Former Prime Minister Of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, Assassinated

[Gold9472]

Who Killed Bhutto?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...ed_bhutto.html

Rick Moran
12/27/2007

Conventional wisdom would point the finger at Islamic extremists in Pakistan as the ones who pulled off the successful assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. They made no secret of the fact that killing Bhutto was their number one priority.

They despised her relative secularism and the fact that she was a woman doing man's work. But most of all, they needed to kill her in order to bring unrest to Pakistan, thus setting the stage for what they hope could turn into a bloody civil war and the victory of extremists.

In this scenario, al-Qaeda and those who sympathize with them both in and out of government could be responsible for her death. The intelligence service, ISI, has many Islamist sympathizers in its ranks and getting through the security that surrounded Bhutto could have been facilitated by the professionals in Pakistani intelligence. As details of the attack are revealed, that aspect of the puzzle may come together.

Who else might have carried out such an attack? The Pakistani people are apparently blaming President Musharraf, thinking he offed her in order to get rid of a rival for power. Or, their reasoning goes, he had Bhutto killed in order to re-establish some kind of one man rule.

The problem with blaming Musharraf is that the last thing the Pakistani president wants at this point is violence in the streets. Dawn is reporting that tear gas is already being used against protestors in Peshwar and the possibility of millions of Pakistanis rioting in the major cities is Musharraf's main nightmare at the moment. This is not to say, as I mention above, that elements of the government weren't in on the plot. But Musharraf would have to have a death wish to kill Bhutto.

Is it possible that this was a lone nut? Possible but not very likely. Security surrounding Bhutto was several layers deep and it would seem extremely unlikely that someone could wander through the security net and blow himself up. This is why the finger keeps coming back to a detailed plot with perhaps complicity among Bhutto's bodyguards. The reason for that speculation is that early reports indicate that shots were fired inside the vehicle immediately before the suicide bomber detonated himself. It could be that the bomber was able to push his way into the car following Bhutto who witnesses say was shot as she was getting into the car.

The next few days will tell the tale for Pakistan and its efforts to bring democracy to the country. Elections, scheduled for a little more than two weeks from today, will feature a new leader of Bhutto's Pakistani People's Party. Can he or she fill Bhutto's shoes?

If not, Pakistan is in for some very dangerous times.

Update: Thomas Lifson adds:

Is there a connection between the killing of Bhutto and Musharraff's campaign in the Swat Valley? Quite possibly.

From December the 8th ABC News (Australia - not related to American ABC News), the Pakistani Army is claiming the Swat Valley is clear of Islamist militants. Musharraff's forces have killed 290 rebels and arrested another 143, but pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah is still on the run with about 200 to 400 "hardcore fighters, including some foreigners."

It's not unreasonable to assume that remnants of Fazlullah's forces are behind the attack on Bhutto given that they were kicked out of the Swat Valley almost three weeks ago and are desperate to continue their campaign of de-stabilization. Also, Maj Gen Janjua of the Pakistan Army says it will take about four months to completely restore order in the Swat Valley. In the meantime, pro-Taliban forces could very well have dispersed and then regrouped to conduct the attack.

[Gold9472]

U.S. Checking al Qaeda Claim of Killing Bhutto

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...ecking-al.html

Brian Ross, Richard Esposito & R. Schwartz
December 27, 2007 11:47 AM

While al Qaeda is considered by the U.S. to be a likely suspect in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot confirm an initial claim of responsibility for the attack, supposedly from an al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

An obscure Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

It said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al Zawahri in October. Before joining Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Zawahri was imprisoned in Egypt for his role in the assassination of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Bhutto had been outspoken in her opposition to al Qaeda and had criticized the government of President Pervez Musharraf for failing to take strong action against the Islamic terrorists.

"She openly threatened al Qaeda, and she had American support," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser. "If al Qaeda could try to kill Musharraf twice, it could easily do this," he said.

Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the bomb attack Oct. 18 during Bhutto's homecoming rally that killed 140 people but left the former prime minister uninjured.

Senior U.S. officials say it will take several days to sort out who was responsible and that it will be "a test of credibility for the Pakistani government."

U.S. officials monitoring Internet chat rooms known to be used by Islamic militants say several claims of responsibility have been posted, although such postings are notoriously unreliable.

[Gold9472]

Opposition leader's assassination 'moves us closer' to potential nuclear apocalypse, expert says
Predicts Pakistan will not dissolve, but US lacks options dealing with nuke-armed country

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Opposi...oser_1227.html

Nick Juliano
Published: Thursday December 27, 2007

The death of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has left the US lacking in options for dealing with the tumultuous, nuclear-armed, militant-rich nation and has raised the possibility that the country's weapons will fall into the wrong hands, leading to a possible apocalypse, a foreign policy expert tells RAW STORY.

"When people aren't looking, you have a question of command and control of their nuclear warheads," Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at The New America Foundation, said in an interview Thursday.

Clemons said Bhutto's assassination could cause the "Doomsday Clock" to tick forward. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists maintains the clock, which depicts how close the world is to midnight, representing a nuclear catastrophe. At the beginning of this year, the clock was set at 11:55 p.m.

"I think we've moved closer to midnight ... to a potential apocalyptic situation," Clemons said. "It doesn't mean we're going to get there, but we have moved closer."

Based on conversations he's had with associates of Bhutto, Clemons predicted the country "would not disintegrate." However, he told RAW STORY that Bhutto's death likely would prevent next month's scheduled election and could lead to more security crackdowns against Pakistani citizens.

As for the US approach toward Pakistan, options are now "very, very narrow," he said.

"It blows up America's effort to manage the Pakistan mess. ... Now we don't have an alternative to Musharraf," Clemons noted. "The timing of this is amazingly bad; she probably would've been elected Prime Minister next week."

Other observers were more pessimistic about Pakistan's future now that Bhutto is dead.

"The impact will be that Pakistan is in more turmoil -- it will be the start of civil war in Pakistan," said Riaz Malik of the opposition party Pakistan Movement for Justice, according to The Guardian. "There is a very real danger of civil war in Pakistan."

Questions have swirled around potential flaws in Bhutto's security detail. The former prime minister, who had recently returned to Pakistan after years in self-imposed exile, was shot at close range by a gunman, then hit with shrapnel from a suicide bomb, according to news reports. It was the second attempt on her life since her return.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, implied in a statement Thursday that more could have been done to protect Bhutto.

“This fall, I twice urged President Musharraf to provide better security for Ms. Bhutto and other political leaders – I wrote him before her return and after the first assassination attempt in October," Biden said. "The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered."

Clemons said that, both Bhutto and Musharraf were seen by the average Pakistani as US "puppets," but that now the US has no option except Musharraf in trying to quell an increasingly unstable country.

Musharraf himself is believed to be under threat of assassination attempts by foreign extremists because of his perceived closeness to the US. At the same time, he has come under fire from American politicians for not doing enough to root out elements of al Qaeda believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Whatever happens, a resolution of the turmoil seems farther away that it was Wednesday night, while threats are still prevalent within Pakistan.

"It's going to take time," Clemons said. "And we still have a nuclear Pakistan with Osama bin Laden and [Ayman al-]Zawahiri residing in their country."

[simuvac]

This was posted at 911Blogger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

At about the 6 minute mark, Bhutto refers to Omar Sheikh as the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.

Have you seen/heard this before, Jon?

[simuvac]

Council on Foreign Relations says: "Almost Certainly Al Qaeda"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/82153

A Pakistan analyst discusses who killed Benazir Bhutto and what her death will mean for Pakistan.

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 2:43 PM ET Dec 27, 2007

Bruce Riedel, a former defense and intelligence official who helped make South Asia policy in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, says he believes Benazir Bhutto's assassination "was almost certainly the work of Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's Pakistani allies." He says, "Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power much as they have in other failing states." He says the United States should press the government of President Pervez Musharraf to go ahead with the parliamentary elections—perhaps after a brief pause. "The only way that Pakistan is going to be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a legitimate democratically elected secular government that can rally the Pakistani people to engage Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist movements," he says.

Let's start with an obvious question. In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who do you think was responsible?
It was almost certainly the work of Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's Pakistani allies. Al Qaeda has been trying to kill Ms. Bhutto for decades. She has been the target of assassination attempts by Al Qaeda before. They were most likely responsible for the attack on her when she first returned to Pakistan. Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power, much as they have in other failing states where Al Qaeda knows its chances for success are higher.

There is supposed to be a parliamentary election on January 8, two weeks away. What will happen? Will they be postponed?
There is a good chance that President Pervez Musharraf will postpone the election, at least temporarily, in part to give Ms. Bhutto's party, the PPP [Pakistan People's Party], a chance to select a new front-runner and to organize itself. If he tries to postpone the election indefinitely, or to in effect shelve them, there will be a very strong backlash in Pakistan because Pakistanis across the political spectrum want an opportunity for elections to produce a new, more legitimate government. I don't think they would find the argument that terrorists killed a leading figure in the democratic movement an appropriate excuse to shelve democracy. We will see soon how Musharraf acts. I hope he will adhere to the principle of elections with a date certain, even if they are postponed temporarily to give the Pakistan People's Party a chance to reorganize.

Do they have an obvious replacement for her?
This party was very much Ms. Bhutto's party. There is no heir apparent on the horizon. They have a significant problem. This might be a boon to the other secular parties, including the one run by Nawaz Sharif. Sharif is clearly not seeking to be elected through this kind of tragedy. He has been an advocate of elections with all political parties running.

Does President Musharraf have a political party?
President Musharraf has a party. It is a splinter of the Sharif party, the Pakistani Muslim League [PML-N]. By most accounts and most polls, [Musharraf's] party will come in very poorly in this election. There is a widespread feeling among Pakistanis that the Musharraf dictatorship has gone on too long. A recent poll (PDF) by the International Republican Institute shows somewhere around two-thirds of Pakistanis would like to see Musharraf step down and give up power now. It [also] suggests that in a fair election, the opposition parties are likely to do very well. But because they are divided, it was unlikely and it remains unlikely that any single opposition party will have a majority in the new national assembly—there would have to be coalition building.

Would the PPP have won outright?
I don't think it would have won a clear majority, but no one knows. Of course another factor is that no election in Pakistani history has ever been entirely free and fair. Every Pakistani election has been tainted by widespread allegations of fraud. It had been expected, even by Ms. Bhutto, that the elections would be tainted by fraud. The question was always going to be whether the level of political machination and rigging of the election would be beyond the pale—that is, so gross and massive that no one would take the election results seriously—or be within the norm of Pakistani politics.

When did you first meet Ms. Bhutto?
My first encounter with Ms. Bhutto was in 1991 when I was working at the White House for President George H.W. Bush as the director for South Asian affairs at the National Security Council. I have seen her again periodically over the years, including when she called on Mrs. Clinton in the second administration when she was in exile. I don't claim to have a personal relationship with her.

Why did she take such risks when she already had been targeted on her first day back in Pakistan?
Ms. Bhutto was the kind of person who believed that it was imperative for her to be in touch with her followers: that she couldn't be a leader of a democratic, secular party and hide from view all the time. It was part of her being the symbol of democracy and of women's rights in a Muslim country that she would be out on the campaign trail. She knew the risks. She knew her own family's tragic history; her father [former Pakistani president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto] being executed by a previous military dictatorship in 1979; her brother [Murtaza Bhutto] dying in politically motivated violence in 1996.

She knew the risks, but she felt that being a political figure and standing for democracy meant that you had to be out there among the people and you couldn't be hiding. There now will be calls in Pakistan for a thorough investigation of the security around her appearance today and whether the government provided sufficient security. I won't try to preview how this will come out, but there will be a lot of desire to have accountability for the security situation today.

You said earlier that Al Qaeda was responsible, but could it also be military intelligence?
I am sure that conspiracy theories about that will abound in Pakistan. She was widely disliked in the intelligence apparatus, but it was more likely the work of Al Qaeda and its cohorts. Now it is certainly possible that they had penetrated and had sympathizers within the Pakistani security apparatus and had advance knowledge of her movements. It is clear from the Al Qaeda attacks in the past, including on President Musharraf, that Al Qaeda has sympathizers at the highest levels of security, and intelligence which provided information on his movements in the past which facilitated the efforts to kill him.

If you were still working at the White House what advice would you give the president on how the United States should respond?
First, to mourn the loss of the heroic figure. But the more critical point would be to press the Pakistani government to continue to go forward with the elections. The Musharraf government has promised to deliver stability and democracy and today's events are a tragic indication that it has failed to do both. Instead of stability we have acts of terror in the military capital of the country, Rawalpindi. And instead of democracy, we have one of the leading democratic advocates in the Muslim world killed. The only way that Pakistan is going to be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a legitimate, democratically-elected, secular government that can rally the Pakistani people to engage Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist movements. The army has failed to do that. The army dictatorship has failed to do so. We should now press for the democratic movement to move forward.

Do you think Sharif will become prime minister?
I don't know. His party has not been tainted by rumors of backroom deals like Bhutto's was. He is doing pretty well among Pakistanis who want a government that will be free of Musharraf and to move against him. But I won't try to predict the outcome of the elections now that we have the new tragedy.


URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/82153

[Gold9472]

This was posted at 911Blogger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

At about the 6 minute mark, Bhutto refers to Omar Sheikh as the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.

Have you seen/heard this before, Jon?

No. Here's the clip.

http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/omarmurderosama.mp3

I'm betting it was probably a mistake, and she meant Daniel Pearl, however, now we'll never know.

[PhilosophyGenius]

This was posted at 911Blogger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

At about the 6 minute mark, Bhutto refers to Omar Sheikh as the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.

Have you seen/heard this before, Jon?

Shit, Bin Laden was murdered by someone? (supposedly)

Of all the way's he'd go out, that's the way I'd least expect.

[beltman713]

Looks like Bush's buddy(Musharraf) in Pakistan finally took her out. There goes the competition. The shit could really hit the fan there now.

[Gold9472]

Although, if he did somehow murder Osama Bin Laden, that would explain why they refuse to even acknowledge Omar Sheikh here in America. If they did, and he did in fact murder him, and he does something like... mention it, then the spectre of their dreams goes away.

On top of everything else Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh related they don't want to get attention.

[Gold9472]

Many Had the Desire, Means to Kill Bhutto

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122702261.html

By Joby Warrick and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 28, 2007; Page A15

Even before the official search got underway in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence agencies yesterday were drawing up their own list of possible suspects in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto -- a list that includes al-Qaeda as well as elements of Pakistan's own intelligence service.

In the initial hours after the slaying, intelligence officials had no firm indication of who was behind the attack and no independent means of verifying any early claims of responsibility. But it was quickly clear that numerous groups possessed both the means of carrying out the assassination and a deep antagonism toward Bhutto and the moderating influences she embodied, according to several current and former officials closely tracking the situation.

At the top of the list, the officials said, is the al-Qaeda terrorist network and its legion of allies, including loosely affiliated groups that espouse similar views and, in some cases, share training facilities and other resources. But several officials said it is equally plausible that the assassination was carried out with the support -- or at least the tacit approval -- of Pakistani government employees. Most of the officials expressed doubt, however, that President Pervez Musharraf himself would have approved the killing.

"There are many Pakistani intelligence types who don't like Benazir Bhutto," said one U.S. official familiar with the country's internal politics. "She had more than her share of detractors throughout the government." At the same time, the official said, the rioting and unrest triggered by the slaying threaten the country's stability in a way that directly undermines the government of Musharraf, who had been her chief political rival.

Some former U.S. intelligence and defense experts said they believe that the assassination marks the beginning of a new and significant Islamic extremist offensive against the government of Pakistan.

"I think they see an opportunity to make Pakistan a new battleground," retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni said of al-Qaeda and its allies. Zinni -- who dealt often with Musharraf when he was chief of Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East -- said there is "no doubt in my mind" that the culprits are linked to al-Qaeda, which has long-established havens along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. He said the group was being pressured by recent agreements between the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and "felt they had to do something."

Al-Qaeda possessed the clearest motive for the attack: the destabilization of Pakistan's government, which Osama bin Laden personally called for in a statement addressed to Pakistan's citizens this past fall. "They had means, plenty of martyr wannabes. And they probably had inside information on her route and security," said Bruce Reidel, a former CIA official and onetime member of the National Security Council.

U.S. officials also mentioned as a possible suspect the Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to previous attempts to assassinate Pakistani political figures.

Although Zinni is skeptical of the notion that Pakistani intelligence backed the assassination, other experts saw the hand of Pakistan's military intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which supported the Taliban inside Afghanistan until the U.S. invasion in 2001, and is believed to maintain links to Islamic extremist groups.

Andrew Exum, who fought in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army officer and now studies Islamic militant groups at King's College London, said he has "a hard time believing no one in ISI knew about this attack."

In the end, however, the facts may not matter as much as perception, said Barnett R. Rubin, a New York University expert on South Asian affairs. "I know what many people in Pakistan and Afghanistan believe: They think that the Pakistani military killed her," he said. "I am not endorsing this belief -- or denying it -- but it is a political reality."