy" and "liberty" overseas-- especially in middle-eastern and Muslim countries-- are as credible as his warnings of Iraqi chemical weapons-armed drones, yellowcake from Niger, or mushroom cloud-shaped smoking guns?  Indeed, the fact that the President claimed "fostering the spread of democracy" in the Middle East as yet another justification for the Iraq war-- even though his own State Department warned before the invasion that this was a fantasy-- should have been all we needed to know about his so-called commitment to democracy.