A scary anecdote from Iran. A trusted colleague - who is married to an Iranian-American and would thus prefer to stay anonymous - has told me of a very disturbing episode that happened to her friend, another Iranian-American, as she was flying to Iran last week. On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely - they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

Social networking can empower political opposition and dissidents. But it can also help security forces track them. During the red scare witch hunts in the United States, suspected communists were asked to name the names of friends and relatives in the party. These days, the authorities could just check out your Facebook or MySpace pages.

Speaking of excessive security activity, I was on NPR's Diane Rehm Show this morning to discuss the recent news reports about a possible torture probe at the Justice Department, the CIA withholding information from Congress regarding a super-secret assassination program that targeted al Qaeda leaders, and Dick Cheney's role in all of this.

One point I hammered: the House and Senate intelligence committees can and should investigate why the CIA did not brief Congress about this assassination program, focusing on the reports that Cheney ordered the spies not to tell the nation's elected representatives about this operation (which may not have become operational). Cheney's been mum about this. (What, no big speech at AEI?) But the public has a right to know if the vice president blocked an intelligence agency from meeting its obligations to inform Congress about its actions. Such an investigation could be conducted quickly and without blowing details of the program at issue. All you have to do is examine any emails or memos related to this and call in a few intelligence officials, a couple ofaides in Cheney's office, and Cheney himself, and ask them what happened. What are they going to do? Take the Fifth? That would be within their rights, but it would speak volumes about their fidelity to republican-style government. 

Good news and bad from Pakistan. A new poll shows that 81 percent of Pakistanis now believe that the Taliban and "Islamist militants" (what we call al Qaeda) pose a "critical threat" to Pakistan. This is up from only 34 percent in September 2007. And it means that the Pakistani government could have more leeway to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda militants within its borders. But there's a but. A large majority of Pakistanis--69 percent--have an unfavorable view of the United States, even after the election of Barack Obama.

From WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland:

"A sea change has occurred in Pakistani public opinion. The tactics and undemocratic bent of militant groups--in tribal areas as well as Swat--have brought widespread revulsion and turned Pakistanis against them," comments Clay Ramsay, research director. However, he adds: "It's crucial to understand that the US is resented just as much as before, despite the US having a new president."

So if the Pakistani government moves boldly against the Taliban and other militants, it could have the support of a majority of Pakistanis behind it. Yet if the Pakistani government is seen to be doing the bidding of the United States, those actions could upset many, if not most, Pakistanis:

Eighty-eight percent think it is a US goal to weaken and divide the Islamic world (78% definitely a goal). The US Predator drone attacks aimed at militant camps within the Pakistani border are rejected by 82 percent as unjustified. On the war in Afghanistan, 72 percent disapprove of the NATO mission and 79 percent want it ended now; 86 percent think most Afghans want the mission ended as well.

According to this poll, they still really don't like us, and there's been no "Obama effect." The bottom line is a pretty obvious one: getting Pakistan right is a tough task for the Obama administration. The same, of course, is true for Afghanistan--especially now that President Hamid Karzai's campaign reelection is based partly on his criticisms of the US presence in Afghanistan. (He recently accused US forces of protecting security guards who killed several Afghan security officers during a gun battle.)

But this poll does show that in Pakistan there is potential for developing pubic support for government actions that would be in sync with US aims for AfPak-land. Let's hope that Joe Biden, Richard Holbrooke and others are pondering how best to take advantage of this shift in public attitudes.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, President Barack Obama said the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan--but did not use the word "losing"--and he raised the possibility of talking to Taliban and Islamist factions in order to separate them from al Qaeda. The point: to isolate Osama bin Laden's murderous gang, both geographically and politically. Obama's remarks have generated much discussion about his policy on Afghanistan, though he does not yet have one. His national security team is in the middle of a review that is due to be completed by the end of the month. Obama has said he will send 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan in the spring and summer. But he has not yet said what the overall mission is there. While foreign policy experts and others await the results of the review, there's still plenty to discuss and ponder, and I did so Tuesday night on Hardball:

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