The news last week of the alleged killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has sparked a round of confused and contradictory messages from various parties.

American and Pakistani officials claim with more and more certainty that Mehsud is dead. Meanwhile, elements of the Pakistani Taliban admitted his death and announced a shura, or gathering, to decide a new Taliban leader, while others strongly asserted that Mehsud is alive, kicking, and making videos to prove it.

While there is at this writing no DNA proof that Mehsud is dead, the strong message from American and Pakistani officials, coupled with persistent reports of fighting between Taliban leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali Ur-Rehman leads me to believe that Mehsud is either dead or out of commission.

It seems that the vocal debate about the future of American involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan has spilled into the hallowed halls of the New America Foundation.

 This month's issue of the Washington Monthly carries an excellent piece from Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative co-director Peter Bergen arguing against the facile statements many have made equating Afghanistan to Vietman, or persisting in the well-worn cliche that Afghanistan is the "graveyard of empires." Bergen continues, laying out a good case for continued investment and intervention in Afghanistan, in order to bolster recent security gains and the nascent Afghan security forces. He also argues that further American presence is necessary to keep Afghanistan from suffering a power vacuum as it did when Washington pulled up stakes in Afghanistan in 1989 and again in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq war.

This year’s Failed States Index from Foreign Policy magazine is interesting not only for the questions the Index raises about failing states, but also for the questions it poses about the very act of measuring state stability (you can read about FP's methodology here).

One article released as part of the Index, written by Robert Rotberg of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, raises questions about the Index itself. Rotberg discusses some of the "puzzling" results, commenting that:

Six months after the Bush era officially ended, the prison at Guantanamo Bay still causes controversy. President Obama has vowed to close the prison by 2010, while Dick Cheney continues to insist to anyone listening that the US will be at greater risk of an Al Qaeda attack if Guantanamo closes.

In a May speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney cited Pentagon figures that 14%, or one in seven, of released Guantanamo detainees rejoined the fight in the Middle East or Central Asia against American interests.