Benazir Bhutto Killed in an Attack

HP,

On another note, have you noticed there has been absolute silence from China when practically all world leaders have condoled? I haven't seen any message from Chinese leaders.

Any ideas?

#390 Posted by HP,

Yes HP I read it. That is your usual theory re Mullah/Military/CIA alliance with Jihadis on military payroll ...

But you say:

"I see a pattern emerging where the PPP or other elements are given free hand to destroy as much property as they can."

This is not true. Since last night, there is a curfew in many Sind towns and shoot at sight orders for looters and arsonists. Hyderabad and Larkana has been handed over to Rangers, and military patrolling all volatile parts of Karachi.

Government was just caught unawares with the suddenness and the intensity of the public rage and is now acting firmly.

"Most likely Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and next likely Lashkar-e-Tayyaba."

Not a chance. Guess some more! Read my post #382 until it finally downs on you who could have done this. Hint: Amateurs don't cover tracks!

Personally, taking everything into account i.e. the Govt explanation, the way Taliban operate, the pattern of attacks carried out and admitted to by Pakistani Taliban so far since Jamia Hafsa (concentrated solely on security services), as well as circumstantial evidence surrounding the event, my conclusion would be it was carried out by one of the Jihadi groups other than Taliban.

Most likely Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and next likely Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

The plot thickens.

GEO has just broadcast a denial by Baitullah Mehsood saying they had no enmity with Benazir because she was not in the Government and had done nothing against the Taliban. He has also said they wouldn't attack a woman anyway. The statement was conveyed by Maulvi Umar, the head of the newly founded joint Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan.

Okay here is a better version.

Carlotta Gall's report is now out in the Times and her report suggests that this is what the government is saying ...

With many of Ms. Bhutto’s supporters openly blaming the government for her death, the Interior Ministry made the surprising announcement that Ms. Bhutto had died not from gunshots or shrapnel but from a skull fracture when she was thrown by the force of the suicide bomb and hit her head on a lever of the sunroof of the car in which she was riding.

So there was no ducking. It was the force of the bomb. Sounds just about right to me.

Fuzair #335 {"It was ZAB who formally instituted Islam into Pakistan life, society and politics as THE dominant force. His handcrafted 1973 Constitution is what made it impossible to ignore Islam. Zia merely instituted mechanisms to implement the Islamic provisions of the 1973 Constitution."}

Fuzair,
Even if I concede the point that ZAB used Islam as a means to appease the cheap seats, may we not extend this thinking to MAJ? After all, both were sort of secularists, both enjoyed the forbidden nectar, and both insisted on unquestioned loyalty from subordinates. If ZAB rode to victory on the backs of Ahmedis, then MAJ attained Pakistan on the backs of Hindus, Sikhs, and Indian Muslims.

Where I do vehemently disagree with you is your assertion that Zia was a mere facilitator for the awfu Nizam-e-Mustafa that he unleashed on our unfortunate country. Zia used and abused Islam more than MAJ, ZAB, or any other demagogue in modern times.

#382 Posted by HP,

HP, I have already said elsewhere on this board that the Govt explanation is plausible. That sunroof lever was indeed very crudely fashioned and don't know how her security could have been so irresponsible to have replaced the power sliding roof with basically what was two large steel panels welded to the roof opening outwards with no padding, and metal levers sticking out. I can understand the panels since these were for bulletproofing from the sides, but those levers were just abominable.

No conspiracy theory my friend. And as SR says there was no exit wound, I believe that too. That was one of the earliest report from the hospital as well.

But I reiterate, many questions remain to be answered.

#366 BJ Coomar,
You do pretty good work when you are not three sheets to the wind. :)
Now, hurry up and tell me how many strikeouts did Hank Greenburg have when he won the batting title for Detroit? :)

This is a duplicate of my post on the other article's "Interact" page... But because this issue is mentioned here also, I am reproducing it.

... copy of post...

Reality can be stranger than fiction.

I have spoken to the surgeon at the hospital where she was taken (he's a former classmate), he did not attended her himself, but he believes that she might have been saved had there been a trained neurosurgery team on hand immediately. She was unconscious and teetering at the edge of life when she was brought in and precious time had been lost already.

The general surgeons who handled her case did not have extensive experience in head trauma management as would a neurosurgeon. She had a massive sub-dural hematoma which the surgeon on duty tried to relieve with a burr hole, but it was too little too late.

Also, curiously, mid-way to the hospital her vehicle stopped and two of her most trusted lieutenants transferred her into another private car and sped off to a different hospital then the one she would have been normally going to. This added an additional ten minutes to the driving time amid evening traffic. Why? On one knows.

These inconvenient pieces of news, of course, are not something that suit anyone's agenda, so they are ignored.

Truth is unimportant when a more "suitable" narrative can pass for the truth. "Benazir Bhutto died due to inadequate medical facilities" just does not make good news copy, compared to "Champion of Freedom and Democracy Martyred by terrorists..." does it?

My surgeon friend (who by the way is a die hard PPP supporter) was very emphatic that there was a "depressed fracture of the skull" and there was "no exit wound" ... It is the "exit woulds" of a bullet that are the real tell-tale signs. X-rays revealed "no foreign body." This is just the way it is.

But the point is that this still is very much an assassination. She wouldn't have ducked (or thrown off due to the shock wave of the blast) had there not been an attempt on her life. So I don't understand why the resistence to accepting these facts.

She was ASSASSINATED. Period.

The cause of death was a depressed fracture of the skull, not a bullet or shrapnel.

The bullet wound reports earlier on WERE NOT coming from the attending surgeons but from "others" who had seen the blood spots on her injured body. Why emotions are high, imagination can take flight.

Right now some elements are causing disruptions in traffic by sneaking around and dropping off one or two burning tires on busy roads, which force the incompetent police to barricade the road that lead to traffic jams. All this gives the impression that law and order are breaking down because the TV comes and focuses on that particular spot, even though thirty minutes later its all clear.

The TV plays along with it because only by stirring up mass anxiety can television (1) get viewers glued to the tube and (2) keep the advertisers paying good money. The rest is all hogwash.

...SR

Zeemax,
You make it sound like conspiracy theory. Just think what was the need to kill BB? The purpose was to create a situation of lawlessness and some sort of anarchy. I see a pattern emerging where the PPP or other elements are given free hand to destroy as much property as they can.
Just think about who benefits from anarchy and the lawlessness.

They have killed two in one hit.

Btw, She got killed by the lever is a very plausible theory. It has happened before. In the 70s old land cruisers had a lever to move the front window and I knew a guy whose Land cruiser flipped on the Superhiway between Hyderabad and karachi he died because the lever hit the side of his head and penetrated the skull. No one else was injured in that accident.

I think her land cruisers had customized Sunroof because normally you don't see lever for sunroof, especially in Land cruiser where it is powered!

#379 Posted by hamidm2

Hamidm Mian, where's any Jihadi propaganda in my post? On the contrary you seem intent on portraying zeemax as a monster, but I assure you that you have failed in your nefarious design. No one takes you seriously except ahmedmadani! (How do you manage to read his posts anyway? I find it quite impossible)
:~)

#372 Posted by tahmed32,

tahmed32, actually none of the above, unfortunately.

There may even have been a silver lining in this in creating some consensus between the parties, because Benazir's controversial politics of deals with Military etc for personal motives is now no more, and could have created a mass movement forcing Musharraf to leave. Such a situation would have arisen in any other country.

Musharraf will however just clamp down even harder and dissipate any budding movement, cut further deals with the remnants of the much weaker PPP left practically leaderless and looking for it's own long-term survival, and carry on as long as he has Corp Commanders' support.

Have you noticed that while PPP is blaming the Government and its workers are on a rampage destroying Govt installations and burning DCOs homes and cars with green number plates, its leaders have still not boycotted the elections? Despite what has happened? Nawaz Sharif was prevented from attending the funeral at Garhi Khuda Buksh by Zardari for the same reason since PML (N) has boycotted and the mutual cooperation in seat-adjustment etc has ended.

Alas, this is how things go in Pakistan. But there's a real chance of anarchy and complete collapse of federal authority, and that may force Musharraf out quicker than anything else.

Re: # 376

zeemaxullah,

.... you are a master at spinning jihadi propaganda - i am beginning to think that you are on their payroll ..... if not, you should be ..... you are wasting your talent

#375 Posted by tahmed32
"the military was already a significant employer for areas"

That is one variable and not the ultimate decider. NAM had all types of Military dictators, Including Nasser, Sukarno and even the Chinese Communists Primarily a military regime also had security agreement signed with the Soviet Union.

Still they managed to keep their countries away from the perpetual international conflicts. Even the Sino-Indian war was a one time low level war and once China was able to assert its position, it had no interest to continue with that.

Here it was necessary for the pak army to keep itself in a perpetual readiness because that is what those defense pacts called for.After every supply of arms the Pak army was not thinking of peace but of war. Because the war is the biggest reason for the army to solicit support from the population and build a myth about patriotism and invincibility( which alluded the Pak army.)

Besides the Sino-Indian conflict, the NAM only had to deal with the Israel Arab situations but one of the country in there was not NAM.

tahmed writes "bjkumar: NAM had limited, statist goals: its basic goals as stated in the panchsheela basically called for maintaining state borders "

Not true, NAM signified an "opting out" of the US farce of the "cold war", it signified an "opting out" of the neo-colonial framework of such militarism that the US was forcing on the world, and even though India was a factor in warping the Pak military to its dominant institution status in Pakistan, the major factor was alignment with the US in the cold war and sacrificing of the domestic agenda and even India to US geostrategic goals. It was by aligning with the US that we signed our death warrant giving the role of "Tara Masih" to the Pakistan Army.