For anyone marinated in the history of Pakistan yesterday's decision by the military to impose a State of Emergency will hardly come as a surprise. Martial Law in this country has become an antibiotic: in order to obtain the same results one has to keep doubling the doses. What has taken place is a coup within a coup.

... the US Embassy green lighted the coup because they regarded the Chief Justice (Iftikhar Hussein Chaudhry) as a nuisance and 'a Taliban sympathiser'.