a la JFK.
Tired...
a la JFK.
Tired...
I call shenanigans.
Yep.Originally Posted by Gold9472
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U.S. to maintain its policy toward Pakistan, for now
http://www.startribune.com/world/12904376.html
Last update: December 28, 2007 - 8:20 PM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is counting on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf going ahead with upcoming parliamentary elections despite Benazir Bhutto's assassination in the hope they will cement steps toward restoring democracy.
Proceeding on or about on schedule with the Jan. 8 election through which Bhutto hoped to return to power is the biggest immediate concern in sustaining a U.S. policy of promoting stability, moderation and democracy in the nation, U.S. officials said Friday.
Although Bhutto's death complicates U.S. efforts to broker reconciliation between the opposition and an increasingly unpopular Musharraf, a key ally in the war on terrorism, her passing is unlikely to prompt any major strategy shift or cuts in U.S. aid, the officials said. The United States has pumped nearly $10 billion in aid into Pakistan since 9/11.
President Bush made the points in a meeting held via secure video link from Crawford, Texas, the White House said. "The president told his senior national security team that the United States needs to support democracy in Pakistan and help Pakistan in its struggle against extremism and terrorism," spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
Other officials conceded the administration has little choice but to stay the course. "There are not a lot of alternatives out there," said one.
They said their main concerns now are the elections taking place, how Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party will fare, and if it can sustain itself in parliament without her.
The State Department said its team in Washington, Islamabad and other Pakistani cities had been in close touch with representatives of the "broad political spectrum."
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Militants, Bhutto Aides Allege Cover-Up
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...5RXzgD8TR5GLO0
By RAVI NESSMAN – 1 hour ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto's killing and the opposition leader's aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official account of her death.
The government stood firmly by its account of Thursday's assassination and insisted it needed no foreign help in any investigation.
"This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it," said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.
Bhutto's aides said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and said the government's claim that she died when she hit her head on the sunroof of her vehicle was "dangerous nonsense."
Cheema said the government's account was based on "nothing but the facts"
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto's death — perhaps by the United Nations — saying Friday there was "no reason to trust the Pakistani government."
Attackers opened fire at a motorcade of Bhutto's supporters as they returned to Karachi after her funeral, killing one man and wounding two, said Waqar Mehdi, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. The government said mass rioting has killed 38 people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.
In Rawalpindi, thousands of Bhutto supporters spilled onto the streets after a prayer ceremony for her, throwing stones and clashing with police who fired tear gas to try and subdue the crowd.
President Pervez Musharraf told his top security officials that those looting and plundering "must be dealt with firmly and all measures be taken to ensure (the) safety and security of the people," the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Pakistan's election commission called an emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the violence's impact on Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.
Nine election offices in Bhutto's home province of Sindh in the south were burned to the ground, along with voter rolls and ballot boxes, the commission said in a statement. The violence also hampered the printing of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election logistics, the statement said.
The U.S. government, which sees nuclear-armed Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war on terror, has pushed Musharraf to keep the election on track to promote stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan, American officials said.
Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said Friday the government had no immediate plans to postpone the election, despite the violence and the decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the poll.
Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party also called a meeting Sunday to decide whether to participate in the vote. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that their son would read a message left by Bhutto and addressed to the party in event of her death.
Roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with burning vehicles, smoking reminders of the continuing chaos since her assassination Thursday. Factories, stores and restaurants were set ablaze in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, where 17 people have been killed and dozens injured, officials said.
Army, police and paramilitary troops patrolled the nearly deserted streets of Bhutto's home city of Larkana, where rioting left shops at a jewelry market smoldering.
The government blamed Bhutto's killing on al-Qaida and Taliban militants operating with increasing impunity in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. It released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant, apparently discussing the assassination.
"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript.
But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda."
"The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan, adding that he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.
Cheema said the government had evidence to back its claim.
"I don't think anybody has the capability to carry out such suicide attacks except for those people," he said.
Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant — through emissaries — had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.
"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.
After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated.
Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.
But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said.
"We gave you absolute facts, nothing but the facts," he said. "It was corroborated by the doctors' report. It was corroborated by the evidence collected."
Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was in the vehicle with her boss, disputed the government's version.
"To hear that Ms. Bhutto fell from an impact from a bump on a sunroof is absolutely rubbish. It is dangerous nonsense, because it implies there was no assassination attempt," she told the BBC.
"There was a clear bullet wound at the back of the neck. It went in one direction and came out another," she said. "My entire car is coated with her blood, my clothes, everybody — so she did not concuss her head against the sun roof."
The government said it was forming two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces.
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"Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto's death"
Hillary dear, I've got news for you. We have NO REASON to trust the United States Government either. Therefore, we should have an "independent, international investigation" into the 9/11 attacks.
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Revealed: Pakistan hosed away scene after Bhutto attack
May have violated law by skipping autopsy
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/New_su...over_1229.html
John Byrne
Published: Saturday December 29, 2007
Despite official reports by Pakistan's interior ministry claiming that the government had intercepted congratulatory messages sent by al Qaeda surrounding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a motley of strange occurrences has sparked new suspicion of the government's official story.
On Friday, doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, said that Bhutto had been killed by shrapnel to the head from an explosion, not by two bullets that Bhutto supporters cited in the aftermath of the attack. Bhutto, 54, was killed as in the aftermath of a shooting and suicide bombing as she left a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
The government soon changed their story, saying she'd been killed by hitting the sunroof of her LandCruiser after she'd stood up to wave to a crowd. Doctors said there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, and released a limited x-ray of what they said was her skull.
More alarming, however, to Bhutto supporters was the fact no autopsy was conducted prior to burial. The official line -- according to Pakistan's interim prime minister Mohammadmian Soomro -- was that Bhutto's husband had insisted no autopsy be performed.
But according to veteran lawyer Athar Minallah who spoke to McClatchy Newspapers Friday, "an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this nature."
"It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate," Minallah told McClatchy's Saeed Shah and Warren Strobel in a little publicized piece. "Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?"
Autopsies are generally not conducted in Islam unless ordered by a court, because the religion calls for burial as quickly as possible. It's unclear whether Bhutto's circumstances would have warranted an exception.
According to the reporters, "the scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence."
Shah, who reported from the scene Thursday, wrote in a second piece that police rangers charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts" shortly before the bombing, leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.
"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," Shah wrote. "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.'"
Some of Bhutto's supporters were suspect of the "sunroof theory."
A "senior official" of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party called the claim "false," saying he'd seen at least two bullet marks on her body after the attack.
"It was a targeted, planned killing," BPP's Babar Awan said. "The firing was from more than one side."
Another newspaper also asserted witnesses saw her shot.
Multiple reports said Bhutto had shown disregard for her personal safety by waving to the crowd.
"In her enthusiasm, she got carried away, and exposed herself in ways" she shouldn't have, a former State Department official told Shah.
Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by Bhutto's death. Protests and looting have left at least 38 people dead.
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Pakistan says turmoil after Bhutto death could delay vote
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Pakista..._12292007.html
Published: Saturday December 29, 2007
Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by the death of Benazir Bhutto, as a bitter dispute erupted over how the opposition leader was killed.
Violent protests and looting which have left at least 33 people dead have rocked the nation of 160 million Muslims since Bhutto was assassinated at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.
The United States and Western powers have urged Pakistan to commit to the democratic process in the aftermath of her death, but leading opposition figure Nawaz Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, which has accused the government of trying to cover up her death, has said it will take a decision on Sunday on whether to take part in the parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8.
The crisis-hit country's election commission said it would hold an urgent meeting on Monday to decide the election's fate, but it indicated a delay could be on the cards.
"All activities pertaining to pre-poll arrangements, including printing of ballot papers and logistics as well as training of polling personnel, have been adversely affected," it said in a statement.
In some places, the commission said, the security situation was "not conducive" to holding the elections which Bhutto had come home from exile in October to contest.
It cited the death of an election candidate in a bomb blast and said election commission offices in nine districts had been set on fire and that voter lists had been "reduced to ashes".
The polls would lack credibility without the participation of Bhutto's PPP, which has been infuriated by the government's official account of their leader's death.
Bhutto died after a suicide attack targetted her vehicle at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi. Early reports and witnesses said she had been shot before a bomb exploded nearby.
However the interior ministry said she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds. It said the opposition leader died after smashing her head on her car's sunroof as she tried to duck.
The ministry also blamed Al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist group's top leader for Pakistan.
Senior members of Bhutto's party dismissed the government's version of events as "lies".
"There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side," Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was involved in washing her body for burial, told AFP.
"This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened," said Rehman.
Farooq Naik, Bhutto's lawyer and a senior PPP official, said Bhutto had a second bullet wound in the abdomen.
Bhutto was an outspoken critic of Al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan and had received threats.
But she had also accused elements from the intelligence services of involvement in a suicide attack on a Bhutto rally in October that left 139 dead and which she only narrowly escaped.
Maulana Omar, a spokesman for alleged Al-Qaeda kingpin Mehsud, denied involvement in the attack and expressed grief over Bhutto's death.
"This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies," said the spokesman from Waziristan, a lawless tribal region where Al-Qaeda leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, are alleged to be hiding.
One day after Bhutto was laid to rest at her family's mausoleum in southern Sindh province, Pakistan was virtually paralysed with most people unable to buy food or petrol, with all shops, fuel stations, banks and offices closed down.
The streets of the country's main cities -- Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar -- were largely empty, and in many places there was evidence of violence and looting.
Analysts warned that Pakistan was facing its biggest crisis since Bangladesh split off from the country more than 35 years ago.
"We are heading towards a very uncertain phase of politics which has the potential to plunge the country into a state of anarchy," Hasan Askari, former head of political science at Lahore's Punjab University, told AFP.
The assassination has also thrust security concerns and foreign policy back into the US political spotlight less than a week before Americans start voting to decide their Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
Leading democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called for an independent, international probe into Bhutto's murder, saying Musharraf's government had no credibility.
"I think it's critically important that we get answers and really those are due first and foremost to the people of Pakistan," Clinton said.
Bhutto was buried on Friday with hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken mourners following her coffin on the final journey to the family's mausoleum in the village of Ghari Khuda Bakhsh.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Bhutto first took the helm of Pakistan in 1988. She was ousted in 1990 amid corruption allegations but was premier again from 1993 to 1996.
She has been buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former premier who was hanged by the military government in 1979.
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Row breaks out over Benazir Bhutto's death
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...bhutto1228.xml
By Isambard Wilkinson, Pakistan Correspondent, and Bonnie Malkin
Last Updated: 2:57am GMT 29/12/2007
The burial of Benzair Bhutto was today marred by heavy violence across Pakistan as a bitter row broke out over how she died.
As hundreds of thousands mourned the murdered opposition leader, the country's Interior Ministry claimed she had died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack.
However, one of Miss Bhutto's aide rejected the government's explanation of her death as a "pack of lies".
Brigadier Javed Cheema, a ministry spokesman, said Miss Bhutto had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof's lever as she tried to shelter inside the car.
"The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull," Mr Cheema said.
But the explanation was ridiculed by Farooq Naik, Miss Bhutto's top lawyer and a senior official in her Pakistan People's Party.
"It is baseless. It is a pack of lies," he said.
"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head. It was a serious security lapse."
The dispute came as Pakistani security forces were given orders to shoot on sight in an attempt to curb unrest as millions across the country mourned Miss Bhutto.
The former prime minister and leading opposition figure was laid to rest in her family's mausoleum a day after her assassination by Islamic extremists.
Her simple coffin, draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party, was greeted by huge crowds at her ancestral grave in the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in the southern province of Sind.
Accompanied by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and three children, her body was carried in a white ambulance as it made its way towards the white Mogulesque mausoleum surrounded by hundreds of thousands of mourners.
As she was being laid to rest alongside the tombs of her father and two brothers, her furious supporters across the country ransacked banks, waged shootouts with police and burned stations in a spasm of violence that threatened to plunge the country into deep turmoil less than two weeks before a crucial election.
Paramilitary rangers were given the authority to use live rounds to stop rioters from damaging property in southern Pakistan. "We have orders to shoot on sight," said Major Asad Ali, the rangers' spokesman.
The shooting and suicide bomb attack that killed Miss Bhutto and 20 others has badly damaged President Pervez Musharraf's plans to "restore democracy" in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key US ally in the war on terrorism.
He has blamed the attack on Islamic militants based near the country's border with Afghanistan, and pledged to "root them out", but an Interior Ministry spokesman today suggested al-Qa'eda may have been responsible.
"Benazir has been on the hit-list of al-Qa'eda," Brigadier Javed Cheema said. "Now there is every possibility that al-Qa'eda is behind this tragic attack to undermine the security of Pakistan."
Later, a ministry spokesman said an al-Qa'eda phone call was intercepted after Miss Bhutto was killed and there was "irrefutable evidence" the group was trying to undermine the country.
The caretaker prime minister, Mohammedmian Soomro, said the government had no immediate plan to postpone the Jan 8 parliamentary elections, but increasingly chaotic scenes and a senior opposition leader's decision to boycott the poll, have put the polls in doubt.
"Right now the elections stand where they were," he said. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."
Thousands of mourners, many of them women and children, gathered around the Bhutto family's home in Sind. "Benazir is alive, Bhutto is alive," cried many of the mourners.
One of them, Nazakat Soomro, 32, said: "She was not just the leader of the PPP, she was a leader of the whole country. I don't know what will happen to the country now."
A mob in Karachi looted at least three banks and set them on fire, and engaged in a shoot out with police that left three officers wounded, police said.
About 7,000 people in the central city of Multan ransacked seven banks and a petrol station and threw stones at police, who responded with tear gas.
In the capital, Islamabad, about 100 protesters burned tyres in a commercial quarter of the city. Angry mobs burned 10 railway stations and several trains across Sind province, forcing the suspension of all train service between the city of Karachi and the eastern Punjab province, said Mir Mohammed Khaskheli, a senior railway official.
The New York Times reported that the head of the medical college in Rawalpindi who attended to Miss Bhutto, said she was clinically dead on arrival.
Miss Bhutto was shot not far from where Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was killed by an assassin's bullet on Oct 16, 1951, and near where her father was hanged by the late dictator, General Zia al-Haq.
Dawn, Pakistan's leading broadsheet newspaper, reported: "Benazir Bhutto is dead. She died amidst her supporters who revered her, and her father before her, and from whom she derived her strength, her legitimacy as a leader. She died because the state proved inadequate in protecting her."
The acting head of Miss Bhutto's party, Amin Fahim, admitted that she could have survived the blast if she had not stood up through the sunroof of her vehicle to acknowledge her supporters.
"She fell down in the seat and we thought she was unconscious. She could have survived had she been sitting," said Mr Fahim.
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Was It Al Qaeda?
Pakistan's government was quick to blame Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but U.S. officials caution that it's too early to pin the blame on any group in particular.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/82313
By Mark Hosenball | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 28, 2007 | Updated: 7:04 p.m. ET Dec 28, 2007
U.S. experts believe that Islamic jihadists with possible connections to Al Qaeda are the most likely perpetrators behind Thursday's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. But counter-terrorism officials warn that U.S. agencies believe it is still to early to pin the blame for the attack on any particular extremist group or faction.
Pakistan's government, led by long-time Bhutto antagonist (and Pakistani President) Pervez Musharraf, has already begun to accuse one specific Islamic militant leader of complicity in the assassination. On Friday, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz claimed that his government had acquired an ''intelligence intercept'' in which Baitullah Mehsud, an alleged Al Qaeda leader based inside Pakistan, ''congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act.''
According to a purported transcript of the intercept reported by the Associated Press, Mehsud was in contact with an associate who described how "our men" had been present at the assassination. Mehsud supposedly replied: "It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her."
Two U.S. counter-terrorism officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing the ongoing investigation, said that U.S. agencies so far had no hard evidence to confirm the authenticity of the purported Pakistani intercept. Likewise, the officials said, there is no hard evidence to confirm the role of Mehsud or any other particular Jihadist leader--or any particular Jihadist group or faction--in the Bhutto attack.
By the same token, the officials said, U.S. experts believe that the assassination bears the hallmarks of an attack by jihadists of some kind. The officials noted that both before and after Bhutto's recent return to Pakistan from years of exile, her life had been the object of public threats by assorted militant groups and leaders, not least among them Ayman al-Zawahiri, the principal deputy to the fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Essentially, the officials said, Bhutto's life had been under constant threat since her return to Pakistan; every time she went out in public she faced possible attack, and jihadist militants were a source of the most virulent threats.
One of the U.S. officials said that while hard evidence was at this point lacking, it is "entirely plausible" that a jihadist leader like Mehsud could have been involved in instigating or organizing the attack. Mehsud is described by the officials as one of the Taliban's most senior leaders inside Pakistan. He supposedly operates from loosely governed tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is believed to be in contact with elements of the Al Qaeda central command, whose leaders, including Zawahiri and bin Laden, are believed to be hiding out in the same rugged region.
But as of late Friday, U.S officials do not regard Mehsud's role in the attack to be confirmed. They say that a whole panoply of jihadist groups or factions could have had roles--major or minor--in the assassination plot, ranging from the top Al Qaeda leadership to groups or cells of internal Pakistani jihadist groups, such as Lashkar e Taiba and Lashkar e Jhangvi, whose contacts with Al Qaeda central command are either murky or tangential.
U.S. officials at the moment seem to be at least generally sympathetic towards the efforts of Musharraf's government to investigate the assassination and are playing down suggestions from Bhutto's followers, amongst others, that the government might have had some complicity in the attack. On the other hand, U.S. officials also acknowledge that there may be validity to complaints from Bhutto supporters about apparently inadequate security precautions which had been set up in connection with her final, fatal public appearance.
Rawalpindi, the city where the assassination occurred, is a military town close to the national capital, Islamabad, where there have been several recent attacks which local authorities have attributed to Islamic militants. Musharraf was in his office at Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi in late October when one of the most recent suicide bombings there occurred.
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