Benazir Bhutto Assassination Video
New video appears to show Bhutto being shot
NYT report asks why crime scene, BB’s car were cleaned up before investigation
By Khalid Hasan
Washington: With accounts of the cause of Benazir Bhutto’s death shifting from bullet wounds to the bombing that followed the gunfire, it’s too early to discount the possibility that the assassin, or assassins, got some help from Pakistan’s many official reservoirs of extremist Islamist sympathy, writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times on Monday.
He finds it suspicious that both the crime scene and Benazir’s car were cleaned up before investigators had access. Supporting Senator Hillary Clinton’s call for an international inquiry, he asks, “How can Musharraf, who showed his contempt for an independent judiciary by dissolving the Supreme Court in November, oversee a credible investigation? It should be accompanied by a US Congressional inquiry into post-9/11 American policy toward Pakistan,” he suggests. The United States, out of misplaced deference to Musharraf, failed to secure Benazir the protection she was demanding, he points out.
Her husband, Asif Zardari, visited the United States shortly before her death to plead for help, but was denied the meetings he sought at the top levels of the State Department. Similarly, the Bush administration failed to pressure Musharraf to accept Benazir family demands for FBI involvement in the investigation of the attempted assassination of Benazir on October 18. Cohen believes that years of strong economic growth have expanded a Pakistani middle class that wants democracy’s rule of law. Radical Islamist parties constitute a minority and democratic forces outweigh the theocratic.
“A discredited Musharraf can do nothing for Pakistan without credible elections. Credibility requires international monitors or a transitional arrangement allowing all major parties to participate in the vote’s organisation. The election should be held on or as soon as possible after January 8. A large sympathy vote for Benazir’s Pakistan Peoples Party is likely.
Benazir’s loss, he adds, is devastating. Her Kennedy-like family tragedy leaves the fathomless void of what might have been. Cohen, who was with Benazir at Oxford, concludes with a tribute: “Of grace and conviction her unusual fusion of East and West was formed. Only Pakistani democracy can avenge, in part, the disappearance of the rare bridge she offered and offset the American mistakes that led to this loss.”
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Related
Bhutto sought to reveal damning allegations against Pakistan’s intelligence agencies
2 responses so far ↓
freeman // January 1, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Why?,the same reason ground zero was scrubbed and the scrap metal was guarded and or immediately shipped to Asia to be smelted.
pjwalker911 // January 2, 2008 at 12:38 am
This is their JFK assassination. Almost a textbook blow by blow replay, allowing for some sloppiness on the part of ISI. Police stand down. Guards stand down. Improper handling of the body (no autopsy at all), false claims about the cause of death (oops, bumped her head…right), crime scene literally hosed down within an hour of the incident, motives galor including the fact that she was going to spill the beans on ISI corruption and on and on and on…..