For a diplomat, Hillary Clinton indulged in some pretty plain speaking in Pakistan yesterday:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed doubt Thursday over Pakistan’s failure to locate top al-Qaeda leaders in the eight years since they escaped over the border from Afghanistan, telling a group of Pakistani journalists that she found “it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”

“So far as we know,” she said, “they’re in Pakistan.”

Can’t see that going over too well with the powers that be in Pakistan (the military and the ISI, as much as the government). And there was more:

Speaking to the Pakistani journalists, Clinton was matter-of-fact, offering an example of some of the questions the United States would like more forcefully addressed even as it strives to respond to some of Pakistan’s grievances. In a separate meeting with business executives in Lahore, Clinton contrasted the opulent conference room where they had gathered with Pakistan’s low ranking on the Human Development Index — 141 out of more than 180 countries — and suggested that the widespread failure to pay taxes here may be related to the country’s economic problems.

The Washington Post tells us that “Officials traveling with Clinton expressed overall satisfaction with the trip, which has been an exercise in message calibration.”

If you say so, boss.