I agree with William Dalrymple’s assessment of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. In July 1990, I accompanied Alan Cranston, the California Democrat who at the time was the Senate majority whip, to India and Pakistan. He wanted to show bipartisan support for confidence-building measures offered by Robert M. Gates, the deputy national security adviser, to avert the possibility of a war between the de facto nuclear powers over common claims of territory in Indian-held Kashmir.

Prime Minister Bhutto played a dangerous double game of inflaming popular passions over Kashmir while portraying herself to the world, and to us over lunch, as a voice of moderation.

Peter Galbraith, a friend of Ms. Bhutto and a fellow staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gamely tried to interpret one of Ms. Bhutto’s more inflammatory speeches urging direct action against India as merely a rhetorical flourish — something neither Senator Cranston nor I bought at the time.

Martin Edwin Andersen
Churchton, Md., Jan. 4, 2008