World: The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Ahmed Rashid at The Pakistan Daily Times has an interesting take on Bhutto's assassination - one shared, we suspect, by most people who know something about the history and politics of Pakistan. That would not include our State Department, Condoloser Rice, and the Republicanidiots currently making policy.

It should come as no surprise to anyone, except the aforementioned pinheads, that Pakistanis in general see the U.S. as meddling in their internal politics. The Boy Emperor, impatient to ensure a democracy somewhere (except, apparently, in the US) as a legitimizing basis of his "legacy," pressured the corrupt and power-hungry Bhutto to return to a Pakistan that was ruled by an even more corrupt and power-hungry Musharraf. It is now clear that Musharraf had no intention of keeping the promises he made to Bush even while siphoning off billions of US taxpayer dollars from the Treasury which we placed in the hands of that incompetent fool.

As our banks and financial institutions drown in a sea of worthless subprime paper, as our housing industry and homeowners circle the toilet, as our people lose their jobs, their homes, their health, and their children, the Chimperor keeps paying for goodwill and reaping only rancour.

I'm sure he wonders why.

Meanwhile, the finger is pointing at Musharraf, and there's no denying that if he did not actively plan to assassinate Bhutto, then he knows who did, and probably inspired said assassins.

First, Musharraf's government claimed she was shot. Then doctors at the hospital in Rawalpindi released X-rays purportedly showing no bullets had penetrated either her body or her skull. The government then asserted that she had fractured her skull when she hit a lever in the sunroof of her vehicle. When their hearers responded with disbelief, they amended their story to claim that gunshots had caused Bhutto to duck back into her car, whereupon a suicide bomber detonated his explosives and the ensuing shock wave slammed her skull into the lever of her sunroof with sufficient force to fracture it. At some point, that claim was further amended to allow the possibility of bomb fragments having caused a bruise or scrape on her head that might have then caused a fracture.

Subsequently, they produced what purported to be a tape of an intercepted conversation with an al-Qaeda leader who is congratulating one of his minions on having achieved the death of Ms. Bhutto. al-Qaeda, never shy about taking credit, has denied any involvement. Even if they were involved, it says a lot for the incompetence of Pervy's government that they have failed to capture Osama bin Laden, who is within their borders, for over seven long years now, but managed in less than 24 hours to track a supposed al-Qaeda assassin.

They must think Americans are even stupider than we think they think we are. Either that or their long dealings with Mr. Bush and his coterie of extremely stupid and incompetent lickspittles has convinced them that Americans are no smarter than their leaders.

Musharraf's toadies have also claimed that Bhutto's husband did not permit an autopsy; yet contradictory reports claim that Rawalpindi police halted the autopsy that should be standard operating procedure when a suspicious death occurs.

The Pakistani ambassador to the US has now contradicted the Pakistani government's official claim that they do not need a UN-style inquiry into the assassination. Scotland Yard is already on the scene mounting an investigation at the request of the Pakistani government. A third investigation is being carried out by high-ranking members of Musharraf's cabal.

And now Raw Story informs us that US intelligence officials believe the suicide bomber was targeting the gunman who shot at Bhutto. It was apparently an attempt to get rid of evidence that implicated the actual assassins. Certainly, the Rawalpindi police displayed an unseemly haste in hosing down the area where the assassination occurred. One might wonder if, coupled with their earlier action in deserting their posts when they were supposed to be providing security for Ms. Bhutto, they were not somehow implicated in the assassination themselves.

To quote Frank Zappa, "Questions, questions, questions, flooding into the mind of the concerned young person today."

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