Tyrrany invokes Lincoln

The news from Pakistan:

Musharraf sought to placate the United States by evoking comparisons between himself and Lincoln, whose 1865 assassination made him in many people’s eyes a martyr for the ideal of national unity.

“As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion ... and this was to preserve the union because the union was in danger,” he said, even quoting from a letter the American president wrote as he battled opponents during the height of the Civil War.

“Toward that end, he broke laws, he violated the constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties.”