Sometimes, you'll read a lot of idle speculation on blogs. People connect the dots in strange ways, and often arrive at conclusions that don't stand up to scrutiny.

With that caveat, I'm going to share some idle speculation from a good friend who has travelled  through Pakistan and who is familiar with the politics of Central Asia.

Over coffee yesterday, he suggested that the U.S.  military under its commander-in-chief,  Barack Obama, will occupy Pakistan under the pretext of gaining control over that country's nuclear weapons.

Today's New York Times  includes an article  that leaves me wondering if my friend's speculation isn't  so farfetched.

Under the headline "Pakistan is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, U.S. Says", the piece quotes Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirming that U.S. aid might be being diverted to Pakistan's nuclear-weapon program.

The article included this zinger: "Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Mr. Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, reflected the administration’s concern in a recent interview, saying that Pakistan 'has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth.' "

Who can forget the role that former  New York Times reporter Judith Miller played in whipping up the liberal establishment in support of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 2003? Miller highlighted the possiblity that then-Iraqi dictator  Saddam  Hussein was developing  biological weapons.

Obama has certainly focused more attention on Pakistan since being elected last November. There have been reports of unmanned U.S.  Predator attacks on militants on  Pakistani soil.

In addition, the new Pakistani government under Asif Zardari  hardly seems like a paragon of stability.  

Then there are all those resources in sparsely populated Balochistan,which covers almost half the country. Recently, Pepe Escobar wrote a provocative piece on this topic in Asia Times.

So does it all add up to a U.S. military strike on Pakistan during Obama's first term? So far, there haven't been any moves to get the U.S. Security Council to take action against Pakistan. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hasn't prepared any slide shows for the UN General Assembly outlining the threat posed by Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

But it's worth noting that Democrats are sometimes just as adept as Republicans when it comes to launching military attacks in Asia. After all, the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were responsible for the mess known as the Vietnam War.