Bhutto's death: No autopsy, two bullet wounds to her head and neck, crime scene rapidly cleaned....

[seafan]

and shifting stories from the Pakistani Government...



Bhutto looks on during the campaign rally in Rawalpindi. The powerful opposition leader had returned to Pakistan from exile just two months earlier.
(Aamir Qureshi AFP/ Getty Images)
December 27, 2007



Bhutto greets her supporters at the rally. After the attack, the crowd erupted in anger, some shouting, "Musharraf is a dog!" in reference to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
(T. Mughal / EPA)
December 27, 2007



Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images
Benazir Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and son Bilawal shower rose petals on her grave Friday in the town of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/23884.html">McClatchy, December 28, 2007:

.....

"In her enthusiasm, she got carried away, and exposed herself in ways" she shouldn't have, said former State Department official Marvin Weinbaum of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

In Pakistan, the shifting government explanations and Bhutto's burial without autopsy aroused suspicion.

Babar Awan, a senior official of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, said of the sunroof theory: "That is a false claim." He said he'd seen her body after the attack and there were at least two bullet marks, one in the neck and one on the top of the head: "It was a targeted, planned killing. The firing was from more than one side."

Pakistan's caretaker prime minister, Mohammadmian Soomro, told the Cabinet that Bhutto's husband had insisted on no autopsy. But according to a leading lawyer, Athar Minallah, 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. Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?" Minallah said.

The scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence.

We must ask the question, who benefited from this catastrophic turn of events in Pakistan?



Pakistan Totters as Bush's "Gift" to bin Laden Bears Fruit

That commander on the ground, Gary Bernsten, wrote in "Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and Al Qaeda":

"The biggest and most important failure on the CENTCOM leadership came at Tora Bora when they turned down my request for a battalion of U.S. rangers to block bin Laden's escape."

.....

Tommy Franks insists he didn't know if bin Laden was there, but Bernsten is blunt: ""He was there, and could have been caught."

Bernsten is corroborated by former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who personally briefed Bush and Cheney, as well as Franks, about the need to go after bin Laden in Tora Bora.

With the assassination of Bhutto, Pakistan is closer than ever to civil war. And ultimately, Islamist forces marching into Islamabad in victory, us tied down in Iraq and not able to do a damned thing about it. This is the first of the many dominoes bin Laden had envisioned, including the "apostate" regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and UAE. But most especially on bin Laden's list was Pakistan.

Writes Scheuer, in "Imperial Hubris," of bin Laden dreaming of a gift from Allah like the invasion of Iraq:

"And then, dreamed bin Laden wildly, things would get bad for the Americans. They would stay too long in Iraq, insist on installing a democracy that would subordinate the long dominant Sunnis, vigorously limit Islam's role in government, and act in ways that spotlighted their interest in Iraq's massive oil reserves."

George Bush has much to answer for, for turning the American tragedy of 9/11 into a spoiled rich boy's chance to get the guy who once threatened his daddy. He has subscribed to the Roman conception of power, in which the battles of the prince do not need to conform to the battles of the nation; they BECOME the battles of the nation. As fights among royalty and its enemies play out, so does the history of the nation.

George Bush listened to the senior White House aide quoted famously in Ron Susskind's book, perhaps one of the tweedy, power-mad draft-doger intellectuals with whom Bush surrounds himself, one of "history's actors":

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

For how much longer will this Bush darkness rob us of our freedom, maim and kill our children and endanger all of us here at home?


We cry out for justice.

[spanone]

1. bu$h* has set the honesty bar below sea level, and the world follows

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. It's sickening all the wrongs this administration has had a hand in. nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. I just read (and I should've known) autopsies are strictly forbidden

for Muslims. They've taken a lot of Jewish rituals and rules!

[seafan]

4. CNN: Bhutto exhumation okay, Pakistan official says

The Pakistani people and the world deserve the truth.


CNN, December 29, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani government has no problem with officials from Benazir Bhutto's political party exhuming the slain opposition leader's body if they see a need to do so, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Saturday.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema made the remark when asked about comments from a top Bhutto aide who helped bathe Benazir Bhutto's body after her death.

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan People's Party information secretary, said it was clear that the former Pakistani prime minister suffered bullet wounds to her head, contrary to a government report that she died because she hit her head on a sunroof lever.

Cheema noted that if Rehman -- as she said -- believes she saw bullet wounds that caused Bhutto's death, "We don't mind if the People's Party leadership wants her body to be exhumed and post-mortemed. They are most welcome, but we gave you what the facts are."

.....




I am not familiar with Muslim traditions, but, according to the McClachy story I posted earlier, Pakistani law requires an autopsy after crimes of this type.

Pakistan's caretaker prime minister, Mohammadmian Soomro, told the Cabinet that Bhutto's husband had insisted on no autopsy. But according to a leading lawyer, Athar Minallah, an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this nature.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Yep, they waited till she was buried. There's lots of shit Musharraf is trying to hide.

And exhumation is against Islam, unless the body has turned to dust. This is getting more complex by the second.

[malaise]

5. BBC showed Mushie's boys washing away the crime scene

with fire hoses. The reporter was beyond troubled.