America and Cheney whacked Bhutto?

That is, in essence, the charge of Pakistani paper The Nation. (Not the U.S. opinion mag.)
The paper says that a U.S. created hit squad, specifically one created by Darth Cheney himself, killed Benazir Bhutto. The paper claims the same squad, and NOT pro-Syrian forces, killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri. It says Sy Hersh disclosed this on an Arab-world TV interview.

Hersh is firmly denying he ever said such a thing.

And, Pakistan’s Dawn media group has already pulled down a story that apparently was similar to Nation’s.

Weird.

Nation’s story sounds legit, in part because of the Hariri add-on, and the fact that I think Cheney could come up with such an assassination idea, or at least run with it when the hit squad had the idea.

But “could” and “did” are different things. Beyond that, Hersh wouldn’t recant something under government pressure, so where Nation got this info, I have no idea.

Pakistani police officer: “Mystery crowd” stopped Bhutto motorcade

McClatchy, extending its usual fine job in U.S. reporting to international coverage, has a boatload of new information related to Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Some snips and pieces:

A police officer, Ishtiaq Hussain Shah of the Rawalpindi police, who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto'’ car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. …

Bhutto, apparently thinking she was greeting her supporters, emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave. …

It was Shah’s job to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at the former prime minister. …

Who organized the crowd is only one of the mysteries two weeks after the assassination. …

The second report emerged in the Pakistani media, with detailed information about the pistol and bomb. It rejects the government's conclusion that Bhutto died when the force of the suicide blast threw her head against the sunroof lever of her car. Such an impact couldn't have fractured her skull, it said. The government refused to confirm the report's authenticity, but a security official verified it to McClatchy.

Really, though, go read the whole thing.

Cover-up in Bhutto assassination

U.S. intelligence claim the suicide bomber in the Benazir Bhutto assassination was there to take out the gunman who actually killed her.:

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto’s assassination.

“He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there,” said this source. “We don’t know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to.”

Several other US intelligence officials concur that the bomber was likely "inserted" to “clean up” evidence of the shooting, including eliminating the gunman.

Well, this just adds to the idea that this was in some way a governmental job.

Several questions:

1. Will Scotland Yard’s assist on the assassination investigation come to the same conclusion as an on-the-record finding? If not, how much obstruction will either Musharraf, or somebody in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, throw up?

Answer? Plenty:

“The investigation will be opaque and less effective than what happened in Lebanon,” said Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations for the office of Counterterrorism in the US State Department.

Others interviewed for this article share Johnson’s skepticism and believe that the Bush administration will likely look the other way should any connection between Musharraf and the assassination be discovered, because, they say, at this point, the US has “no workable solution” and cannot discontinue support for Musharraf, given the options.

“We are being held hostage to Musharraf’s whim,” said one former intelligence official.

And, don’t you think Musharraf knows what Johnson said?

2. Who is behind the hit? Musharraf directly? Musharraf indirectly? Musharraf not having any advance knowledge? Will an anonymous U.S. intelligence source leak any preliminary ideas, at the least, on that?

Bhutto reportedly had info about Pakistani ISI election sabotage

And now, Musharraf is practicing other “sabotage”

Assassinated Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto reportedly had information Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency was working to rig the Jan. 8 parliamentary election. And, not trusting BushCo, she was going to present this information to Sen. Arlen Spector and Rep. Patrick Kennedy.

The fraud reportedly was to include fake ballots, and U.S. aid money was being funneled to finance the effort.

I don’t doubt something like this, to be honest. Nor do I doubt President Pervez Musharraf knew ISI was up to something. Exactly what he knew, I don’t know.

Now, the assassination itself. My guess is ISI was behind it. The gunman, as I’ve noted before, is not al-Qaeda/Islamist style. At the same time, the way he was able to penetrate so closely to Bhutto suggests someone who had been spying out the campaign, possibly even someone with at least a tenuous “in.” I doubt Musharraf was involved. He probably figured a mix of ballot-stuffing, martial law and post-election browbeating was enough; in short, I don’t think even he would be that stupid. If nothing else, if Bhutto got to be trouble, he could have revived the old corruption charges against her or invented new ones.

Now, that said, how high in ISI might the assassination plot have gone? Given that a brigadier general is reportedly behind the election fraud, I’d say someone about the same rank would have headed operational planning. Higher ranks may have heard something, but only on a “plausible deniability” basis.

At the same time, could Bhutto have done more to protect herself? She talked to U.S. officials about hiring private U.S. or British bodyguards; the U.S. suggested she look at private Pakistani companies with international reputations who already do things like provide embassy service.

This is a toughie. I can understand the U.S. position that even private U.S. guards would have looked like too much direct involvement by the U.S. On the other hand, if ISI did penetrate the security she had when she was killed, they might have penetrated a private Pakistani company, no matter how sterling its reputation.

But, in either case, she never did beef up her security. Perhaps she had a stereotypical Muslim fatalism expressed in one of two classic words: “kismet” or “inshallah.”

Meanwhile, Musharraf has announced he will suspend the election; a “date certain” has not been announced, and may or may not be on Jan. 2.

In the latest ‘shock me’ news from Pakistan

First, it’s alleged that Rawalpindi’s police chief, and not Benazir Bhutto’s husband, blocked an autopsy into the exact cause of her death. And, in the totally unsurprising, President Pervez Musharraf sounds like he’s going to (indefinitely?) delay the Jan. 8 parliamentary election.

So, will Bush/Condi Rice actually do something beyond hand-wringing, like cut aid to Pakistan, or something even more serious, like a mild, but visible, set of limited sanctions against the country, up to working behind the scenes to encourage Musharraf to resign?

This is doubly true now that Britain’s Channel 4 has aired video footage clearly showing Bhutto being shot before the explosion. Gun-wieldng hitman are definitely not the mark of al-Qaeda; I would guess the same to be true of Islamist groups inside Pakistan.

That, the blocked autopsy, (her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has said the family was against exhumation because it did not trust the government) and the refusal to use international help to investigate, all point to some degree of Pakistani government connection, if not outright collaboration. Simple hand-wringing just won’t cut it.

Meanwhile, political opponents inside Pakistan, and not just Nawaz Sharif, are calling for Musharraf to step down and be replaced by a national unity government. In U.S. politics, its interesting that this was the position adopted by Bill Richardson, then some other “second-tier” Democratic presidential candidates; however, none of the Democratic “big three,” nor any Republicans, have taken up that position.

From where I stand, the tepid response of the Democratic “big three” is yet another reason to question just how much newness they bring to foreign policy, and another reason to not vote for them.

Nepotism among Bhutto assassination fallout

Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, reportedly will be named the new head of the Pakistan People's Party. Uhh, in a democracy, you’d actually have a caucus of party leaders or something, even in an emergency like this, and you certainly wouldn’t give the reins to a 19-year-old kid.

That’s even worse than Rajiv Ghandi being named his mom’s successor as head of the Congress Party in India.

Pakistan’s past, present, and maybe future? The tyrant and the criminal meet

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has held under-the-radar talks with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto about him getting her support for a third term, in exchange for a power-sharing arrangement. Talks reportedly broke down when Bhutto refused the deal unless Musharraf resigned from the military.

Let’s hope they stay broken down. Musharraf would only resign his commission, if he does, with a whole series of toadies to replace him in all top rungs of the Pakistani Army. That leaves a military just about as dependent on him but less skilled than before, while Ms. Graft returns to skim money off government contracts and such.