Narus.Info

This excellent report from UK’s Channel Four shows multiple angles of the assassination. Benazir Bhutto was killed by bullets and not by the suicide bomber, whose job apparently was to kill the gunner, a different man.

“This is the height of brutality. They have hanged her father. They have killed her brothers. The government has killed all the good people of Pakistan,” said Sarfraz Khan, a doctor. “Please pray for us. Pray for our poor country.”

Bush’s motive in sending Bhutto into Pakistan was simply to prop up the military dictator Musharraf.

For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy — and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan’s most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington’s key ally in the battle against terrorism. . . .

As President Pervez Musharraf’s political future began to unravel this year, Bhutto became the only politician who might help keep him in power.

“The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact,” said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy. . . .

“U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto’s participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf’s continued power as president,” said Barnett R. Rubin of New York University. “Now Musharraf is finished.”

But that’s not all. The police in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani Army, abandoned their posts before Bhutto was killed yesterday.

The assassination occurred in this garrison city housing the headquarters of the Pakistan army, an institution that has always seemed opposed to Bhutto. A couple of miles away across Rawalpindi, a previous military regime had executed her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, in 1979, when she was 26.

Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday’s rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts. As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: “Willing to die for Benazir.”

Ghulam Mustafa, a witness at the scene, said he saw bodies with missing heads and limbs.

“This happens only in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Why not America?” he said.

Bhutto’s party had complained repeatedly that the government provided her with inadequate security. She’d narrowly escaped another assassination attempt, at her homecoming parade Oct. 18 in Karachi, which left 140 dead.

In attack on Mahdi Army in Kut.

Atrios has a good point; Bhutto died at 6am today Washington, DC time. Where is the US Secretary of State? The coffin is on its way to the graveyard. Maybe she is actually on the way to the funeral, I certainly hope so.

Was Musharraf involved? Is the Pope Catholic?

UPDATE: Riots breaking out in Pakistani cities. I’ve noticed that CNN is using their international feed nonstop, while the local NPR station has simply switched to a BBC feed. US media is obviously not up to the task of covering this at all.

Earlier Thursday, at a different pre-election rally in this garrison city south of Islamabad, a rooftop sniper opened fire on supporters of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif leaving four dead and at least five injured.

The violence comes 12 days before Pakistanis are set to vote in national parliamentary elections, which have already been marked by enormous political turmoil. President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November — a move that he said was to combat terrorism but was widely perceived as an effort to stave off legal challenges to his authority.

Bhutto was rushed from the public park where the rally took place to Rawalpindi General Hospital, where a surgeon worked in vain to save her.

Her SUV was so badly damaged by the bomb that it could not make the drive; she was transferred en route to another private vehicle.

Thousands had gathered at the hospital by the time an official emerged from the hospital to say Bhutto was dead; the announcement triggered a roar of rage and grief.

Devastated supporters smashed the glass doors of the hospital and stormed the building to try and view her lifeless body. Even as ambulances continued to arrive bearing dead and wounded from the bombing, the crowd outside the hospital tore down and burned campaign posters showing candidates from Musharraf’s party. Yelling “Musharraf is a dog,” they blamed him for Bhutto’s death.

“Today there is no more Pakistan. The woman who has defended us has died,” said Sher Zaman as he beat his chest in mourning. “I’m 70 years old, but today I feel like an orphan.”

Elsewhere in Pakistan, crowds were taking to the streets to demonstrate and riot in protest of the assassination, setting fires and pelting cars with stones, news services reported.

this is awful. cnn is reporting the benazir bhutto has been killed in the attack, while the ny times is reporting she may have been killed.

update: the ny times is now reporting that bhutto was “assassinated.”

This is where the Iraq war has brought us. Despite all-time record spending, the skies of the Eastern United States are now more defenseless than they were on 9/11, and Osama Bin Laden is a free man plotting to attack us again. Perhaps more importantly, Bush has made joining the military so undesirable that combined with his Iraq fiasco there are not sufficient US forces to stop the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

There are other articles about this, but this one does the best job that I have seen in describing the vicious political process that produced this disgrace, controlled of course by veto threats and lobbying $$$$ behind the GOP. Democrats apparently finally caved out of fear they would be blamed for a 10% pay cut for Medicare doctors due to take effect Jan. 1 if they did not bow to GOP demands to push the S-CHIP issue past the 2008 elections. They should have stood their ground and called the GOP bluff, this is a disgrace. All of those responsible should have this hanging over their consciences during the holiday season. Too bad they don’t give a damn.

This is an absolute must read people. An absolute must read story. The convicted GOP “phone jammer” details how racist election dirty tricks are done by the Republican Party of the United States. In detail.

UPDATE: McClatchy is reporting that Dick Cheney’s personal lawyer made sure that the DOJ delayed this guy’s prosecution until after the 2004 elections.