Push vs. Mush, Bush
UPDATE: ”Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on orders of lower- and middle-level officers of the Pakistani army and air force.” UPI, citing intel sources:
According to a source who asked to remain unnamed, members of the Pakistani armed forces involved in Thursday’s killing of the former prime minister and leader of the opposition are sympathizers of the ultra-conservative Islamists with ties to the jihadis.
“It’s worrying when half of your lower or mid-level Pak intelligence analysts have bin Laden screen savers on their computers,” a former official of the CIA was reported to have commented.
More than one analyst is of the opinion al-Qaida and other jihadis have managed to successfully penetrate Pakistan’s armed forces and security services.
Story thins out considerably after that, leaving the impression it’s more informed speculation than anything else. Whoever killed her, Mush could find Bhutto is more trouble dead than alive. “New evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections” is going to look a lot worse coming from a dead martyr than a live pol. McClatchy:
NAUDERO, Pakistan — The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.
Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.
Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party election monitoring unit, said the report was “very sensitive” and that the party wanted to initially share it with trusted American politicians rather than the Bush administration, which is seen here as strongly backing Musharraf.
Sad commentary when Arlen Specter and Patches, heck, anyone and Patches, are more trusted than the Bush administration. They certainly can be relied on to call some hearings to determine how all this is Bush’s fault, anyway.
“It was compiled from sources within the (intelligence) services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto,” Lashari said, speaking Monday at Bhutto’s house in her ancestral village of Naudero, where her husband and children continued to mourn her death.
The ISI had no official comment. However, an agency official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the subject, dismissed the allegations as “a lot of talk but not much substance.”
Musharraf has been highly critical of those who allege that his regime is involved in electoral manipulation. “Now when they lose, they’ll have a good rationale: that it is all rigged, it is all fraud,” he said in November. “In Pakistan, the loser always cries.”
It’s a small world after all. Though I have to say, Mush admin is starting to make Bush admin look like PR geniuses by comparison.
According to Lashari, the document includes information on a “safe house” allegedly being run by the ISI in a central neighborhood of Islamabad, the alleged headquarters of the rigging operation.
It names as the head of the unit a brigadier general recently retired from the ISI, who was secretly assigned to run the rigging operation, Lashari said. It charges that he was working in tandem with the head of a civilian intelligence agency. Before her return to Pakistan, Bhutto, in a letter to Musharraf, had named the intelligence official as one of the men she accused of plotting to kill her.
Lashari said the report claimed that U.S. aid money was being used to fix the elections. Ballots stamped in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, which supports Musharraf, were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in about 100 parliamentary constituencies.
I sense congressional hearings coming on about that, too. Bhutto’s assassination theoretically reminded everyone that foreign policy matters, the war isn’t over, Pakistan’s stability is of vital interest to the United States. I’m guessing in this election year, the most vital U.S. interest will turn out to be a good Bush-bash.
Mush expected to delay Jan. 8 election well into February, which may make sense given unrest, let things settle out, but may just mean another month of trouble.
Here’s a VOA analysis, Can Pakistan Bring Back Stability. Leads off with Nawaz Sharif’s demands for Mush to go, follows with a former Clinton official saying Mush has to embrace moderates. Somehow I doubt that will work. CSIS expert helpfully weighs in with the observation that none of this is good news for GWOT’s Pak theater.
Prior:
Pak It Up, prior election/emergency background and context re Bhutto, Musharraf etal.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:22 am on Tuesday, January 1, 2008
3 Responses to “Push vs. Mush, Bush”
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January 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am
More speculation: that elements in the Pakistani government assassinated Bhutto in order to blame it on Musharraf. He doesn’t seem to be popular with anybody in his country, and this would be the perfect catalyst to get rid of him. It’s still a disaster, as they will discover to their sorrow.
January 1st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
So the ISI says the Army did it? Shocka!
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
It is all a disaster–and perfectly predictable. We made a pact with te devil and now he will exact his due.