The Wildest Bhutto Conspiracy Theory Yet

This one takes the cake:

ISLAMABAD: The controversy over former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination has taken another turn with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated "laser beam technology".

Bhutto's wounds were caused not by bullets but by some sort of laser weapon, 'The Nation' newspaper said quoting sources in the PPP.

When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said.

Bhutto's wounds were not caused by bullets and she had died before reaching the hospital. A part of her brain and blood had spilled out from her head, they quoted the doctor as saying.

The sources also claimed both the gunshots and the bomb blast in the attack on Bhutto "were a decoy to hide the real shooters".

The paper further quoted the sources as saying that the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud and the Taliban, blamed for her assassination by the government, did not have such technology.

Perhaps Dr. Khan has a reason for not wanting the militants or the Taliban to be thought responsible?

Uh-oh, Part II

This report can't be very good for Musharraf:

Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.

"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."

Did Musharraf deliberately deny the visas in order to keep Bhutto vulnerable? Inquiring minds want to know.

More on Pakistan

Mark Steyn lays his finger on one of the biggest problems in Pakistan:

It’s easy to tell Musharraf what he should do. Over one thousand Pakistani soldiers have been killed fighting Islamists in Waziristan and other tribal lands. That would be a lot even for an army solidly behind Musharraf. But in Pakistan every institution charged with “relentlessly hunting down terrorists” has, to one degree or another, been subverted by them: Pakistan’s military – the least corrupt agency in the country – and its intelligence service, the ISI, are both riddled with Islamist sympathizers. As Churchill noted, the British had a fondness for the more bloodcurdling Pushtun warriors: In 1939, for example, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Sanders accepted an invitation to tikala (lunch) from the tribesman who’d blown him up. The Pushtun apologized for costing the Colonel his right arm, and the Colonel accepted the apology and raised his glass in a presumably left-handed toast, and they got on splendidly and had a whale of a time. But a mutual respect between combatants is very different from the ties that bind Taliban leaders in Waziristan with elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence service: Two groups, nominally at war with each other, nevertheless share indistinguishable views on the joys of hardline sharia and the wickedness of the United States.

Read the whole thing--link, as usual, in the title. Really.

Uh-oh

This can't be good:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States condemned an attack that killed Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a U.S. State Department official said on Thursday.

"The attack shows that there are still those in Pakistan trying to undermine reconciliation and democratic development in Pakistan," the official said.

Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in the city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.

Still ruminating on what the outcome(s) might be, but I figured I'd get this out there for comment.

WaPo: Islamist = Conservative

Hot on the heels of the Harvard report on media bias comes a shining example, as explained by the Counterterrorism blog:

Regarding Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the November 5 Washington Post views him as "head of a conservative religious party", and reports Qazi Hussain Ahmed's calls against Musharraf as: "It's time to take a stand. It's a now-or-never chance, and people should come out on the streets and throw out this military dictator." The Washington Post reports that "[h]undreds of the party's activists had been arrested as of Monday morning, a party spokesman said". The Washington Post does not identify the organizations or the ideology that Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his political parties represent.

In fact, the "conservative religious party" that Qazi Hussain Ahmed leads is Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), which is also part of the Muttahidah Majlis-e-'Amal (Council of United Action) (MMA) -- that he also leads. Neither are merely a "conservative religious party", but are Islamist political organizations, with reported support of Jihad by their leaders and some of their members.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed has been reported as a sympathizer and defender of Osama Bin Laden. One media report stated "Qazi Hussain Ahmed has earlier made flattering comments about Osama bin Laden, and his party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also has hailed al-Qaeda members as heroes." Qazi Hussain Ahmed views that the 9/11 attacks were "specially designed to crush Muslims all over the world under this garb".

In his own party's media news ("Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) Media News"), Qazi Hussain Ahmed "has warned the government that unrest in the country would assume serious dimensions if it assisted the United States or any agency in arrest of Osama bin Laden." In May 2003, South Asia Intelligence Group reported potential links between Qazi Hussain Ahmed, JEI, and Bin Laden: "US intelligence officers posted in Pakistan have reportedly been making detailed enquiries into the likely links of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Pakistan headed by Qazi Hussain Ahmed with Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden".

Regarding Jamaat-e-Islami, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Pakistan's Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisel Saleh Hayat has alleged links between JEI and Al Qaeda stating "[a]ll of the activists and terrorists who have been apprehended in recent months have had links to the Jamaat-e-Islami, whether we have arrested them in Lahore or here or Karachi....[t]hey have been harboring them."

Prior to the Musharraf emergency declaration, the Pakistan Daily Times reported that Jamaat-e-Islami has been petitioning the Pakistani Supreme Court to halt all Pakistani military action in the Tribal Areas.

As GlobalSecurity.org states of Muttahidah Majlis-e-'Amal (MMA) political coalition: "it venomously attacked the Musharraf government for having betrayed the Taliban and sided with the US in its supposed 'war against Islam'. They...speak in favour of the militant groups banned by the Musharraf government Leaders under the MMA umbrella have issued fatwas of death on Americans and have denied the 9/11 attack by Osama bin Laden. The four parties are opposed to the present fiscal system and want it Islamised together with a complete enforcement of 'shariah'."

Now, granted, this may be viewed as "conservative" in Pakistan, which has a long history of being an Islamist haven, but the WaPo article makes no such distinction. By slapping the label "conservative" on this man and his party without explanation, they are at the very least negligent in not clearly explaining their terms, and at worst are trying to conflate the American conservative movement with these Islamoterrorists.

And don't get me started on the "religious" label. That's even worse, lumping all religions in with the radical terrorist wing of Islam.

The Washington Post deserves nothing but scorn for that article.

Shades of John Kerry

27 July 2007 (emphasis added):

US Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton has rejected suggestions of a unilateral US strike in Pakistan's tribal region, American troops should accompany Pakistan troops.

1 August 2007 (again, emphasis added):

But she did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998.

"If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured," she said.

Need I say more?