http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bill_dou_071225_the_media_hounds_unl.htm
December 29, 2007
The Media Hounds Unleashed on Ron Paul -- How the CIA Will Use Liberals to Destroy the Anti-Empire Candidate
By Bill Douglas
“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
~William Colby, former CIA director
THOSE DEMOCRATS WHO DON'T KNOW HISTORY, ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT:
When Bill Clinton was first running for President, he had a revolutionary challenger in the Democratic Primary, named Jerry Brown. Brown had been the former Governor of California, as well as the State Chair of the California Democratic Party. He had been revolutionary, pushing hard for labor rights for farmworkers to protect them from agri-industrial poisons, he’d funded those large wind energy projects along the length of California, and had introduced satellite conference calls to California Government. The corporate interests he threatened needed to divorce this man of the people, this man of vision . . . from the people he served so well. So, they called him “Governor Moon Beam.”
The name caught on. What it was in reference to, although few in the media or public looked beyond that funny name as they laughed at Brown, was Brown’s idea of using satellite phone technology for meetings. Rather than having state legislators fly back to Sacremento everytime they needed to meet, they could use this new technology and save time, energy, etc. Of course today, everyone, all companies use this technology, and it was brilliant back then. But, “Governor Moonbeam” was the label some bright boys hired by the corporate powers Brown was slapped with. It made people laugh at him. It worked.
Then years later after serving as California State Chair of the CA Democratic Party, Brown decided to run for President. BUT, he refused to take a donation over $100. WHY? Because he’d learned as State Chair that money had taken over politics. He had raised more money than any other Chair before, but no matter how much he raised, they always needed more. Brown said that in that system you lose touch with real people, real needs. You lose touch with the reality of America, when you only have time to sit down with people who can write multi-thousand dollar checks.
So in his Presidential campaign, Brown lived among ordinary people, depended on them for rides, and broke bread with them at their tables. He refused to accept more than $100 donations from any one person. The corporate media made fun of him.
Then Brown won Colorado, beating Bill Clinton soundly. The foundations of American power were shaken. Almost immediately, Ted Koppel’s Nightline, brought on several anonymous, hooded figures, to character assassinate Brown. It was all lies but Koppel didn’t seem to care, and the public didn’t care. Oh, those who really knew Brown were outraged, but the public bought it. His campaign was ruined, and Bill Clinton, the chosen one, sailed into power so that he could later enable trade agreements that would decimate American labor, and war crimes abroad.
His crimes included ad hoc bombings, boycotts and sanctions designed to starve human beings into submission, and supporting ethnic cleansing in brutal counterinsurgency warfare, and the devastation by bombing designed to return rogues to the stone age and keep them there. Of course it was “all for a good cause” we were told. I bought it. I thought, geez he’s a Democrat, this can’t really be a bad thing.
On June 26, 1993, Clinton bombed Baghdad to pay them back for an unproven plot to kill President George Bush. Eight Iraqi civilians, including the distinguished Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar were killed in the raid, and 12 more were wounded. This kind of unilateral action in response to an unproven charge is a violation of international law.
In 1998 Clinton bombed Afghanistan and the Sudan. Unknown numbers were killed in Afghanistan (and by the missiles that accidentally landed in Pakistan), and the pharmaceutical factory destroyed in the Sudan was the major source of medical drugs in that poor country. All evidence points to the fact that the Sudan factory destroyed had no connection whatever to chemical weapons or Bin Laden, and was bombed on the basis of insufficient and poorly evaluated data. But following the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, Clinton felt compelled to act for internal political reasons once again, and there are no international constraints or costs to him or his country if he chooses to bomb small and weak countries to score political points at home.
Clinton’s sanctions on Iraq were brutal. According to UNICEF, more than one-million Iraqi children under five suffered malnutrition, which resulted in 4,000 to 5,000 children dying per month beyond normal death rates.
In the US war against Yugoslavia under Clinton, there were attacks on Yugoslav Television and 60% of overall NATO targets were civilian, including 33 hospitals and 344 schools, and 144 industrial plants. Targets included hotels, libraries, museums, churches, monasteries, youth centers, theatres, and housing estates.
And today, we have a Hillary and Obama, darlings of the corporate media, who will end the war in Iraq . . . sort of . . . and have made no indication they will in any way change the business as usual in global politics and war empire.
Then, on the other hand, we have Ron Paul, who wishes to decimate the CIA militarist global empire and end this misery that supports resource theft and slave labor markets for corporations.
Who will the media make fun of? Who will the media smear?
What I find the saddest, is that Liberals and Progressives, who’ve I’ve worked side by side with in anti-war and human rights causes . . . will bleat like sheep, and parrot all the character assassinations the CIA plants in their corporate media lackey’s mouths.
It will be liberals and progressives who will turn on the last greatest hope we have of saving our democracy and ending the brutal CIA run global corporate empire. After 9/11, when the Democrats were licking the boots of Bush and the neo-cons, there was one shining knight who stood tall against them. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney demanded to know what happened to the $2.3 TRILLION Rumsfeld said the Pentagon "lost." She demanded to know more about the connections between Bush and the Bin Laden family, and she demanded to know who ordered the mysterious war games to be held coincidentally on 9/11/2001, and why they were not called off when the attacks began.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RvLL--vSsA
For her courage her own Democratic Party leaders turned on her or turned away from her as the CIA controlled media hounds were unleashed upon her. This brave woman is now the Green Party Candidate, and if she garners the kind of support Ron Paul has, the CIA controlled media will turn on her again. And as before, the Democratic leadership will parrot the media's attacks on her.
Suddenly, I wake up and can hardly believe that I ever knew these people in the first place. It’s like invasion of the body snatchers, and they are all screaming their alarms at Ron Paul, the one candidate who has not been replaced with the soul of a CIA militarist pod.
On NBC's Meet the Press last week, Ron Paul shook the foundations of the illegal war mongering power structures of America. He'll have hell to pay. His only hope is that the people he is standing up for, the average peace and justice loving American, will stand up for Ron Paul.
You can watch Ron Paul's historic interview at 4 youtube links. 2 are below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saDw03JXigA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCSY438wpCk
My fellow liberals and progressives, there is still time to awaken. Join the Ron Paul Revolution.
Bill Douglas directed campaign operations in several districts of Los Angeles as a professional staff member of the Dukakis Campaign. He served as a district manager for Democratic Senator Alan Cranston’s Project Democracy. He was a professional staffer for Jerry Brown’s bid for California State Democratic Chair, and later as a full time volunteer as O.C. media director for Brown for President. Bill worked on the Californian’s for a Bi-Lateral Nuclear Freeze, was Director of the Central American Task Force on El Salvador, and served under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Central American refugee camps during Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America. He served as OC Director of the anti-war environmental Operation Real Security, and was a media coordinator for Kansas City’s stop the war movement, Founder of the National 911Visiblity Project, and previously served as the original national outreach director of 911Truth.org. Bill and his wife also worked as full time volunteers for the John Kerry Campaign in both Missouri and in Nevada.
Authors Bio: By William E. Douglas, Jr., who is author of "The Amateur Parent – A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe." Bill has been a guest columnist for the Kansas City Star, The Business Journal, and other media worldwide. His past essays include, "Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts," "The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- US Media's Dirty Little Secret," "Good Night, and Good Luck - WMD, NIST, Popular Mechanics, 9/11 and Media Crimes" and also "Why the Jewish Community Should Demand 9/11 Truth."
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Michael Bloomberg: Trans-partisan savior
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/31/bloomberg/index.html
Michael Bloomberg: Trans-partisan savior
Who thinks a third party candidate like this is a good idea, and why?
Glenn Greenwald
Dec. 31, 2007 Following along in David Broder's excited footsteps, Sam Roberts in The New York Times reports that Michael Bloomberg "is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run." And a handful of retired, mediocre politicians with no following are issuing self-absorbed, thug-like demands, complete with deadlines:
Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, "I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent."
Is it even theoretically possible for Democrats to "cooperate" more with Republicans than they've been doing since taking over control of Congress?
The NYT article quotes actor Sam Waterston of the painfully silly, substance-free Unity '08 group describing the promise of Bloomberg's candidacy as promoting "Unity08's principal goals of a bipartisan, nonpartisan, postpartisan ticket." The website Unite for Mike -- a grass-roots movement that now has 500 supporters! -- says that Bloomberg "has the vision, experience and passion of a true and demonstrated leader" and that Bloomberg can solve this problem: "Our international leadership has become confused and directionless. We are no longer the shining beacon of freedom and justice to our fellow nations."
Here's Bloomberg's record of Independence, Judgment, Competence, and Trans-partisan Wisdom. Consider how sterling his judgment is and how able he would be to make the world respect us again:
NYT, May 11, 2004:
Laura Bush and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in an appearance that may well dispel any lingering doubt as to the mayor's feelings about the president, or of the mayor's own political identity. . . .
[T]here he was yesterday, throwing in his words of support for the president's decision to invade Iraq -- promoting one of the notions that is central to the rationale for the attack, that the conflict was justified by what happened on Sept. 11.
"Let me add something to that," Mr. Bloomberg said after Mrs. Bush gave her defense of her husband and his decision to go to war. "Don't forget that the war started not very many blocks from here."
Joe Conason, Salon, June 22, 2007:
Dating back to his infatuation with Bush, the mayor has always been an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Iraq. He marched lockstep in the Bush drive toward invasion when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002: "Freedom comes at a price, and tragically, sometimes that price is the commitment to defend freedom by arms. America has been, is, and always will be willing to do its duty -- to sacrifice even its own blood, so that people everywhere can live as individuals responsible for their own destinies." (As Wayne Barrett once pointed out in the Village Voice, the man spouting this brave talk got out of the Vietnam draft because his feet are flat.)
Bloomberg's pro-war rhetoric dutifully echoed the White House line connecting Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida and 9/11, almost as if Karl Rove had programmed his brain. "I'm voting for George W. Bush and it's mainly because I think we have to strike back at terrorists," he said in September 2004. "To argue that Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrorist is ridiculous. He used mustard gas, or some kind of gas, against his own people."
Bloomberg's speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention:
I want to thank President Bush for supporting New York City and changing the homeland security funding formula and for leading the global war on terrorism.
(APPLAUSE)
The president deserves our support.
(APPLAUSE)
We are here to support him.
(APPLAUSE)
And I am here to support him.
(APPLAUSE)
NYT, January 29, 2004:
We are going to get George W. Bush re-elected as president of the United States! We are going to carry New York City and New York State. Everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I think we can do it.
Wayne Barrett, Village Voice, October 18, 2005:
Even though the City Council passed a resolution opposing the war, Bloomberg called an old friend, Paul Wolfowitz, to express his desire to host a ticker tape parade "to say thank you," apparently as unaware as the "Mission Accomplished" president that the troops would not be coming home for years. Bloomberg actually contributed $5 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs in the late '90s, when war architect Wolfowitz was dean. . . .
Even before the war, Bloomberg brought his mother and daughter to the United Nations, where he addressed the General Assembly a day after Bush did in September 2002. Echoing Bush's warnings that the U.S. would go it alone if the U.N. didn't act, Bloomberg "praised" Bush's war on terror "and offered support for an attack on Iraq," according to the Daily News.
Michael Bloomberg Press Release, July 17, 2006, as the Israeli bombing of Lebanon proceeded:
Israel rightly continues to defend itself from unprovoked attacks on innocent civilians, and the killing and abduction of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Let there be no doubt: Hamas and Hezbollah must return the Israeli soldiers they abducted and cease their attacks against Israel.
I have said time and again that you cannot negotiate when there is a gun to your head. The international community needs to send a clear message to these terrorist organizations -- and the countries that fund and support their reign of terror -- that these kinds of attacks on peaceful, democratic nations will not be tolerated. . . . .
I commend President Bush and his cabinet for their continued support of Israel and its right to defend itself. I deeply hope that the fighting will end soon, and that all the innocent people affected by this conflict will again be safe. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those soldiers who have fallen in combat, the brave sons and daughters of Israel who are defending Israel's freedom at this very moment, and with the people of Israel who are an inspiration to all of us as they continue to go about their lives in the face of such uncertainty.
I have always believed that the fate of Israel and the future of New York City are deeply connected. If Israel's democracy is compromised, so too are our freedoms here at home. A strong Israel means a strong America and a strong New York. And as Americans and New Yorkers, we must continue to stand with Israel as we have done for the past 58 years, and we must never lose our hope for peace.
Rolling Stone, August 22, 2006:
Bloomberg, in fact, identifies strongly with the defeated Democrat from Connecticut. "I think what they're doing to Joe Lieberman is a disgrace," the mayor volunteered when I met with him in his offices in July, shortly before anti-war bloggers helped Ned Lamont beat Lieberman in the primary. . . . A few days later, Bloomberg was offering to campaign for Lieberman.
He also is as enamored of government control, police powers and surveillance as anyone in the Bush administration. He is an unrestrained advocate and enforcer of the War on Drugs (despite his own acknowledged use of marijuana, of course) and advocates the creation of "a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers," about which the NY Civil Liberties Union said, with extreme understatement: "It doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in. It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector."
Clearly, this is just exactly what our country desperately needs, what it is missing most -- a neoconservative, combat-avoiding, Bush-supporting, Middle-East-warmonger who sees U.S. and Israeli interests as indistinguishable and inextricably linked, with a fetish for ever-increasing government control and surveillance, and a background as a Wall St. billionaire. We just haven't had enough of those in our political culture. Our political system, more than anything, is missing the influence of people like that. That's why it's broken: not enough of those.
Bloomberg is basically just Rudy Giuliani with a billion or two dollars to spend to alter the election. When it comes to foreign policy, war-making and government power, he offers absolutely nothing that isn't found in destructive abundance among the most extremist precincts in the Republican Party, while his moderate to liberal stance on social issues would prevent him from actually winning the support of his natural GOP base.
In fact -- despite his steadfast neoconservatism -- it's hard to see how the candidacy of a divorced, unmarried, stridently pro-gun-control, pro-choice, socially liberal New York City billionaire would accomplish anything other than offering the Republicans their best hope of winning in 2008. All of this seems to be intended as punishment meted out by the Establishment to the Democrats -- using Bloomberg's billions as the weapon -- for not repudiating their loudmouth, restless liberal base strongly enough. That, more than anything, seems to be the oh-so-noble and trans-partisan purpose of David Broder, David Boren and Sam Nunn: to find a way to stifle the populist anger at our political establishment after 8 years of unrestrained Bush-Cheney devastation, increasingly represented (on the Democratic side) by the Scary, Angry, Intemperate John Edwards campaign.
A Bloomberg candidacy would have no purpose other than satisfy his bottomless personal lust for attention and bestow the wise old men threatening the country with his candidacy with some fleeting sense of rejuvenated relevance and wisdom. His political views are conventional in every way and he's little more than an establishment-enabling figurehead. The whole attraction to his candidacy has nothing to do with any issues or substance and everything to do with an empty addiction to vapid notions of Establishment harmony and a desire to exert control, whereby our Seriousness guardians devote themselves to a candidate for reasons largely unrelated to his policies or political views, thus proving themselves, as usual, to be the exact antithesis of actual seriousness.
Michael Bloomberg: Trans-partisan savior
Who thinks a third party candidate like this is a good idea, and why?
Glenn Greenwald
Dec. 31, 2007 Following along in David Broder's excited footsteps, Sam Roberts in The New York Times reports that Michael Bloomberg "is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run." And a handful of retired, mediocre politicians with no following are issuing self-absorbed, thug-like demands, complete with deadlines:
Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, "I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent."
Is it even theoretically possible for Democrats to "cooperate" more with Republicans than they've been doing since taking over control of Congress?
The NYT article quotes actor Sam Waterston of the painfully silly, substance-free Unity '08 group describing the promise of Bloomberg's candidacy as promoting "Unity08's principal goals of a bipartisan, nonpartisan, postpartisan ticket." The website Unite for Mike -- a grass-roots movement that now has 500 supporters! -- says that Bloomberg "has the vision, experience and passion of a true and demonstrated leader" and that Bloomberg can solve this problem: "Our international leadership has become confused and directionless. We are no longer the shining beacon of freedom and justice to our fellow nations."
Here's Bloomberg's record of Independence, Judgment, Competence, and Trans-partisan Wisdom. Consider how sterling his judgment is and how able he would be to make the world respect us again:
NYT, May 11, 2004:
Laura Bush and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in an appearance that may well dispel any lingering doubt as to the mayor's feelings about the president, or of the mayor's own political identity. . . .
[T]here he was yesterday, throwing in his words of support for the president's decision to invade Iraq -- promoting one of the notions that is central to the rationale for the attack, that the conflict was justified by what happened on Sept. 11.
"Let me add something to that," Mr. Bloomberg said after Mrs. Bush gave her defense of her husband and his decision to go to war. "Don't forget that the war started not very many blocks from here."
Joe Conason, Salon, June 22, 2007:
Dating back to his infatuation with Bush, the mayor has always been an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Iraq. He marched lockstep in the Bush drive toward invasion when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002: "Freedom comes at a price, and tragically, sometimes that price is the commitment to defend freedom by arms. America has been, is, and always will be willing to do its duty -- to sacrifice even its own blood, so that people everywhere can live as individuals responsible for their own destinies." (As Wayne Barrett once pointed out in the Village Voice, the man spouting this brave talk got out of the Vietnam draft because his feet are flat.)
Bloomberg's pro-war rhetoric dutifully echoed the White House line connecting Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida and 9/11, almost as if Karl Rove had programmed his brain. "I'm voting for George W. Bush and it's mainly because I think we have to strike back at terrorists," he said in September 2004. "To argue that Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrorist is ridiculous. He used mustard gas, or some kind of gas, against his own people."
Bloomberg's speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention:
I want to thank President Bush for supporting New York City and changing the homeland security funding formula and for leading the global war on terrorism.
(APPLAUSE)
The president deserves our support.
(APPLAUSE)
We are here to support him.
(APPLAUSE)
And I am here to support him.
(APPLAUSE)
NYT, January 29, 2004:
We are going to get George W. Bush re-elected as president of the United States! We are going to carry New York City and New York State. Everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I think we can do it.
Wayne Barrett, Village Voice, October 18, 2005:
Even though the City Council passed a resolution opposing the war, Bloomberg called an old friend, Paul Wolfowitz, to express his desire to host a ticker tape parade "to say thank you," apparently as unaware as the "Mission Accomplished" president that the troops would not be coming home for years. Bloomberg actually contributed $5 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs in the late '90s, when war architect Wolfowitz was dean. . . .
Even before the war, Bloomberg brought his mother and daughter to the United Nations, where he addressed the General Assembly a day after Bush did in September 2002. Echoing Bush's warnings that the U.S. would go it alone if the U.N. didn't act, Bloomberg "praised" Bush's war on terror "and offered support for an attack on Iraq," according to the Daily News.
Michael Bloomberg Press Release, July 17, 2006, as the Israeli bombing of Lebanon proceeded:
Israel rightly continues to defend itself from unprovoked attacks on innocent civilians, and the killing and abduction of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Let there be no doubt: Hamas and Hezbollah must return the Israeli soldiers they abducted and cease their attacks against Israel.
I have said time and again that you cannot negotiate when there is a gun to your head. The international community needs to send a clear message to these terrorist organizations -- and the countries that fund and support their reign of terror -- that these kinds of attacks on peaceful, democratic nations will not be tolerated. . . . .
I commend President Bush and his cabinet for their continued support of Israel and its right to defend itself. I deeply hope that the fighting will end soon, and that all the innocent people affected by this conflict will again be safe. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those soldiers who have fallen in combat, the brave sons and daughters of Israel who are defending Israel's freedom at this very moment, and with the people of Israel who are an inspiration to all of us as they continue to go about their lives in the face of such uncertainty.
I have always believed that the fate of Israel and the future of New York City are deeply connected. If Israel's democracy is compromised, so too are our freedoms here at home. A strong Israel means a strong America and a strong New York. And as Americans and New Yorkers, we must continue to stand with Israel as we have done for the past 58 years, and we must never lose our hope for peace.
Rolling Stone, August 22, 2006:
Bloomberg, in fact, identifies strongly with the defeated Democrat from Connecticut. "I think what they're doing to Joe Lieberman is a disgrace," the mayor volunteered when I met with him in his offices in July, shortly before anti-war bloggers helped Ned Lamont beat Lieberman in the primary. . . . A few days later, Bloomberg was offering to campaign for Lieberman.
He also is as enamored of government control, police powers and surveillance as anyone in the Bush administration. He is an unrestrained advocate and enforcer of the War on Drugs (despite his own acknowledged use of marijuana, of course) and advocates the creation of "a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers," about which the NY Civil Liberties Union said, with extreme understatement: "It doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in. It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector."
Clearly, this is just exactly what our country desperately needs, what it is missing most -- a neoconservative, combat-avoiding, Bush-supporting, Middle-East-warmonger who sees U.S. and Israeli interests as indistinguishable and inextricably linked, with a fetish for ever-increasing government control and surveillance, and a background as a Wall St. billionaire. We just haven't had enough of those in our political culture. Our political system, more than anything, is missing the influence of people like that. That's why it's broken: not enough of those.
Bloomberg is basically just Rudy Giuliani with a billion or two dollars to spend to alter the election. When it comes to foreign policy, war-making and government power, he offers absolutely nothing that isn't found in destructive abundance among the most extremist precincts in the Republican Party, while his moderate to liberal stance on social issues would prevent him from actually winning the support of his natural GOP base.
In fact -- despite his steadfast neoconservatism -- it's hard to see how the candidacy of a divorced, unmarried, stridently pro-gun-control, pro-choice, socially liberal New York City billionaire would accomplish anything other than offering the Republicans their best hope of winning in 2008. All of this seems to be intended as punishment meted out by the Establishment to the Democrats -- using Bloomberg's billions as the weapon -- for not repudiating their loudmouth, restless liberal base strongly enough. That, more than anything, seems to be the oh-so-noble and trans-partisan purpose of David Broder, David Boren and Sam Nunn: to find a way to stifle the populist anger at our political establishment after 8 years of unrestrained Bush-Cheney devastation, increasingly represented (on the Democratic side) by the Scary, Angry, Intemperate John Edwards campaign.
A Bloomberg candidacy would have no purpose other than satisfy his bottomless personal lust for attention and bestow the wise old men threatening the country with his candidacy with some fleeting sense of rejuvenated relevance and wisdom. His political views are conventional in every way and he's little more than an establishment-enabling figurehead. The whole attraction to his candidacy has nothing to do with any issues or substance and everything to do with an empty addiction to vapid notions of Establishment harmony and a desire to exert control, whereby our Seriousness guardians devote themselves to a candidate for reasons largely unrelated to his policies or political views, thus proving themselves, as usual, to be the exact antithesis of actual seriousness.
Benazir Bhutto and destabilization of Pakistan
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2789.shtml
Anglo-American ambitions behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and destabilization of Pakistan
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Dec 31, 2007
It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been manuevering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto does not change this agenda. In fact, it simplifies Bush-Cheney’s options.
Seeding chaos with a pretext
“Delivering democracy to the Muslim world” has been the Orwellian rhetoric used to mask Bush-Cheney’s application of pressure and force, its dramatic attempt at reshaping the Pakistani government (into a joint Bhutto/Sharif-Musharraf) coalition, and backdoor plans for a military intervention. Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan's military.
The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place.
As succinctly summarized in Jeremy Page’s article, "Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? The Main Suspects", the primary suspects are 1) “Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge," and 2) the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari directly accused the ISI of being involved in the October attack.
The assassination of Bhutto has predictably been blamed on “Al-Qaeda,” without mention of fact that Al-Qaeda itself is an Anglo-American military-intelligence operation.
Page’s piece was one of the first to name the man who has now been tagged as the main suspect: Baitullah Mehsud, a purported Taliban militant fighting the Pakistani army out of Waziristan. Conflicting reports link Mehsud to “Al-Qaeda,” the Afghan Taliban, and Mullah Omar. Other analysis links him to the terrorist A.Q. Khan.
Mehsud’s profile, and the reporting of it, echoes the propaganda treatment of all post-9/11 “terrorists." This in turn raises familiar questions about Anglo-American intelligence agency propaganda involvement. Is Mehsud connected to the ISI or the CIA? What did the ISI and the CIA know about Mehsud? More importantly, does Mehsud, or the manipulation of the propaganda surrounding him provide Bush-Cheney with a pretext for future aggression in the region?
Classic “war on terrorism” propaganda
While details on the Bhutto assassination continue to unfold, what is clear is that it was a political hit, along the lines of US agent Rafik Harriri in Lebanon. Like the highly suspicious Harriri hit, the Bhutto assassination has been depicted by corporate media as the martyring of a great messenger of Western-style “democracy." Meanwhile, the US government’s ruthless actions behind the scenes have received scant attention.
The December 28 New York Times coverage of the Bhutto assassination offers the perfect example of mainstream Orwellian media distortion that hides the truth about the Bush-Cheney agenda behind blatant propaganda smoke. This piece echoes White House rhetoric proclaiming that Bush’s main objectives are to “bring democracy to the Muslim world” and “force out Islamist militants."
In fact, the openly criminal Bush-Cheney administration has only supported and promoted the antithesis of democracy: chaos, fascism, and the installation of Anglo-American friendly puppet regimes.
In fact, the central and consistent geostrategy of Bush-Cheney, and their elite counterparts around the world, is the continued imposition and expansion of the manufactured “war on terrorism”; the continuation of war across the Eurasian subcontinent, with events triggered by false flag operations and manufactured pretexts.
In fact, the main tools used in the “war on terrorism” remain Islamist militants, working on behalf of Anglo-American military intelligence agencies -- among them, “Al-Qaeda," and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. Mehsud fits this same profile.
Saving Bush-Cheney’s Pakistan
In an amusing quote from the same New York Times piece, Wendy Chamberlain, former US ambassador to Pakistan (and a central figure behind multinational efforts to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, connected to 9/11), proudly states: “We are a player in the Pakistani political system."
Not only has the US continued to be a “player," but one of its top managers for decades. Each successive Pakistani leader since the early 1990s -- Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf -- have bowed to Western interests. The ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA.
While Musharraf has been, and remains, a strongman for Bush-Cheney, questions about his “reliability," and control -- both his regime’s control over the populace and growing popular unrest, and elite control over his regime -- have driven Bush-Cheney attempts to force a clumsy (pro-US, Iraq-style) power-sharing government. As noted by Robert Scheer, Bush-Cheney has been playing “Russian roulette” with Musharraf, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- each of whom have been deeply corrupt, willing fronts for the US.
The return of both Bhutto and the other former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has merely been an attempt by the US to hedge its regional power bets.
What exactly were John Negroponte and Condoleeza Rice really setting up the past few months?
Who benefits from Bhutto’s murder?
The “war on terrorism” geostrategy and propaganda milieu, the blueprint that has been used by elite interests since 9/11 to impose a continuing world war, is the clear beneficiary of the Bhutto assassination. Bush-Cheney and their equally complicit pro-war/pro-occupation counterparts in the Democratic Party enthusiastically support the routine use of “terror” pretexts to impose continued war policies.
True to form, fear, “terrorism," “security” and military force are, once again, the focuses of Washington political rhetoric, and the around-the-clock media barrage.
The 2008 US presidential candidates and their elite campaign advisers, all but a few of whom enthusiastically support the “war on terrorism," have taken turns pushing their respective versions of “we must stop the terrorists” rhetoric for brain-addled supporters. The candidates whose polls have slipped, led by 9/11 participant and opportunist Rudy Guiliani, and hawkish neoliberal Hillary Clinton, have already benefited from a new round of mass fear.
Musharraf benefits from the removal of a bitter rival, but now must find a way to re-establish order. Musharraf now has an ideal justification to crack down on “terrorists” and impose full martial law, with Bush-Cheney working from the shadows behind Musharraf and continuing to manipulate or remove his apparatus if Musharraf proves too unreliable or broken to suit Anglo-American plans.
The likely involvement of the ISI behind the Bhutto hit cannot be overstated. ISI’s role behind every major act of “terrorism” since 9/11 remains the central unspoken truth behind current geopolitical realities. Bhutto, but not Sharif or Musharraf would have threatened the ISI’s agendas.
Bhutto, militant Islam, and the pipelines
Now that she has been martyred, many unflattering historical facts about Benazir Bhutto will be hidden or forgotten.
Bhutto herself was intimately involved in the creation of the very “terror” milieu purportedly responsible for her assassination. Across her political career, she supported militant Islamists, the Taliban, the ISI, and the ambitions of Western governments.
As noted by Michel Chossudovsky in America’s “War on Terrorism," it was during Bhutto’s second term that Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and the Taliban rose to prominence, welcomed into Bhutto’s coalition government. It was at that point that ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI were established.
While Bhutto’s relationship with both the ISI and the Taliban were marked by turmoil, it is clear that Bhutto, when in power, supported both -- and enthusiastically supported Anglo-American interventions.
In his two landmark books, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad:The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid richly details the Bhutto regime’s connections to the ISI, the Taliban, “militant Islam," multinational oil interests, and Anglo-American officials and intelligence proxies.
In Jihad, Rashid wrote: “Ironically it was not the ISI but Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the most liberal, secular leader in Pakistan’s recent history, who delivered the coup de grace to a new relationship with Central Asia. Rather than support a wider peace process in Afghanistan that would have opened up a wider peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the Taliban, in a rash and presumptuous policy to create a new western-oriented trade and pipeline route from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, from which the Taliban would provide security. The ISI soon supported this policy because its Afghan protégé, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had made no headway in capturing Kabul, and the Taliban appeared to be strong enough to do so.”
In Taliban, Rashid provided even more historical detail: “When Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister in 1993, she was keen to open a route to Central Asia. A new proposal emerged backed strongly by the frustrated Pakistani transport and smuggling mafia, the JUI and Pashtun military and political officials.”
“The Bhutto government fully backed the Taliban, but the ISI remained skeptical of their abilities, convinced that they would remain a useful but peripheral force in the south.”
“The US Congress had authorized a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, and Tehran accused Washington of funneling some of these funds to the Taliban -- a charge that was always denied by Washington. Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban.”
Bhutto’s one mistake: she vehemently supported the pipeline proposed by Argentinian oil company Bridas, and opposed the pipeline by Unocal (favored by the US). This contributed to her ouster in 1996, and the return of Nawaz Sharif to power.
As noted by Rashid: “After the dismissal of the Bhutto government in 1996, the newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his oil minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, the army and the ISI fully backed Unocal. Pakistan wanted more direct US support for the Taliban and urged Unocal to start construction quickly in order to legitimize the Taliban. Basically the USA and Unocal accepted the ISI’s analysis and aims -- that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would make Unocal’s job much easier and quicken US recognition.”
Her appealing and glamorous pro-Western image notwithstanding, Bhutto’s true record is one of corruption and accommodation.
The “war on terrorism” resparked
Every major Anglo-American geostrategic crime has been preceded by a convenient pretext, orchestrated and carried out by “terror” proxies directly or indirectly connected to US military-intelligence, or manipulated into performing as intelligence assets. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is simply one more brutal example.
This was Pakistan’s 9/11; Pakistan’s JFK assassination, and its impact will resonate for years.
Contrary to mainstream corporate news reporting, chaos benefits Bush-Cheney’s “war on terrorism." Calls for “increased worldwide security” will pave the way for a muscular US reaction, US-led force and other forms of “crackdown” from Bush-Cheney across the region. In other words, the assassination helps ensure that the US will not only never leave, but also increase its presence.
The Pakistani election, if it takes place at all, is a simpler two-way choice: pro-US Musharraf or pro-US Sharif.
While the success of Bush-Cheney’s 9/11 agenda has met with mixed results, and it has met with a wide array of resistance (“terroristic” as well as political), there is no doubt that the propaganda foundation of the “war on terrorism” has remained firm, unshaken and routinely reinforced.
As for Nawaz Sharif, who now emerges as the sole competitor to Musharraf, he, like Musharraf and Bhutto, is legendary for his accommodation to Anglo-American interests -- pipelines, trade, and the continued US military presence. As Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie noted in their book, Forbidden Truth, the October 1999 military coup led by Musharraf that originally toppled Sharif’s regime was sparked by animosity between the two camps, as well as “Sharif’s personal corruption and political megalomania," and “concerns that Sharif was dancing too eagerly to Washington’s tune on Kashmir and Afghanistan."
In other words, Bush-Cheney wins, no matter which asset winds up on the throne.
Anglo-American ambitions behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and destabilization of Pakistan
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Dec 31, 2007
It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been manuevering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto does not change this agenda. In fact, it simplifies Bush-Cheney’s options.
Seeding chaos with a pretext
“Delivering democracy to the Muslim world” has been the Orwellian rhetoric used to mask Bush-Cheney’s application of pressure and force, its dramatic attempt at reshaping the Pakistani government (into a joint Bhutto/Sharif-Musharraf) coalition, and backdoor plans for a military intervention. Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan's military.
The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place.
As succinctly summarized in Jeremy Page’s article, "Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? The Main Suspects", the primary suspects are 1) “Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge," and 2) the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari directly accused the ISI of being involved in the October attack.
The assassination of Bhutto has predictably been blamed on “Al-Qaeda,” without mention of fact that Al-Qaeda itself is an Anglo-American military-intelligence operation.
Page’s piece was one of the first to name the man who has now been tagged as the main suspect: Baitullah Mehsud, a purported Taliban militant fighting the Pakistani army out of Waziristan. Conflicting reports link Mehsud to “Al-Qaeda,” the Afghan Taliban, and Mullah Omar. Other analysis links him to the terrorist A.Q. Khan.
Mehsud’s profile, and the reporting of it, echoes the propaganda treatment of all post-9/11 “terrorists." This in turn raises familiar questions about Anglo-American intelligence agency propaganda involvement. Is Mehsud connected to the ISI or the CIA? What did the ISI and the CIA know about Mehsud? More importantly, does Mehsud, or the manipulation of the propaganda surrounding him provide Bush-Cheney with a pretext for future aggression in the region?
Classic “war on terrorism” propaganda
While details on the Bhutto assassination continue to unfold, what is clear is that it was a political hit, along the lines of US agent Rafik Harriri in Lebanon. Like the highly suspicious Harriri hit, the Bhutto assassination has been depicted by corporate media as the martyring of a great messenger of Western-style “democracy." Meanwhile, the US government’s ruthless actions behind the scenes have received scant attention.
The December 28 New York Times coverage of the Bhutto assassination offers the perfect example of mainstream Orwellian media distortion that hides the truth about the Bush-Cheney agenda behind blatant propaganda smoke. This piece echoes White House rhetoric proclaiming that Bush’s main objectives are to “bring democracy to the Muslim world” and “force out Islamist militants."
In fact, the openly criminal Bush-Cheney administration has only supported and promoted the antithesis of democracy: chaos, fascism, and the installation of Anglo-American friendly puppet regimes.
In fact, the central and consistent geostrategy of Bush-Cheney, and their elite counterparts around the world, is the continued imposition and expansion of the manufactured “war on terrorism”; the continuation of war across the Eurasian subcontinent, with events triggered by false flag operations and manufactured pretexts.
In fact, the main tools used in the “war on terrorism” remain Islamist militants, working on behalf of Anglo-American military intelligence agencies -- among them, “Al-Qaeda," and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. Mehsud fits this same profile.
Saving Bush-Cheney’s Pakistan
In an amusing quote from the same New York Times piece, Wendy Chamberlain, former US ambassador to Pakistan (and a central figure behind multinational efforts to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, connected to 9/11), proudly states: “We are a player in the Pakistani political system."
Not only has the US continued to be a “player," but one of its top managers for decades. Each successive Pakistani leader since the early 1990s -- Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf -- have bowed to Western interests. The ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA.
While Musharraf has been, and remains, a strongman for Bush-Cheney, questions about his “reliability," and control -- both his regime’s control over the populace and growing popular unrest, and elite control over his regime -- have driven Bush-Cheney attempts to force a clumsy (pro-US, Iraq-style) power-sharing government. As noted by Robert Scheer, Bush-Cheney has been playing “Russian roulette” with Musharraf, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- each of whom have been deeply corrupt, willing fronts for the US.
The return of both Bhutto and the other former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has merely been an attempt by the US to hedge its regional power bets.
What exactly were John Negroponte and Condoleeza Rice really setting up the past few months?
Who benefits from Bhutto’s murder?
The “war on terrorism” geostrategy and propaganda milieu, the blueprint that has been used by elite interests since 9/11 to impose a continuing world war, is the clear beneficiary of the Bhutto assassination. Bush-Cheney and their equally complicit pro-war/pro-occupation counterparts in the Democratic Party enthusiastically support the routine use of “terror” pretexts to impose continued war policies.
True to form, fear, “terrorism," “security” and military force are, once again, the focuses of Washington political rhetoric, and the around-the-clock media barrage.
The 2008 US presidential candidates and their elite campaign advisers, all but a few of whom enthusiastically support the “war on terrorism," have taken turns pushing their respective versions of “we must stop the terrorists” rhetoric for brain-addled supporters. The candidates whose polls have slipped, led by 9/11 participant and opportunist Rudy Guiliani, and hawkish neoliberal Hillary Clinton, have already benefited from a new round of mass fear.
Musharraf benefits from the removal of a bitter rival, but now must find a way to re-establish order. Musharraf now has an ideal justification to crack down on “terrorists” and impose full martial law, with Bush-Cheney working from the shadows behind Musharraf and continuing to manipulate or remove his apparatus if Musharraf proves too unreliable or broken to suit Anglo-American plans.
The likely involvement of the ISI behind the Bhutto hit cannot be overstated. ISI’s role behind every major act of “terrorism” since 9/11 remains the central unspoken truth behind current geopolitical realities. Bhutto, but not Sharif or Musharraf would have threatened the ISI’s agendas.
Bhutto, militant Islam, and the pipelines
Now that she has been martyred, many unflattering historical facts about Benazir Bhutto will be hidden or forgotten.
Bhutto herself was intimately involved in the creation of the very “terror” milieu purportedly responsible for her assassination. Across her political career, she supported militant Islamists, the Taliban, the ISI, and the ambitions of Western governments.
As noted by Michel Chossudovsky in America’s “War on Terrorism," it was during Bhutto’s second term that Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and the Taliban rose to prominence, welcomed into Bhutto’s coalition government. It was at that point that ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI were established.
While Bhutto’s relationship with both the ISI and the Taliban were marked by turmoil, it is clear that Bhutto, when in power, supported both -- and enthusiastically supported Anglo-American interventions.
In his two landmark books, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad:The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid richly details the Bhutto regime’s connections to the ISI, the Taliban, “militant Islam," multinational oil interests, and Anglo-American officials and intelligence proxies.
In Jihad, Rashid wrote: “Ironically it was not the ISI but Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the most liberal, secular leader in Pakistan’s recent history, who delivered the coup de grace to a new relationship with Central Asia. Rather than support a wider peace process in Afghanistan that would have opened up a wider peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the Taliban, in a rash and presumptuous policy to create a new western-oriented trade and pipeline route from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, from which the Taliban would provide security. The ISI soon supported this policy because its Afghan protégé, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, had made no headway in capturing Kabul, and the Taliban appeared to be strong enough to do so.”
In Taliban, Rashid provided even more historical detail: “When Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister in 1993, she was keen to open a route to Central Asia. A new proposal emerged backed strongly by the frustrated Pakistani transport and smuggling mafia, the JUI and Pashtun military and political officials.”
“The Bhutto government fully backed the Taliban, but the ISI remained skeptical of their abilities, convinced that they would remain a useful but peripheral force in the south.”
“The US Congress had authorized a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to destabilize Iran, and Tehran accused Washington of funneling some of these funds to the Taliban -- a charge that was always denied by Washington. Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban.”
Bhutto’s one mistake: she vehemently supported the pipeline proposed by Argentinian oil company Bridas, and opposed the pipeline by Unocal (favored by the US). This contributed to her ouster in 1996, and the return of Nawaz Sharif to power.
As noted by Rashid: “After the dismissal of the Bhutto government in 1996, the newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his oil minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, the army and the ISI fully backed Unocal. Pakistan wanted more direct US support for the Taliban and urged Unocal to start construction quickly in order to legitimize the Taliban. Basically the USA and Unocal accepted the ISI’s analysis and aims -- that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would make Unocal’s job much easier and quicken US recognition.”
Her appealing and glamorous pro-Western image notwithstanding, Bhutto’s true record is one of corruption and accommodation.
The “war on terrorism” resparked
Every major Anglo-American geostrategic crime has been preceded by a convenient pretext, orchestrated and carried out by “terror” proxies directly or indirectly connected to US military-intelligence, or manipulated into performing as intelligence assets. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is simply one more brutal example.
This was Pakistan’s 9/11; Pakistan’s JFK assassination, and its impact will resonate for years.
Contrary to mainstream corporate news reporting, chaos benefits Bush-Cheney’s “war on terrorism." Calls for “increased worldwide security” will pave the way for a muscular US reaction, US-led force and other forms of “crackdown” from Bush-Cheney across the region. In other words, the assassination helps ensure that the US will not only never leave, but also increase its presence.
The Pakistani election, if it takes place at all, is a simpler two-way choice: pro-US Musharraf or pro-US Sharif.
While the success of Bush-Cheney’s 9/11 agenda has met with mixed results, and it has met with a wide array of resistance (“terroristic” as well as political), there is no doubt that the propaganda foundation of the “war on terrorism” has remained firm, unshaken and routinely reinforced.
As for Nawaz Sharif, who now emerges as the sole competitor to Musharraf, he, like Musharraf and Bhutto, is legendary for his accommodation to Anglo-American interests -- pipelines, trade, and the continued US military presence. As Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie noted in their book, Forbidden Truth, the October 1999 military coup led by Musharraf that originally toppled Sharif’s regime was sparked by animosity between the two camps, as well as “Sharif’s personal corruption and political megalomania," and “concerns that Sharif was dancing too eagerly to Washington’s tune on Kashmir and Afghanistan."
In other words, Bush-Cheney wins, no matter which asset winds up on the throne.
Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24001.html
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections
Saeed Shah McClatchy Newspapers
December 31, 2007
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.
"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."
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.
"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money," Lashari said.
Lashari, who formerly taught environmental economics at Britain's Cranfield University, said the effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it wouldn't be obvious.
Bhutto was due to meet Specter and Kennedy after dinner last Thursday. She was shot as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi early that evening. Pakistan's government claims instead that she was thrown against the lever of her car's sunroof, fracturing her skull.
(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections
Saeed Shah McClatchy Newspapers
December 31, 2007
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.
"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."
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.
"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money," Lashari said.
Lashari, who formerly taught environmental economics at Britain's Cranfield University, said the effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it wouldn't be obvious.
Bhutto was due to meet Specter and Kennedy after dinner last Thursday. She was shot as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi early that evening. Pakistan's government claims instead that she was thrown against the lever of her car's sunroof, fracturing her skull.
(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
Sacrificing Bhutto to prop up Musharraf?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/novak/719606,CST-EDT-NOVAK31.article
Sacrificing Bhutto to prop up Musharraf?
December 31, 2007
BY ROBERT NOVAK
Sun-Times Columnist
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed urgent pleas to the State Department for the last two months by her representatives for better security protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.
That attitude led Bhutto's agent to inform a high-ranking State Department official that her camp no longer viewed the backstage U.S. effort to broker power sharing between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Bhutto as a good-faith effort toward democracy. It was, according to the written complaint, an attempt to preserve the politically endangered Musharraf as President Bush's man in Islamabad.
Bush confirmed that judgment Thursday when he urged that the Jan. 8 election be held in furtherance of Pakistani ''democracy.'' That may be Musharraf's position, but it definitely is not that of his critics. They say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead, no successor named to head her Pakistan People's Party, and Saudi-backed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif boycotting the balloting.
The Bush administration months ago decided to broker power sharing with the deeply unpopular Musharraf and the popular Bhutto. That decision was based on Pakistan's strategic importance as a sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Bush was in a quandary. Bhutto was much tougher than Musharraf on Islamist extremists, but Bush had heavily invested in Musharraf.
When I last saw Bhutto in August in Manhattan, she was deeply concerned about U.S. ambivalence but asked me not to write about it. She had not heard from Musharraf for three weeks after their secret July meeting in Abu Dhabi. She feared the Pakistani strongman was not being prodded from Washington.
Next came Musharraf's state of emergency and purge of Pakistan's Supreme Court to guarantee legality of his questionable election as president. According to Bhutto's advisers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Bhutto to go along with that process in return for concessions from Musharraf. Bhutto agreed but got nothing in return.
The unsuccessful Oct. 18 attempt on Bhutto's life followed the regime's rejection of her requested security protection when she returned from eight years in exile. The Pakistani government vetoed FBI assistance in investigating the attack. On Oct. 26, Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark Siegel, her friend and Washington spokesman, to be made public only in the event of her death.
''I would hold Musharraf responsible,'' Bhutto said. ''I have been made to feel insecure by his minions.'' She listed obstruction to her ''taking private cars or using tinted windows,'' using jammers against roadside bombs and being surrounded by police cars. ''Without him [Musharraf],'' she said, those requests could not have been blocked.
In early December, a former Pakistani official supporting Bhutto visited a senior U.S. government official to renew her security requests. He got a brush-off, a mind-set reflected Dec. 6 in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, was asked to respond to fears by nonpartisan American observers of a rigged election. His reply: ''I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent and a fair election. It's not going to be a perfect election.'' Boucher's words echoed through corridors of power in Islamabad. The Americans' not demanding perfection signaled they would settle for less. Without Benazir Bhutto around, it is apt to be a lot less.
A more sinister fallout of a free hand from Washington for Pakistan might be Bhutto's murder. Neither her shooting last Thursday nor the attempt on her life Oct. 18 bore the classic al-Qaida trademark. After the carnage, government trucks used streams of water to clean up the blood and in the process destroy forensic evidence. If not too late, would an investigation by the FBI still be in order?
Musharraf's critics say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead.
Sacrificing Bhutto to prop up Musharraf?
December 31, 2007
BY ROBERT NOVAK
Sun-Times Columnist
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed urgent pleas to the State Department for the last two months by her representatives for better security protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.
That attitude led Bhutto's agent to inform a high-ranking State Department official that her camp no longer viewed the backstage U.S. effort to broker power sharing between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Bhutto as a good-faith effort toward democracy. It was, according to the written complaint, an attempt to preserve the politically endangered Musharraf as President Bush's man in Islamabad.
Bush confirmed that judgment Thursday when he urged that the Jan. 8 election be held in furtherance of Pakistani ''democracy.'' That may be Musharraf's position, but it definitely is not that of his critics. They say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead, no successor named to head her Pakistan People's Party, and Saudi-backed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif boycotting the balloting.
The Bush administration months ago decided to broker power sharing with the deeply unpopular Musharraf and the popular Bhutto. That decision was based on Pakistan's strategic importance as a sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Bush was in a quandary. Bhutto was much tougher than Musharraf on Islamist extremists, but Bush had heavily invested in Musharraf.
When I last saw Bhutto in August in Manhattan, she was deeply concerned about U.S. ambivalence but asked me not to write about it. She had not heard from Musharraf for three weeks after their secret July meeting in Abu Dhabi. She feared the Pakistani strongman was not being prodded from Washington.
Next came Musharraf's state of emergency and purge of Pakistan's Supreme Court to guarantee legality of his questionable election as president. According to Bhutto's advisers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Bhutto to go along with that process in return for concessions from Musharraf. Bhutto agreed but got nothing in return.
The unsuccessful Oct. 18 attempt on Bhutto's life followed the regime's rejection of her requested security protection when she returned from eight years in exile. The Pakistani government vetoed FBI assistance in investigating the attack. On Oct. 26, Bhutto sent an e-mail to Mark Siegel, her friend and Washington spokesman, to be made public only in the event of her death.
''I would hold Musharraf responsible,'' Bhutto said. ''I have been made to feel insecure by his minions.'' She listed obstruction to her ''taking private cars or using tinted windows,'' using jammers against roadside bombs and being surrounded by police cars. ''Without him [Musharraf],'' she said, those requests could not have been blocked.
In early December, a former Pakistani official supporting Bhutto visited a senior U.S. government official to renew her security requests. He got a brush-off, a mind-set reflected Dec. 6 in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, was asked to respond to fears by nonpartisan American observers of a rigged election. His reply: ''I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent and a fair election. It's not going to be a perfect election.'' Boucher's words echoed through corridors of power in Islamabad. The Americans' not demanding perfection signaled they would settle for less. Without Benazir Bhutto around, it is apt to be a lot less.
A more sinister fallout of a free hand from Washington for Pakistan might be Bhutto's murder. Neither her shooting last Thursday nor the attempt on her life Oct. 18 bore the classic al-Qaida trademark. After the carnage, government trucks used streams of water to clean up the blood and in the process destroy forensic evidence. If not too late, would an investigation by the FBI still be in order?
Musharraf's critics say an election would be a sham with Bhutto dead.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The main suspects
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7687
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The main suspects
by Jeremy Page
Global Research, December 27, 2007
The Times
The main suspects in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination are the Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge and had repeatedly threatened to kill her.
But fingers will also be pointed at Inter-Services Intelligence, the agency that has had close ties to the Islamists since the 1970s and has been used by successive Pakistani leaders to suppress political opposition.
Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in October, when a suicide bomber killed about 140 people at a rally in the port city of Karachi to welcome her back from eight years in exile.
Earlier that month, two militant warlords based in Pakistan's lawless northwestern areas, near the border with Afghanistan, had threatened to kill her on her return.
One was Baitullah Mehsud, a top commander fighting the Pakistani army in the tribal region of South Waziristan. He has close ties to al Qaeda and the Afghan Taleban.
The other was Haji Omar, the “amir” or leader of the Pakistani Taleban, who is also from South Waziristan and fought against the Soviets with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
After that attack Ms Bhutto revealed that she had received a letter signed by a person who claimed to be a friend of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden threatening to slaughter her like a goat.
She accused Pakistani authorities of not providing her with sufficient security and hinted that they may have been complicit in the bomb attack. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, directly accused the ISI of being involved in that attempt on her life.
Mrs Bhutto stopped short of blaming the Government directly, saying that she had more to fear from unidentified members of a power structure that she described as allies of the “forces of militancy”.
Analysts say that President Musharraf himself is unlikely to have ordered her assassination, but that elements of the army and intelligence service would have stood to lose money and power if she had become Prime Minister.
The ISI, in particular, includes some Islamists who became radicalised while running the American-funded campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan and remained fiercely opposed to Ms Bhutto on principle.
Saudi Arabia, which has strong influence in Pakistan, is also thought to frown on Ms Bhutto as being too secular and Westernised and to favour Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The main suspects
by Jeremy Page
Global Research, December 27, 2007
The Times
The main suspects in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination are the Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge and had repeatedly threatened to kill her.
But fingers will also be pointed at Inter-Services Intelligence, the agency that has had close ties to the Islamists since the 1970s and has been used by successive Pakistani leaders to suppress political opposition.
Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in October, when a suicide bomber killed about 140 people at a rally in the port city of Karachi to welcome her back from eight years in exile.
Earlier that month, two militant warlords based in Pakistan's lawless northwestern areas, near the border with Afghanistan, had threatened to kill her on her return.
One was Baitullah Mehsud, a top commander fighting the Pakistani army in the tribal region of South Waziristan. He has close ties to al Qaeda and the Afghan Taleban.
The other was Haji Omar, the “amir” or leader of the Pakistani Taleban, who is also from South Waziristan and fought against the Soviets with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
After that attack Ms Bhutto revealed that she had received a letter signed by a person who claimed to be a friend of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden threatening to slaughter her like a goat.
She accused Pakistani authorities of not providing her with sufficient security and hinted that they may have been complicit in the bomb attack. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, directly accused the ISI of being involved in that attempt on her life.
Mrs Bhutto stopped short of blaming the Government directly, saying that she had more to fear from unidentified members of a power structure that she described as allies of the “forces of militancy”.
Analysts say that President Musharraf himself is unlikely to have ordered her assassination, but that elements of the army and intelligence service would have stood to lose money and power if she had become Prime Minister.
The ISI, in particular, includes some Islamists who became radicalised while running the American-funded campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan and remained fiercely opposed to Ms Bhutto on principle.
Saudi Arabia, which has strong influence in Pakistan, is also thought to frown on Ms Bhutto as being too secular and Westernised and to favour Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.
Lawyer: Police prevented Bhutto autopsy
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/01/pakistan.autopsy/index.html
Lawyer: Police prevented Bhutto autopsy
Story Highlights
NEW: Reward offered for ID of two suspects believed involved in assassination
New video proves Bhutto shot, widower says
Doctors claim Pakistani police prevented an autopsy on Benazir Bhutto
Lawyer Athar Minallah said the move violated Pakistani criminal law
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Rawalpindi's police chief stopped doctors at the hospital where Benazir Bhutto died from conducting an autopsy, according to a lawyer on the hospital's board.
It was a violation of Pakistani criminal law and prevented a medical conclusion about what killed the former prime minister, said Athar Minallah, who serves on the board that manages Rawalpindi General Hospital.
However, the police chief involved, Aziz Saud, told CNN that he suggested an autopsy be done, but that Bhutto's husband objected.
The revelation came on Monday after new videotape of Bhutto's assassination emerged, showing her slumping just after gunshots rang out.
The tape provided the clearest view yet of the attack and appeared to show that Bhutto was shot. That would contradict the Pakistan government's account.
A previously released videotape showed a man at the right of her vehicle raising a gun, pointing it toward Bhutto, who was standing in her car with her upper body through the sunroof. He fired three shots, then there was an explosion.
In the video that emerged on Sunday, Bhutto was standing, and her hair and scarf appeared to move, perhaps from the bullet. Bhutto fell into the car, then came the blast. Watch new tape showing apparent gunman »
These images seem to support the theory that Bhutto died at the hands of a shooter before a bomb was detonated, killing another 23 people.
Doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital declared the 54-year-old dead hours after Thursday's attack, but the cause of her death has been widely debated.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry announced on Friday that Bhutto died from a skull fracture suffered when she fell or ducked into the car as a result of the shots or the explosion and crashed her head onto a sunroof latch. See the likely sequence of events »
Bhutto's family and political party maintain that the government is lying, and insist she died from gunshot wounds.
Bhutto's husband, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday, called for an international investigation into his wife's death, saying the new video proves the Pakistani government "has been trying to muddy the water from the first day."
"Everything is now very clear that she was shot," Asif Ali Zardari said.
Zardari also called on the U.S. government to push for an international probe.
"I want them to help me find out who killed my wife, the mother of my children," he said of the Bush administration.
Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said the government's conclusion on Bhutto's death was based on "absolute facts, nothing but the facts" and "it was corroborated by the doctor's report."
But Minallah issued an open letter on Monday and released the doctors' clinical notes to distance them from the government statement, and he also talked to CNN.
In the letter, Minallah said the doctors "suggested to the officials to perform an autopsy," but that Saud "did not agree." He noted that under the law, police investigators have "exclusive responsibility" in deciding to have an autopsy.
Minallah told CNN that he was speaking out because the doctors at the hospital were "threatened."
"They are government servants who cannot speak; I am not," he said. He did not elaborate on the threats against the doctors.
He said the lack of an autopsy has created "a perception that there is some kind of cover-up, though I might not believe in that theory."
"There is a state within the state, and that state within the state does not want itself to be held accountable," Minallah said.
Cheema said the government had no objection to Bhutto's body being exhumed for an autopsy if the family requested it.
Her widower has said the family was against exhumation because it did not trust the government.
Minallah said the family could not have prevented an autopsy at the hospital without getting an order from a judge.
The three-page medical report, which was signed by seven doctors, described Bhutto's head wound, but it did not conclude what caused it. It noted that X-ray images were made after she was declared dead.
The wound was described as an irregular oval of about 5 centimeters by 3 centimeters above her right ear.
"Sharp bones edges were felt in the wound," it read. "No foreign body was felt in the wound."
The Pakistani government on Monday offered a reward for anyone who could identify two suspects connected to Bhutto's assassination.
According to the Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, sketches of two people believed to have been involved in the attack were to be published in the local press.
"The person identifying these terrorists will be awarded a cash prize of 5 million rupees [about $81,400] and his identity will also be kept confidential," Elahi said.
CNN's Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report
All About Pakistani Politics • Benazir Bhutto • Rawalpindi General Hospital • Asif Ali Zardari
Lawyer: Police prevented Bhutto autopsy
Story Highlights
NEW: Reward offered for ID of two suspects believed involved in assassination
New video proves Bhutto shot, widower says
Doctors claim Pakistani police prevented an autopsy on Benazir Bhutto
Lawyer Athar Minallah said the move violated Pakistani criminal law
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Rawalpindi's police chief stopped doctors at the hospital where Benazir Bhutto died from conducting an autopsy, according to a lawyer on the hospital's board.
It was a violation of Pakistani criminal law and prevented a medical conclusion about what killed the former prime minister, said Athar Minallah, who serves on the board that manages Rawalpindi General Hospital.
However, the police chief involved, Aziz Saud, told CNN that he suggested an autopsy be done, but that Bhutto's husband objected.
The revelation came on Monday after new videotape of Bhutto's assassination emerged, showing her slumping just after gunshots rang out.
The tape provided the clearest view yet of the attack and appeared to show that Bhutto was shot. That would contradict the Pakistan government's account.
A previously released videotape showed a man at the right of her vehicle raising a gun, pointing it toward Bhutto, who was standing in her car with her upper body through the sunroof. He fired three shots, then there was an explosion.
In the video that emerged on Sunday, Bhutto was standing, and her hair and scarf appeared to move, perhaps from the bullet. Bhutto fell into the car, then came the blast. Watch new tape showing apparent gunman »
These images seem to support the theory that Bhutto died at the hands of a shooter before a bomb was detonated, killing another 23 people.
Doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital declared the 54-year-old dead hours after Thursday's attack, but the cause of her death has been widely debated.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry announced on Friday that Bhutto died from a skull fracture suffered when she fell or ducked into the car as a result of the shots or the explosion and crashed her head onto a sunroof latch. See the likely sequence of events »
Bhutto's family and political party maintain that the government is lying, and insist she died from gunshot wounds.
Bhutto's husband, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday, called for an international investigation into his wife's death, saying the new video proves the Pakistani government "has been trying to muddy the water from the first day."
"Everything is now very clear that she was shot," Asif Ali Zardari said.
Zardari also called on the U.S. government to push for an international probe.
"I want them to help me find out who killed my wife, the mother of my children," he said of the Bush administration.
Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said the government's conclusion on Bhutto's death was based on "absolute facts, nothing but the facts" and "it was corroborated by the doctor's report."
But Minallah issued an open letter on Monday and released the doctors' clinical notes to distance them from the government statement, and he also talked to CNN.
In the letter, Minallah said the doctors "suggested to the officials to perform an autopsy," but that Saud "did not agree." He noted that under the law, police investigators have "exclusive responsibility" in deciding to have an autopsy.
Minallah told CNN that he was speaking out because the doctors at the hospital were "threatened."
"They are government servants who cannot speak; I am not," he said. He did not elaborate on the threats against the doctors.
He said the lack of an autopsy has created "a perception that there is some kind of cover-up, though I might not believe in that theory."
"There is a state within the state, and that state within the state does not want itself to be held accountable," Minallah said.
Cheema said the government had no objection to Bhutto's body being exhumed for an autopsy if the family requested it.
Her widower has said the family was against exhumation because it did not trust the government.
Minallah said the family could not have prevented an autopsy at the hospital without getting an order from a judge.
The three-page medical report, which was signed by seven doctors, described Bhutto's head wound, but it did not conclude what caused it. It noted that X-ray images were made after she was declared dead.
The wound was described as an irregular oval of about 5 centimeters by 3 centimeters above her right ear.
"Sharp bones edges were felt in the wound," it read. "No foreign body was felt in the wound."
The Pakistani government on Monday offered a reward for anyone who could identify two suspects connected to Bhutto's assassination.
According to the Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, sketches of two people believed to have been involved in the attack were to be published in the local press.
"The person identifying these terrorists will be awarded a cash prize of 5 million rupees [about $81,400] and his identity will also be kept confidential," Elahi said.
CNN's Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report
All About Pakistani Politics • Benazir Bhutto • Rawalpindi General Hospital • Asif Ali Zardari
Missing Evidence from Bhutto's Murder
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1699138,00.html
Monday, Dec. 31, 2007
Missing Evidence from Bhutto's Murder
By Aryn Baker and Simon Robinson/Islamabad
With rumors of government complicity in Benazir Bhutto's assassination rife throughout Pakistan, the country's stability may depend on the absolute transparencey of the investigation into the murder. But a constantly evolving and sometimes contradictory explanation of the events by Pakistani investigators has only clouded the issue. Meanwhile, her husband and her supporters are asking for a United Nations-led inquiry into her death, something Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is unlikely to accede to. But even if Musharraf were to agree, there is very little for international forensics experts to investigate.
Within hours of the attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi some 10 miles from the capital, authorities had already hosed down the streets. Pools of blood, along with possible evidence such as bullet casings, DNA samples from the bomber and tracks had been washed away. Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani Intelligence, said he was shocked to see people cleaning up the debris so soon after the assassination. "It's a crime scene, and they're washing away all the evidence! We need to be asking why the hell was this thing done." One of the few pieces of evidence from the crime scene that remains is amateur footage showing a clean cut man in a black vest brandishing what appears to be a gun. Behind him stands another man, a white scarf wrapped around his head. It is thought that he might have been the suicide bomber.
The situation had already been muddied by contradictory versions of how Bhutto died. Initial health official reports stated that Bhutto had been shot twice before a suicide bomber detonated himself seconds later. But by Saturday, the government reversed track. Bhutto had been shot at, said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, but the shooter missed. The force of the explosion knocked Bhutto, who had been waving at the crowds from her vehicle's sunroof, backwards. She hit her head on a protruding lever, and succumbed to the fractures to her skull. Cheema presented X rays to support his claim, but witnesses and close friends who rushed Bhutto to the hospital say that there was no doubt she had been shot.
Doctors who had attended Bhutto immediately after the attack initially said that she died of gunshot wounds, but over the weekend they released new findings in line with the Interior Ministry's claim that the official cause of death was head wounds sustained when Bhutto fell. The reversal has many people suspecting government interference. Says Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, an opposition member of the National Assembly and a former petroleum minister: "The government says it was the work of terrorists and they say someone has claimed responsibility. What I don't understand is why they keep changing the story of how Bhutto died? Why do that? These summersaults make everything look suspicious."
Khan says he is naturally skeptical of talk that the government could be behind the assassination but says that their inept handling of the investigation only adds to the rumors. The idea that Bhutto died when her head hit a lever as she was pushed down into her open top car is "ridiculous." He also says that the government is not serious in investigating incidents like last week's. "How come, at least in the last three years, there have been scores and scores if not hundreds of bomb blasts and suicide attacks in Pakistan and the only incidents that resulted in people being arrested and sentenced is in the two attacks on Pervez Musharraf?"
An autopsy would have been the obvious solution to the ongoing debate, but Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadari declined one at the time of her death, explaining at a news conference on Sunday that, "It was an insult to my wife, an insult to the mother of the nation. I know their forensic reports are useless. I refuse to give them her last remains." The government has since offered to exhume the body, which was buried Friday, in order to perform a post-mortem — but it may be a case of too little, too late. Doing so now only risks inflaming tensions. Islamic traditions hold that the body is sacred, and must not be disturbed in death. As expected, Bhutto's family declined the offer.
As for who plotted the assassination, that too is clouded by what many see as either government incompetence or a knee-jerk choice of "usual suspects." On Friday, the Interior Ministery claimed that investigators had intercepted a telephone call that proved that Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban thought to be affiliated with al Qaeda, had instigated the attack. Ministry spokesman Cheema released a transcript of a purported conversation between Mehsud and a follower, offering congratulations for a job well done.
But Bhutto supporters are skeptical of the reports' veracity. "We do not know if it is a genuine transcript or one created by the intelligence agencies," says PPP party spokesman Farhatullah Babar. Mehsud has become a convenient scapegoat in recent terrorist attacks, sometimes standing in when investigators turn up empty handed. Speaking through his spokesman to the BBC, Mehsud denied any involvement in the attack, as he did when he was accused in the October 18th suicide bombing at a Bhutto rally in Karachi that killed some 140. Such denials, of course, are meaningless, but they do exacerbate rumors of government complicity, a situation that benefits an anti-government insurgency. "There is a very strong possibility that the intelligence agencies were behind the attack," Mehsud's spokesman told the BBC.
The government pirouettes may have less to do with a possible cover-up of an administration-led assassination than a poorly executed attempt at damage control. If Bhutto was killed in a deliberate attack by a sniper, the government would have much more to answer for than if she was the victim of an arguably less-focused terrorist bombing. Bhutto has been dogged by terrorist threats since she returned to Pakistan on October 18th; attending a rally and waving to crowds from the sunroof of her car was clearly a risky undertaking. And the government can argue that providing security under such conditions is impossible. "Look at our country," says Abdul Sattar, a former foreign minister under Musharraf. "Ask whether anyone could get security. I do not know while moving on a street with the supporters lining up along the side, front and rear, whether our security authorities have the capabilities to have a wall of security around the car."
Bhutto's supporters have demanded an international, independent investigation into the events leading to her death. California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that Washington needed to answer some "troubling questions" about Pakistan's investigation so far. At yesterday's press conference, Bhutto's husband Zadari demanded a United Nations investigation, saying "We want a [assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri commission-style investigation... we are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom." According to Dawn, a local newspaper Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said that he would "consider" outside help during a phone call with British PM Gordon Brown yesterday, which many are interpreting as a "Thanks, but no thanks" dismissal.
And then there is the cynical view. In some ways, the lack of a definitive answer suits all sides. The government can maintain its story that an al-Qaeda suicide bomb plot killed Bhutto, thus exonerating itself from negligence at best and complicity at worst. Meanwhile the PPP can leverage the insinuation of government culpability to keep Bhutto's death relevant as Pakistan prepares for the elections she died campaigning for.
With reporting by Khuda Yar Khan/Islamabad
Monday, Dec. 31, 2007
Missing Evidence from Bhutto's Murder
By Aryn Baker and Simon Robinson/Islamabad
With rumors of government complicity in Benazir Bhutto's assassination rife throughout Pakistan, the country's stability may depend on the absolute transparencey of the investigation into the murder. But a constantly evolving and sometimes contradictory explanation of the events by Pakistani investigators has only clouded the issue. Meanwhile, her husband and her supporters are asking for a United Nations-led inquiry into her death, something Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is unlikely to accede to. But even if Musharraf were to agree, there is very little for international forensics experts to investigate.
Within hours of the attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi some 10 miles from the capital, authorities had already hosed down the streets. Pools of blood, along with possible evidence such as bullet casings, DNA samples from the bomber and tracks had been washed away. Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani Intelligence, said he was shocked to see people cleaning up the debris so soon after the assassination. "It's a crime scene, and they're washing away all the evidence! We need to be asking why the hell was this thing done." One of the few pieces of evidence from the crime scene that remains is amateur footage showing a clean cut man in a black vest brandishing what appears to be a gun. Behind him stands another man, a white scarf wrapped around his head. It is thought that he might have been the suicide bomber.
The situation had already been muddied by contradictory versions of how Bhutto died. Initial health official reports stated that Bhutto had been shot twice before a suicide bomber detonated himself seconds later. But by Saturday, the government reversed track. Bhutto had been shot at, said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, but the shooter missed. The force of the explosion knocked Bhutto, who had been waving at the crowds from her vehicle's sunroof, backwards. She hit her head on a protruding lever, and succumbed to the fractures to her skull. Cheema presented X rays to support his claim, but witnesses and close friends who rushed Bhutto to the hospital say that there was no doubt she had been shot.
Doctors who had attended Bhutto immediately after the attack initially said that she died of gunshot wounds, but over the weekend they released new findings in line with the Interior Ministry's claim that the official cause of death was head wounds sustained when Bhutto fell. The reversal has many people suspecting government interference. Says Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, an opposition member of the National Assembly and a former petroleum minister: "The government says it was the work of terrorists and they say someone has claimed responsibility. What I don't understand is why they keep changing the story of how Bhutto died? Why do that? These summersaults make everything look suspicious."
Khan says he is naturally skeptical of talk that the government could be behind the assassination but says that their inept handling of the investigation only adds to the rumors. The idea that Bhutto died when her head hit a lever as she was pushed down into her open top car is "ridiculous." He also says that the government is not serious in investigating incidents like last week's. "How come, at least in the last three years, there have been scores and scores if not hundreds of bomb blasts and suicide attacks in Pakistan and the only incidents that resulted in people being arrested and sentenced is in the two attacks on Pervez Musharraf?"
An autopsy would have been the obvious solution to the ongoing debate, but Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadari declined one at the time of her death, explaining at a news conference on Sunday that, "It was an insult to my wife, an insult to the mother of the nation. I know their forensic reports are useless. I refuse to give them her last remains." The government has since offered to exhume the body, which was buried Friday, in order to perform a post-mortem — but it may be a case of too little, too late. Doing so now only risks inflaming tensions. Islamic traditions hold that the body is sacred, and must not be disturbed in death. As expected, Bhutto's family declined the offer.
As for who plotted the assassination, that too is clouded by what many see as either government incompetence or a knee-jerk choice of "usual suspects." On Friday, the Interior Ministery claimed that investigators had intercepted a telephone call that proved that Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban thought to be affiliated with al Qaeda, had instigated the attack. Ministry spokesman Cheema released a transcript of a purported conversation between Mehsud and a follower, offering congratulations for a job well done.
But Bhutto supporters are skeptical of the reports' veracity. "We do not know if it is a genuine transcript or one created by the intelligence agencies," says PPP party spokesman Farhatullah Babar. Mehsud has become a convenient scapegoat in recent terrorist attacks, sometimes standing in when investigators turn up empty handed. Speaking through his spokesman to the BBC, Mehsud denied any involvement in the attack, as he did when he was accused in the October 18th suicide bombing at a Bhutto rally in Karachi that killed some 140. Such denials, of course, are meaningless, but they do exacerbate rumors of government complicity, a situation that benefits an anti-government insurgency. "There is a very strong possibility that the intelligence agencies were behind the attack," Mehsud's spokesman told the BBC.
The government pirouettes may have less to do with a possible cover-up of an administration-led assassination than a poorly executed attempt at damage control. If Bhutto was killed in a deliberate attack by a sniper, the government would have much more to answer for than if she was the victim of an arguably less-focused terrorist bombing. Bhutto has been dogged by terrorist threats since she returned to Pakistan on October 18th; attending a rally and waving to crowds from the sunroof of her car was clearly a risky undertaking. And the government can argue that providing security under such conditions is impossible. "Look at our country," says Abdul Sattar, a former foreign minister under Musharraf. "Ask whether anyone could get security. I do not know while moving on a street with the supporters lining up along the side, front and rear, whether our security authorities have the capabilities to have a wall of security around the car."
Bhutto's supporters have demanded an international, independent investigation into the events leading to her death. California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that Washington needed to answer some "troubling questions" about Pakistan's investigation so far. At yesterday's press conference, Bhutto's husband Zadari demanded a United Nations investigation, saying "We want a [assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri commission-style investigation... we are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom." According to Dawn, a local newspaper Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said that he would "consider" outside help during a phone call with British PM Gordon Brown yesterday, which many are interpreting as a "Thanks, but no thanks" dismissal.
And then there is the cynical view. In some ways, the lack of a definitive answer suits all sides. The government can maintain its story that an al-Qaeda suicide bomb plot killed Bhutto, thus exonerating itself from negligence at best and complicity at worst. Meanwhile the PPP can leverage the insinuation of government culpability to keep Bhutto's death relevant as Pakistan prepares for the elections she died campaigning for.
With reporting by Khuda Yar Khan/Islamabad
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=IG1ZSIRJ0UOFPQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/30/wbhutto230.xml
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
By Philip Sherwell in New York
31/12/2007
Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.
"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."
Ms Bhutto's entourage discussed deals with the American Blackwater operation, this newspaper has learnt. Sources within the British private security industry said that she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East - last night the company said that it had no knowledge of any talks.
A Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations. "We were approached to provide prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," she said. She declined to go into the precise details.
Ms Bhutto contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Gen Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 19.
Indeed, US diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential US intelligence about militant threats to her life.
Pakistan's interior ministry also passed on details of plots against her and aides said that letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home.
Husain Haqqani, a US-based Bhutto adviser, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.
He added that America, which has arranged for private contractors to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to press Gen Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind. This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy.
Mr Siegel's comments will add to the long-running controversy over Ms Bhutto's security arrangements, which were widely regarded as woefully inadequate given the seriousness of the threats against her from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others.
She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as Thursday's attack proved, it was little real protection against a determined assailant.
Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted.
Being surrounded by foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Ms Bhutto was in the pocket of the West - an accusation levelled at President Karzai - and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the companies could have taken a back role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguard techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage.
"It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.
"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'
By Philip Sherwell in New York
31/12/2007
Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
But the plans collapsed because President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, according to senior aides.
"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her US representative. "In fact she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan."
Ms Bhutto's entourage discussed deals with the American Blackwater operation, this newspaper has learnt. Sources within the British private security industry said that she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East - last night the company said that it had no knowledge of any talks.
A Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations. "We were approached to provide prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," she said. She declined to go into the precise details.
Ms Bhutto contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Gen Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 19.
Indeed, US diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential US intelligence about militant threats to her life.
Pakistan's interior ministry also passed on details of plots against her and aides said that letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home.
Husain Haqqani, a US-based Bhutto adviser, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.
He added that America, which has arranged for private contractors to guard the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to press Gen Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind. This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy.
Mr Siegel's comments will add to the long-running controversy over Ms Bhutto's security arrangements, which were widely regarded as woefully inadequate given the seriousness of the threats against her from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and others.
She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as Thursday's attack proved, it was little real protection against a determined assailant.
Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted.
Being surrounded by foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Ms Bhutto was in the pocket of the West - an accusation levelled at President Karzai - and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the companies could have taken a back role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguard techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage.
"It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.
"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."
Bhutto wanted ties with Israel
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=14909
Friday, December 28, 2007 by Staff Writer
Bhutto wanted ties with Israel, sought Mossad protection
Israeli media reports on Friday revealed that slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto intended to establish official relations with the Jewish state if elected and was seeking Mossad protection in the interim.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert grieved over Bhutto's assassination following an election rally on Thursday, and said that upon her return to Pakistan in October after years of exile Bhutto conveyed to him via a mutual acquaintance that she wanted close ties between Israel and Pakistan.
The Hebrew daily newspaper Ma'ariv further revealed that Bhutto had asked Israel's Mossad spy agency, along with the CIA and Britain's Scotland Yard, to help protect her in the run-up to Pakistan's January 8 election. Bhutto complained that current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was trying to make her an easy target for assassination by now allowing her to use adequate protective measures.
According to the report, Israel's Foreign Ministry was in favor of aiding Bhutto, though the government ultimately decided against it for fear of angering the Musharraf regime and upsetting relations with neighboring India, a close ally of Israel engaged in an ongoing bitter confrontation with Pakistan.
Israeli leaders lamented that Bhutto, a popular former prime minister who was twice deposed by authoritarian elements, could have served as a bridge between Israel and the Muslim world.
Friday, December 28, 2007 by Staff Writer
Bhutto wanted ties with Israel, sought Mossad protection
Israeli media reports on Friday revealed that slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto intended to establish official relations with the Jewish state if elected and was seeking Mossad protection in the interim.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert grieved over Bhutto's assassination following an election rally on Thursday, and said that upon her return to Pakistan in October after years of exile Bhutto conveyed to him via a mutual acquaintance that she wanted close ties between Israel and Pakistan.
The Hebrew daily newspaper Ma'ariv further revealed that Bhutto had asked Israel's Mossad spy agency, along with the CIA and Britain's Scotland Yard, to help protect her in the run-up to Pakistan's January 8 election. Bhutto complained that current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was trying to make her an easy target for assassination by now allowing her to use adequate protective measures.
According to the report, Israel's Foreign Ministry was in favor of aiding Bhutto, though the government ultimately decided against it for fear of angering the Musharraf regime and upsetting relations with neighboring India, a close ally of Israel engaged in an ongoing bitter confrontation with Pakistan.
Israeli leaders lamented that Bhutto, a popular former prime minister who was twice deposed by authoritarian elements, could have served as a bridge between Israel and the Muslim world.
Meeting the Taliban: row over talks exposes divide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2232354,00.html
Meeting the Taliban: row over talks exposes divide
· Afghanistan US suspicious of British attempts at engagement
· Kabul government split on ethnic and political lines
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Thursday December 27, 2007
The Guardian
The threatened expulsion of two senior western officials from Afghanistan yesterday laid bare growing tensions over Kabul's great burning issue: can the Taliban be brought to the negotiating table?
Britain is quietly spearheading efforts to engage militants who are ready to quit the Taliban, although Downing Street vehemently denies reports that MI6 opened talks with some Taliban commanders last summer, trying to convince them to stop shooting by appealing to their better feelings - or through large cash payments.
The enthusiasm for deal-making has echoes of the Raj, when British officers roamed the wild Pashtun lands. But it is most firmly rooted in Britain's struggle to tame Helmand, where more than 7,000 troops are trapped in a bloody fight against an obdurate enemy.
The policy has been resisted by the US military, which is suspicious of attempts to negotiate with "terrorists" and which instead relies heavily on military force.
"The Americans have a way of painting this black and white," said one European official. "For them it's like a cowboy film - you're either a good guy or a bad guy. But anyone with any experience in this country knows it's not that simple."
US generals point to the fiasco of Musa Qala, the strategic Helmand town where British officers struck an experimental peace deal with local insurgents in late 2006, only to see the Taliban seize control in February. The town became a base of Taliban operations and drug smuggling, until Nato seized it back this month.
The two western officials who face expulsion today, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, met tribal elders in Musa Qala on Monday.
The Afghan government is also divided, but along ethnic and political lines. About 5,000, mostly low-level insurgents - disparaged as "cannon fodder" by one western official - have swapped sides under a long-running "national reconciliation" programme. But government officials of the former Northern Alliance, which helped topple the Taliban in 2001 and is dominated by Tajiks, remain hostile to any moves to bring more senior Taliban commanders into power in Kabul.
Ordinary Afghans are desperate for an end to a wave of violence that has surged to new heights - more than 5,000 deaths in 2007, many of them civilians - but terrified of a return to the medieval punishments and harsh repression that characterised the Taliban government.
The UN supports the Taliban contacts, saying reports from political officers in the provinces indicate that many commanders are looking for a "way out". The UN believes it is possible to separate the hardcore leadership linked to al-Qaida from less ideological commanders driven by money, nationalism or disaffection with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai.
"We know the Taliban are not a homogenous group. Some have been coerced into fighting, others have been paid," said UN spokesman Aleem Siddique. "The important thing is to focus on those people who can be brought under the big tent of the government of Afghanistan to support the peace process."
Some analysts say talks will only undermine the fragile national parliament elected in 2005 and human rights groups worry that they could bring notorious rights abusers back into power. "There is an urgent need for greater clarity in who we should be talking to, when and why," admitted one western official in Kabul.
Karzai himself has repeatedly offered to open direct talks with the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. But he is reportedly angry with British efforts to pursue talks without his knowledge.
In such a fluid and complex situation first-hand local knowledge is vital - which is what the EU's Semple and the UN's Patterson were trying to obtain this week, friends and colleagues said yesterday. Some were confident they will shortly be able to return to Kabul, terming the controversy a "hiccup". But for now their services are no longer available.
Meeting the Taliban: row over talks exposes divide
· Afghanistan US suspicious of British attempts at engagement
· Kabul government split on ethnic and political lines
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Thursday December 27, 2007
The Guardian
The threatened expulsion of two senior western officials from Afghanistan yesterday laid bare growing tensions over Kabul's great burning issue: can the Taliban be brought to the negotiating table?
Britain is quietly spearheading efforts to engage militants who are ready to quit the Taliban, although Downing Street vehemently denies reports that MI6 opened talks with some Taliban commanders last summer, trying to convince them to stop shooting by appealing to their better feelings - or through large cash payments.
The enthusiasm for deal-making has echoes of the Raj, when British officers roamed the wild Pashtun lands. But it is most firmly rooted in Britain's struggle to tame Helmand, where more than 7,000 troops are trapped in a bloody fight against an obdurate enemy.
The policy has been resisted by the US military, which is suspicious of attempts to negotiate with "terrorists" and which instead relies heavily on military force.
"The Americans have a way of painting this black and white," said one European official. "For them it's like a cowboy film - you're either a good guy or a bad guy. But anyone with any experience in this country knows it's not that simple."
US generals point to the fiasco of Musa Qala, the strategic Helmand town where British officers struck an experimental peace deal with local insurgents in late 2006, only to see the Taliban seize control in February. The town became a base of Taliban operations and drug smuggling, until Nato seized it back this month.
The two western officials who face expulsion today, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, met tribal elders in Musa Qala on Monday.
The Afghan government is also divided, but along ethnic and political lines. About 5,000, mostly low-level insurgents - disparaged as "cannon fodder" by one western official - have swapped sides under a long-running "national reconciliation" programme. But government officials of the former Northern Alliance, which helped topple the Taliban in 2001 and is dominated by Tajiks, remain hostile to any moves to bring more senior Taliban commanders into power in Kabul.
Ordinary Afghans are desperate for an end to a wave of violence that has surged to new heights - more than 5,000 deaths in 2007, many of them civilians - but terrified of a return to the medieval punishments and harsh repression that characterised the Taliban government.
The UN supports the Taliban contacts, saying reports from political officers in the provinces indicate that many commanders are looking for a "way out". The UN believes it is possible to separate the hardcore leadership linked to al-Qaida from less ideological commanders driven by money, nationalism or disaffection with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai.
"We know the Taliban are not a homogenous group. Some have been coerced into fighting, others have been paid," said UN spokesman Aleem Siddique. "The important thing is to focus on those people who can be brought under the big tent of the government of Afghanistan to support the peace process."
Some analysts say talks will only undermine the fragile national parliament elected in 2005 and human rights groups worry that they could bring notorious rights abusers back into power. "There is an urgent need for greater clarity in who we should be talking to, when and why," admitted one western official in Kabul.
Karzai himself has repeatedly offered to open direct talks with the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. But he is reportedly angry with British efforts to pursue talks without his knowledge.
In such a fluid and complex situation first-hand local knowledge is vital - which is what the EU's Semple and the UN's Patterson were trying to obtain this week, friends and colleagues said yesterday. Some were confident they will shortly be able to return to Kabul, terming the controversy a "hiccup". But for now their services are no longer available.
Bhutto broke her agreement with the CIA
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2007/12/29/bhutto-broke-her-agrrement-with-the-cia-she-wanted-to-talk-with-the-islamists/
Bhutto broke her agreement with the CIA, she wanted to talk with the Islamists
According to the manar newspaper the CIA in coordination with Musharraf’s ISI [International Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan] are behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Musharraf briefed the Americans that Bhutto contacted the Islamic movement in Pakistan to reach an agreement for reconciliation leading to future stability of the country and breaking Pakistan link with American war-on -terror.
This explanation seems logical, few days ago two British diplomats were expelled from Afghanistan for conducting talks with the Taliban.
Remember when Karzai told the CNN that he was being held back from serious peace negotiations by the US?, Bhutto was convinced that Bin Laden is dead, so there is no need for the US fake so called “war-o-terror”.
Bhutto broke her agreement with the CIA, she wanted to talk with the Islamists
According to the manar newspaper the CIA in coordination with Musharraf’s ISI [International Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan] are behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Musharraf briefed the Americans that Bhutto contacted the Islamic movement in Pakistan to reach an agreement for reconciliation leading to future stability of the country and breaking Pakistan link with American war-on -terror.
This explanation seems logical, few days ago two British diplomats were expelled from Afghanistan for conducting talks with the Taliban.
Remember when Karzai told the CNN that he was being held back from serious peace negotiations by the US?, Bhutto was convinced that Bin Laden is dead, so there is no need for the US fake so called “war-o-terror”.
Bhutto email named killers
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=505152&in_page_id=1811
Bhutto email named killers weeks before assassination
By SIMON WALTERS
30th December 2007
Benazir Bhutto: 'People are planning to murder me'
Benazir Bhutto claimed three senior allies of Pakistan's president General Musharraf were out to kill her in a secret email to Foreign Secretary David Miliband written weeks before her death.
Astonishingly, one of them is a leading intelligence officer who was officially responsible for protecting Miss Bhutto from an assassination.
The second is a prominent Pakistani figure, one of whose family members was allegedly murdered by a militant group run by Miss Bhutto's brother. The third is a well-known chief minister in Pakistan who is a long-standing opponent of Miss Bhutto.
Miss Bhutto told Mr Miliband she was convinced that the three were determined to assassinate her on her return to the country and pleaded with him to put pressure on the Pakistan government to stop them.
The disclosure is bound to lead to questions as to whether the Foreign Office did enough to safeguard Miss Bhutto.
Her return was organised in close co-ordination with the UK and US governments, which saw her as the best hope of restoring democracy in Pakistan while preventing it from falling into the hands of Islamic extremists.
The email concerning the three alleged would-be killers identified by Miss Bhutto emerged as rival political factions in Pakistan continued to dispute the details surrounding her assassination.
The Pakistan government said she was killed by Al Qaeda, but her People's Party dismissed that as "a pack of lies" and insisted General Musharraf's regime was implicated.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's former High Commissioner to the UK and a British-based adviser to Miss Bhutto, said: "She sent an email to the Foreign Office before she returned to Pakistan naming certain people.
"In the email, she said, 'The following persons are planning to murder me and if any harm comes to me they should be held responsible.'"
Miss Bhutto wrote her prophetic email to Mr Miliband in September, shortly after she met him to discuss her return to Pakistan. She named the same three individuals in a letter to General Musharraf in October.
The Mail on Sunday has been informed of the names but has decided not to publish them.
One is a senior intelligence officer and retired army officer who worked for Pakistan's sinister Inter Services Intelligence spy agency, which has close links to the Taliban and has been involved in drug smuggling and political assassinations. He allegedly directed two Islamic terrorist groups and reportedly once boasted that he could pay money to hired killers to assassinate anyone who posed a threat to Musharraf's regime.
He was given another senior intelligence post by Musharraf after his bid to become a senior overseas diplomat for Pakistan failed when the host country refused to let him in because of his past activities.
He was also linked to Omar Sheikh, the former British public schoolboy convicted of kidnapping US journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in 2002 by having his throat cut and being decapitated by Islamic terrorists.
The second individual named by Miss Bhutto is well known in Pakistani political circles and has been involved in a vicious family feud with her for decades.
One of his relatives was said to have been murdered by the militant Al Zulfiqar group run by Miss Bhutto's brother, Murtaza. The organisation was set up to avenge the execution of Miss Bhutto's father Zulfiqar Bhutto by ex-Pakistan dictator Zia ul Haq.
The third individual is a chief minister who has repeatedly denounced Miss Bhutto - and faced political annihilation if she won the elections scheduled for next week. He made an outspoken attack on her only hours before her death.
A senior source said: "She knew the risk she was taking when she decided to go back but also took the precaution of informing the British Government of the names of those she thought presented the biggest danger to her.
"She hoped Mr Miliband would use his influence with General Musharraf to remove certain people from positions where they were able to plot against her. She gave the same names to General Musharraf but she knew there was only a limited possibility of any action being taken.
"She had to rely on Mr Musharraf and countries such as Britain and America, who supported her return and have close connections with Mr Musharraf's government, to take her concerns seriously.
"Events have shown she was right to be worried. If any of the three people she named turn out to have been involved in this assassination, there will be serious repercussions."
The Mail on Sunday has also learned that after an earlier attempt to assassinate her in October, the Foreign Office told Miss Bhutto to stop making wild allegations against Musharraf - or face greater danger.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Miss Bhutto had a series of meetings with the Foreign Secretary and other officials. She raised her concerns about particular people and we raised them in turn with the authorities in Pakistan and asked them to put in place more strict security measures to protect her."
Bhutto email named killers weeks before assassination
By SIMON WALTERS
30th December 2007
Benazir Bhutto: 'People are planning to murder me'
Benazir Bhutto claimed three senior allies of Pakistan's president General Musharraf were out to kill her in a secret email to Foreign Secretary David Miliband written weeks before her death.
Astonishingly, one of them is a leading intelligence officer who was officially responsible for protecting Miss Bhutto from an assassination.
The second is a prominent Pakistani figure, one of whose family members was allegedly murdered by a militant group run by Miss Bhutto's brother. The third is a well-known chief minister in Pakistan who is a long-standing opponent of Miss Bhutto.
Miss Bhutto told Mr Miliband she was convinced that the three were determined to assassinate her on her return to the country and pleaded with him to put pressure on the Pakistan government to stop them.
The disclosure is bound to lead to questions as to whether the Foreign Office did enough to safeguard Miss Bhutto.
Her return was organised in close co-ordination with the UK and US governments, which saw her as the best hope of restoring democracy in Pakistan while preventing it from falling into the hands of Islamic extremists.
The email concerning the three alleged would-be killers identified by Miss Bhutto emerged as rival political factions in Pakistan continued to dispute the details surrounding her assassination.
The Pakistan government said she was killed by Al Qaeda, but her People's Party dismissed that as "a pack of lies" and insisted General Musharraf's regime was implicated.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's former High Commissioner to the UK and a British-based adviser to Miss Bhutto, said: "She sent an email to the Foreign Office before she returned to Pakistan naming certain people.
"In the email, she said, 'The following persons are planning to murder me and if any harm comes to me they should be held responsible.'"
Miss Bhutto wrote her prophetic email to Mr Miliband in September, shortly after she met him to discuss her return to Pakistan. She named the same three individuals in a letter to General Musharraf in October.
The Mail on Sunday has been informed of the names but has decided not to publish them.
One is a senior intelligence officer and retired army officer who worked for Pakistan's sinister Inter Services Intelligence spy agency, which has close links to the Taliban and has been involved in drug smuggling and political assassinations. He allegedly directed two Islamic terrorist groups and reportedly once boasted that he could pay money to hired killers to assassinate anyone who posed a threat to Musharraf's regime.
He was given another senior intelligence post by Musharraf after his bid to become a senior overseas diplomat for Pakistan failed when the host country refused to let him in because of his past activities.
He was also linked to Omar Sheikh, the former British public schoolboy convicted of kidnapping US journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in 2002 by having his throat cut and being decapitated by Islamic terrorists.
The second individual named by Miss Bhutto is well known in Pakistani political circles and has been involved in a vicious family feud with her for decades.
One of his relatives was said to have been murdered by the militant Al Zulfiqar group run by Miss Bhutto's brother, Murtaza. The organisation was set up to avenge the execution of Miss Bhutto's father Zulfiqar Bhutto by ex-Pakistan dictator Zia ul Haq.
The third individual is a chief minister who has repeatedly denounced Miss Bhutto - and faced political annihilation if she won the elections scheduled for next week. He made an outspoken attack on her only hours before her death.
A senior source said: "She knew the risk she was taking when she decided to go back but also took the precaution of informing the British Government of the names of those she thought presented the biggest danger to her.
"She hoped Mr Miliband would use his influence with General Musharraf to remove certain people from positions where they were able to plot against her. She gave the same names to General Musharraf but she knew there was only a limited possibility of any action being taken.
"She had to rely on Mr Musharraf and countries such as Britain and America, who supported her return and have close connections with Mr Musharraf's government, to take her concerns seriously.
"Events have shown she was right to be worried. If any of the three people she named turn out to have been involved in this assassination, there will be serious repercussions."
The Mail on Sunday has also learned that after an earlier attempt to assassinate her in October, the Foreign Office told Miss Bhutto to stop making wild allegations against Musharraf - or face greater danger.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Miss Bhutto had a series of meetings with the Foreign Secretary and other officials. She raised her concerns about particular people and we raised them in turn with the authorities in Pakistan and asked them to put in place more strict security measures to protect her."
How did Pakistan's Bhutto die?
Please check out Rense.com for links to the following and other Bhutto news articles:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/28/bhutto.death/
How did Pakistan's Bhutto die?
Story Highlights
Latest explanation: Benazir Bhutto died from skull fracture by hitting head in vehicle
Pakistan Interior Ministry earlier said Bhutto died from shrapnel from suicide bomb
Earlier ministry report said ex-prime minister died from bullet wound
Analyst: Bhutto's enemies are trying to deny her a martyr's death
(CNN) -- Conflicting reports about what caused the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto are fueling questions about the circumstances of her assassination.
Bhutto's political party disputed official versions of the incident, accusing the government of lying. Video footage of Thursday's attack on Bhutto contains a murky shot of a hand firing a pistol three times, but the Pakistani government said Bhutto -- who was standing through her vehicle's sunroof -- was not hit.
The latest explanation Friday by Pakistan's Interior Ministry said Bhutto, 54, died from a fractured skull after hitting her head on a piece of the vehicle.
Immediately following the gunfire, a suicide bomber ignited explosives near Bhutto's motorcade. Watch the video »
An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, said Bhutto "fell down or perhaps ducked" and apparently hit her head on a lever connected to the car's sunroof. Cheema added that the lever was stained with blood.
Cheema's version of events conflicts with that of the government-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan, which at first quoted the Interior Ministry as saying shrapnel from the bomb blast killed Bhutto. The suicide bomb killed more than 20 others, and at least 100 were wounded.
On Thursday, an initial report from the Interior Ministry said Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck.
Bhutto's death did not result from a bullet or shrapnel, Cheema said, and nothing entered her head. Watch Cheema discuss Bhutto's killing »
Dr. Mussadiq Khan of Rawalpindi General Hospital, who treated Bhutto before she was declared dead, said she had "a big wound" on the side of her head "that usually occurs when something big, with a lot of speed, hits that area."
By the time Bhutto was brought to the hospital Thursday, she "was not breathing, she did not have a pulse," Khan said, and her eyes were not responding to light. Doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive her by cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he said.
At a news conference, Cheema showed the video of Bhutto in the vehicle, standing up in the sunroof and looking out at the surrounding crowd.
Farzana Raja of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party said the government's explanation is "a pack of lies," and she offered another explanation. "It was a sniper shooting," she said, also accusing the government of a "total security lapse."
CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, who worked in U.S. intelligence in Pakistan during the Clinton administration, said he suspects Bhutto's enemies are attempting to control her legacy by minimizing the attack's role in her demise.
"They're trying to deny her a martyr's death, and in Islam, that's pretty important," Robinson said.
Bhutto, he said, threatens to become more influential in death than she was in life. "Her torch burns bright now forever. She's forever young; she's forever brave, challenging against all odds the party in power and challenging the military and Islamic extremism."
Only if Bhutto's family allows an autopsy, said Robinson, will the world know for certain the medical reasons behind her death. The Associated Press, quoting Cabinet sources, said Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, refused to permit an autopsy before she was laid to rest Friday.
The Pakistani government pointed to Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal leader from southern Pakistan known to have ties to al Qaeda, as a prime suspect.
One senior U.S. official told CNN there is information "... that leads us to believe he [Mehsud] is the guy responsible."
The official said Mehsud "had been trying to get Bhutto for some time" and described him as "one of the big players."
The Pakistani Interior Ministry also said it had "intelligence intercepts" indicating Mehsud was behind Bhutto's assassination.
There have been no claims of responsibility for Bhutto's death on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.
Hundreds of thousands of people jammed streets Friday surrounding Bhutto's funeral procession in Garhi-Khuda Baksh. Violence after the attack has left at least nine people reported killed and banks, train stations and cars torched.
Bhutto led Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996, but both times, the sitting president dismissed her amid corruption allegations. See a timeline leading up to Bhutto's assassination »
She was the first female prime minister of any Islamic nation.
A terrorist attack targeted her motorcade in Karachi in October on the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile. Bhutto told Al-Jazeera television she believed Mehsud may have been involved in that attempt on her life, which killed 136 people.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/28/bhutto.death/
How did Pakistan's Bhutto die?
Story Highlights
Latest explanation: Benazir Bhutto died from skull fracture by hitting head in vehicle
Pakistan Interior Ministry earlier said Bhutto died from shrapnel from suicide bomb
Earlier ministry report said ex-prime minister died from bullet wound
Analyst: Bhutto's enemies are trying to deny her a martyr's death
(CNN) -- Conflicting reports about what caused the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto are fueling questions about the circumstances of her assassination.
Bhutto's political party disputed official versions of the incident, accusing the government of lying. Video footage of Thursday's attack on Bhutto contains a murky shot of a hand firing a pistol three times, but the Pakistani government said Bhutto -- who was standing through her vehicle's sunroof -- was not hit.
The latest explanation Friday by Pakistan's Interior Ministry said Bhutto, 54, died from a fractured skull after hitting her head on a piece of the vehicle.
Immediately following the gunfire, a suicide bomber ignited explosives near Bhutto's motorcade. Watch the video »
An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, said Bhutto "fell down or perhaps ducked" and apparently hit her head on a lever connected to the car's sunroof. Cheema added that the lever was stained with blood.
Cheema's version of events conflicts with that of the government-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan, which at first quoted the Interior Ministry as saying shrapnel from the bomb blast killed Bhutto. The suicide bomb killed more than 20 others, and at least 100 were wounded.
On Thursday, an initial report from the Interior Ministry said Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck.
Bhutto's death did not result from a bullet or shrapnel, Cheema said, and nothing entered her head. Watch Cheema discuss Bhutto's killing »
Dr. Mussadiq Khan of Rawalpindi General Hospital, who treated Bhutto before she was declared dead, said she had "a big wound" on the side of her head "that usually occurs when something big, with a lot of speed, hits that area."
By the time Bhutto was brought to the hospital Thursday, she "was not breathing, she did not have a pulse," Khan said, and her eyes were not responding to light. Doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive her by cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he said.
At a news conference, Cheema showed the video of Bhutto in the vehicle, standing up in the sunroof and looking out at the surrounding crowd.
Farzana Raja of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party said the government's explanation is "a pack of lies," and she offered another explanation. "It was a sniper shooting," she said, also accusing the government of a "total security lapse."
CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, who worked in U.S. intelligence in Pakistan during the Clinton administration, said he suspects Bhutto's enemies are attempting to control her legacy by minimizing the attack's role in her demise.
"They're trying to deny her a martyr's death, and in Islam, that's pretty important," Robinson said.
Bhutto, he said, threatens to become more influential in death than she was in life. "Her torch burns bright now forever. She's forever young; she's forever brave, challenging against all odds the party in power and challenging the military and Islamic extremism."
Only if Bhutto's family allows an autopsy, said Robinson, will the world know for certain the medical reasons behind her death. The Associated Press, quoting Cabinet sources, said Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, refused to permit an autopsy before she was laid to rest Friday.
The Pakistani government pointed to Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal leader from southern Pakistan known to have ties to al Qaeda, as a prime suspect.
One senior U.S. official told CNN there is information "... that leads us to believe he [Mehsud] is the guy responsible."
The official said Mehsud "had been trying to get Bhutto for some time" and described him as "one of the big players."
The Pakistani Interior Ministry also said it had "intelligence intercepts" indicating Mehsud was behind Bhutto's assassination.
There have been no claims of responsibility for Bhutto's death on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.
Hundreds of thousands of people jammed streets Friday surrounding Bhutto's funeral procession in Garhi-Khuda Baksh. Violence after the attack has left at least nine people reported killed and banks, train stations and cars torched.
Bhutto led Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996, but both times, the sitting president dismissed her amid corruption allegations. See a timeline leading up to Bhutto's assassination »
She was the first female prime minister of any Islamic nation.
A terrorist attack targeted her motorcade in Karachi in October on the day she returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile. Bhutto told Al-Jazeera television she believed Mehsud may have been involved in that attempt on her life, which killed 136 people.
America could plunge into recession
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3111659.ece
December 31, 2007
Top economist says America could plunge into recession
Suzy Jagger in New York
Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told The Times.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged into a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.
Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already lost around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase threefold over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.”
He said that US futures markets had priced in further declines in house prices in the short term, with contracts on the S&P Shiller index pointing to decreases of up to 14 per cent.
“Over the next five years, the futures contracts are pointing to losses of around 35 per cent in some areas, such as Florida, California and Las Vegas. There is a good chance that this housing recession will go on for years,” he said.
Professor Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, a phrase later used by Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said: “This is a classic bubble scenario. A few years ago house prices got very high, pushed up because of investor expectations. Americans have fuelled the myth that prices would never fall, that values could only go up. People believed the story. Now there is a very real chance of a big recession.”
He pointed out that signs at the beginning of 2007 that had indicated that some states were beginning to experience a recovery in house prices had proved to be false: “States such as Massachusetts had seen some increases at the beginning of the year. Denver also looked like it had a different path. Now all states are falling.”
Until two years ago, each of America’s 50 states had experienced a prolonged housing boom, with properties in some – such as Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada – doubling in price, fuelled by cheap credit and lax lending practices to borrowers who ordinarily would not have been able to secure a mortgage. Two years ago, the northeastern states of America became the first to slide into a recession after 17 successive interest-rate rises between June 2004 and August 2006 hit the property market.
Last week, new numbers from the S&P/Case Shiller index showed that house prices had declined in October at their fastest rate for more than six years, with homes in Miami losing 12 per cent of their value.
December 31, 2007
Top economist says America could plunge into recession
Suzy Jagger in New York
Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told The Times.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged into a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.
Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already lost around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase threefold over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.”
He said that US futures markets had priced in further declines in house prices in the short term, with contracts on the S&P Shiller index pointing to decreases of up to 14 per cent.
“Over the next five years, the futures contracts are pointing to losses of around 35 per cent in some areas, such as Florida, California and Las Vegas. There is a good chance that this housing recession will go on for years,” he said.
Professor Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, a phrase later used by Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said: “This is a classic bubble scenario. A few years ago house prices got very high, pushed up because of investor expectations. Americans have fuelled the myth that prices would never fall, that values could only go up. People believed the story. Now there is a very real chance of a big recession.”
He pointed out that signs at the beginning of 2007 that had indicated that some states were beginning to experience a recovery in house prices had proved to be false: “States such as Massachusetts had seen some increases at the beginning of the year. Denver also looked like it had a different path. Now all states are falling.”
Until two years ago, each of America’s 50 states had experienced a prolonged housing boom, with properties in some – such as Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada – doubling in price, fuelled by cheap credit and lax lending practices to borrowers who ordinarily would not have been able to secure a mortgage. Two years ago, the northeastern states of America became the first to slide into a recession after 17 successive interest-rate rises between June 2004 and August 2006 hit the property market.
Last week, new numbers from the S&P/Case Shiller index showed that house prices had declined in October at their fastest rate for more than six years, with homes in Miami losing 12 per cent of their value.
Legal Fictions
http://www.slate.com/id/2179934/
jurisprudence
Legal Fictions
The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Dec. 28, 2007
This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year's roundup: The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.
10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.
Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we'd been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we'd been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.
9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.
Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was "excessive." In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby's sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush's own Justice Department earlier this year.
8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.
We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch" and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.
7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.
This has been one of the catchiest refrains of the war on terror, right up there with the claim that the prisoners there are well-fed and cared for. The government brief in the December Supreme Court appeal on the rights of these detainees to contest their detentions proudly proclaimed that the "detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war." That certainly sounds plausible. But as my colleague Emily Bazelon detailed here in Slate, a vast gaggle of historians, constitutional scholars, and retired military officers vehemently dispute that characterization of the legal processes afforded the detainees. The argument that Guantanamo prisoners have greater rights than they would otherwise be afforded relies on deep distortions of both fact and law.
6. Water-boarding may not be torture.
Water-boarding is torture. It's torture under the Geneva Conventions and has been treated as a war crime in the United States for decades. The answer to the question of its legality should be as simple as the answer to whether boiling prisoners in oil is legal. But in his confirmation hearings to become U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey could not bring himself to agree. He claimed not to have been "read into" the interrogation program and to be incapable of speculating about hypothetical techniques. He added that he did not want to place U.S. officials "in personal legal jeopardy" and that such remarks might "provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program." Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seems to be catching on to what it means when senior legal advisers find themselves incapable of calling water-boarding torture.
5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.
This little gem of an argument was cooked up by the White House last July when the Senate judiciary committee sought the testimony of former White House political director Sara Taylor, as well as that of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, in connection with the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for partisan ideological reasons. Taylor was subpoenaed in June and, according to her lawyers, she wanted to testify but was barred by White House counsel Fred Fielding's judgment that the president could compel her to assert executive privilege and forbid her testimony. As Bruce Fein argued in Slate, that dramatic over-reading of the privilege would both preclude congressional oversight of any sort and muzzle anyone who'd ever communicated with the president, regardless of their wish to talk.
4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.
Of course, the great legal story of 2007 was the unprecedented firing of nine U.S. attorneys who either declined to prosecute Democrats or were too successful in prosecuting Republicans. After months of congressional hearings, subpoenas, and investigations, the mastermind behind the plan to replace these prosecutors with "loyal Bushies" has yet to be determined. The decision is instead blamed on a "process" wherein unnamed senior department officials came to a "consensus" decision. No one is willing to name names, even though the firings were ostensibly legal, because, in the words of the president himself, these prosecutors all "serve at the pleasure of the president" and can be fired for any reason. Nevertheless, the firing of the nine U.S. attorneys—many of whom had stellar records and job reviews—remains shrouded in secrecy, although at least according to everyone who's testified, they were all fired for good reasons (which also cannot be articulated).
3. Alberto Gonzales.
I am forced to put the former attorney general into his own category only because were I to attempt to round up his best legal whoppers of the calendar year, it would overwhelm the rest of the list. As Paul Kiel over at Talking Points Memo so aptly put it earlier this year, Gonzales was and is clearly "the lying-est attorney general in recent history." Kiel went on to catalog Gonzales' six most egregious legal lies of the year, but I'll focus here on just two. First, his claim at a March press conference that he "was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" with respect to the U.S. attorney firings. This was debunked shortly thereafter when Kyle Sampson testified that Gonzales was frequently updated throughout the process. Second, his April testimony that he had not "talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations," which was promptly contradicted by Monica Goodling's testimony about his efforts to coordinate his version of the story with hers.
2. State secrets.
Again, it's virtually impossible to cite the single most egregious assertion by the Bush administration of the state-secrets privilege, because there are so many to choose from. This doctrine once barred the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, but in the hands of the Bush administration, it has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide. The privilege was invoked in 2007 to block testimony about its torture and extraordinary rendition program, its warrantless surveillance program, and to defend the notion of telecom immunity for colluding in government eavesdropping, among other things. No longer an evidentiary rule, the state-secrets privilege has become one of the administration's surest mechanisms for shielding its most egregious activities.
1. The United States does not torture.
First there was the 2002 torture memo. That was withdrawn. Then there was the December 2004 statement that declared torture "abhorrent." But then there was the new secret 2005 torture memo. But members of Congress were fully briefed about that. Except that they were not. There was Abu Ghraib. There were the destroyed CIA tapes. So you see, the United States does not torture. Except for when it does.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
jurisprudence
Legal Fictions
The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Dec. 28, 2007
This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year's roundup: The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.
10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.
Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we'd been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we'd been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.
9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.
Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was "excessive." In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby's sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush's own Justice Department earlier this year.
8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.
We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch" and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.
7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.
This has been one of the catchiest refrains of the war on terror, right up there with the claim that the prisoners there are well-fed and cared for. The government brief in the December Supreme Court appeal on the rights of these detainees to contest their detentions proudly proclaimed that the "detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war." That certainly sounds plausible. But as my colleague Emily Bazelon detailed here in Slate, a vast gaggle of historians, constitutional scholars, and retired military officers vehemently dispute that characterization of the legal processes afforded the detainees. The argument that Guantanamo prisoners have greater rights than they would otherwise be afforded relies on deep distortions of both fact and law.
6. Water-boarding may not be torture.
Water-boarding is torture. It's torture under the Geneva Conventions and has been treated as a war crime in the United States for decades. The answer to the question of its legality should be as simple as the answer to whether boiling prisoners in oil is legal. But in his confirmation hearings to become U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey could not bring himself to agree. He claimed not to have been "read into" the interrogation program and to be incapable of speculating about hypothetical techniques. He added that he did not want to place U.S. officials "in personal legal jeopardy" and that such remarks might "provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program." Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seems to be catching on to what it means when senior legal advisers find themselves incapable of calling water-boarding torture.
5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.
This little gem of an argument was cooked up by the White House last July when the Senate judiciary committee sought the testimony of former White House political director Sara Taylor, as well as that of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, in connection with the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for partisan ideological reasons. Taylor was subpoenaed in June and, according to her lawyers, she wanted to testify but was barred by White House counsel Fred Fielding's judgment that the president could compel her to assert executive privilege and forbid her testimony. As Bruce Fein argued in Slate, that dramatic over-reading of the privilege would both preclude congressional oversight of any sort and muzzle anyone who'd ever communicated with the president, regardless of their wish to talk.
4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.
Of course, the great legal story of 2007 was the unprecedented firing of nine U.S. attorneys who either declined to prosecute Democrats or were too successful in prosecuting Republicans. After months of congressional hearings, subpoenas, and investigations, the mastermind behind the plan to replace these prosecutors with "loyal Bushies" has yet to be determined. The decision is instead blamed on a "process" wherein unnamed senior department officials came to a "consensus" decision. No one is willing to name names, even though the firings were ostensibly legal, because, in the words of the president himself, these prosecutors all "serve at the pleasure of the president" and can be fired for any reason. Nevertheless, the firing of the nine U.S. attorneys—many of whom had stellar records and job reviews—remains shrouded in secrecy, although at least according to everyone who's testified, they were all fired for good reasons (which also cannot be articulated).
3. Alberto Gonzales.
I am forced to put the former attorney general into his own category only because were I to attempt to round up his best legal whoppers of the calendar year, it would overwhelm the rest of the list. As Paul Kiel over at Talking Points Memo so aptly put it earlier this year, Gonzales was and is clearly "the lying-est attorney general in recent history." Kiel went on to catalog Gonzales' six most egregious legal lies of the year, but I'll focus here on just two. First, his claim at a March press conference that he "was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" with respect to the U.S. attorney firings. This was debunked shortly thereafter when Kyle Sampson testified that Gonzales was frequently updated throughout the process. Second, his April testimony that he had not "talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations," which was promptly contradicted by Monica Goodling's testimony about his efforts to coordinate his version of the story with hers.
2. State secrets.
Again, it's virtually impossible to cite the single most egregious assertion by the Bush administration of the state-secrets privilege, because there are so many to choose from. This doctrine once barred the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, but in the hands of the Bush administration, it has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide. The privilege was invoked in 2007 to block testimony about its torture and extraordinary rendition program, its warrantless surveillance program, and to defend the notion of telecom immunity for colluding in government eavesdropping, among other things. No longer an evidentiary rule, the state-secrets privilege has become one of the administration's surest mechanisms for shielding its most egregious activities.
1. The United States does not torture.
First there was the 2002 torture memo. That was withdrawn. Then there was the December 2004 statement that declared torture "abhorrent." But then there was the new secret 2005 torture memo. But members of Congress were fully briefed about that. Except that they were not. There was Abu Ghraib. There were the destroyed CIA tapes. So you see, the United States does not torture. Except for when it does.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/rowling-hints-a.html
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
By Lewis Wallace
December 30, 2007
We already know J.K. Rowling can craft a franchise. Now the writer who turned the seven-book Harry Potter series into a money-minting machine reminds us that she's a master at generating publicity. Just two months after cranking up the PR machine with the revelation that Potter wizard Dumbledore was gay, she tells the Daily Mail she's considered revisiting the supposedly finished franchise.
"There have been times since finishing, weak moments, when I've said, 'Yeah, all right' to the eighth novel," she told the British publication. "If -- and it's a big if -- I ever write an eighth book, I doubt that Harry would be the central character. I feel I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years."
Oh, and in the meantime, she's working on a "political fairy tale" and a novel for adults (in between superproductive brainstorming sessions with her publicity team).
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
By Lewis Wallace
December 30, 2007
We already know J.K. Rowling can craft a franchise. Now the writer who turned the seven-book Harry Potter series into a money-minting machine reminds us that she's a master at generating publicity. Just two months after cranking up the PR machine with the revelation that Potter wizard Dumbledore was gay, she tells the Daily Mail she's considered revisiting the supposedly finished franchise.
"There have been times since finishing, weak moments, when I've said, 'Yeah, all right' to the eighth novel," she told the British publication. "If -- and it's a big if -- I ever write an eighth book, I doubt that Harry would be the central character. I feel I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years."
Oh, and in the meantime, she's working on a "political fairy tale" and a novel for adults (in between superproductive brainstorming sessions with her publicity team).
'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2007-12-26-year-in-review-potter_N.htm?csp=34
Book of the year: 'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
This year's choice had to be the final Harry Potter book. The reasons are as varied as the different wizards' wands found in Diagon Alley. There were the numbers: Hallows sold a record-breaking 11.5 million copies in the USA during its first 10 days on sale in July. Then there was the pre-publication hysteria: Would Harry die? Could the world's children — and a lot of adults — handle it? Was an early version posted on the Web the real thing? (Yes.) Months after the book's publication, Rowling triggered controversy by revealing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. The blogosphere went wild. But none of that matters. Hallows is the book of the year because Rowling gave her story an ending that was as graceful, unpredictable and satisfying as the series itself. She reaffirmed that magic can exist when someone opens a great book and enters a world created from words on paper. She made us believe that the imagination — like her own little wizard, now all grown up — still lives.
Book of the year: 'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
This year's choice had to be the final Harry Potter book. The reasons are as varied as the different wizards' wands found in Diagon Alley. There were the numbers: Hallows sold a record-breaking 11.5 million copies in the USA during its first 10 days on sale in July. Then there was the pre-publication hysteria: Would Harry die? Could the world's children — and a lot of adults — handle it? Was an early version posted on the Web the real thing? (Yes.) Months after the book's publication, Rowling triggered controversy by revealing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. The blogosphere went wild. But none of that matters. Hallows is the book of the year because Rowling gave her story an ending that was as graceful, unpredictable and satisfying as the series itself. She reaffirmed that magic can exist when someone opens a great book and enters a world created from words on paper. She made us believe that the imagination — like her own little wizard, now all grown up — still lives.
2007 deadliest for US troops in Iraq
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071230/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_casualties
2007 deadliest for US troops in Iraq
By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer
12-30-7
The second half of 2007 saw violence drop dramatically in Iraq, but the progress came at a high price: The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.
American commanders and diplomats, however, say the battlefield gains against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq offer only a partial picture of where the country stands as the war moves toward its five-year mark in March.
Two critical shifts that boosted U.S.-led forces in 2007 — a self-imposed cease-fire by a main Shiite militia and a grassroots Sunni revolt against extremists — could still unravel unless serious unity efforts are made by the Iraqi government.
Iran also remains a major wild card. U.S. officials believe the neighboring country has helped quiet Iraq by reducing its flow of suspected aid to Shiite fighters, including materials needed for deadly roadside bombs.
But Iran's apparent hands-off policies could come under strain as Shiite factions — some favoring Iran, others not — battle for control of Iraq's oil-rich south.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, will increasingly look to the uneven Iraqi security forces to carry the load in 2008 as demands for an American exit strategy grow sharper during the U.S. election year.
Britain, the main U.S. coalition partner in Iraq, is gradually drawing down its forces and other allies, including Poland and Australia, are contemplating full-scale withdrawals in the coming year.
"We're focusing our energy on building on what coalition and Iraqi troopers have accomplished in 2007," Gen. David Petraeus told a group of Western journalists on Saturday. "Success will not, however, be akin to flipping on a light switch. It will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days."
That arc of progress played out in the raw statistics of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.
American military deaths peaked in May with 126 troops killed. It was then that the U.S. began ramping up its attacks against insurgent strongholds, leading to increased clashes in Baghdad and other key areas across central Iraq.
Seven months on, commanders and analysts say America's aggressive strategy of targeting al-Qaida in Iraq strongholds is paying off: U.S. casualties have dropped sharply. As of Sunday night in Baghdad, 21 deaths were reported in December, one more than in February 2004, which was the lowest monthly total of the war.
The 899 deaths in 2007 surpassed the previously highest death toll in 2004, when 850 U.S. soldiers were killed. The total for 2007 could rise slightly; occasionally the military reports new casualties a few days after they occur. The military reported the non-combat related death of a soldier on Sunday.
At least 3,902 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war. Of those, at least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Iraqi civilian deaths have tracked that decline and overall violence across the country is down roughly 60 percent, American commanders say.
Since the influx of some 30,000 U.S. troops that began in June, the lessening violence has meant that new problems have emerged.
"There certainly are ample challenges out there in the new year. In some respects, the positive developments in the latter half of 2007 also represent the challenges of 2008," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during a recent briefing.
An example, Crocker said, is how the improving security situation is in part luring back Iraqis who took refugee in neighboring Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.
"The return of refugees — a good thing obviously, but a process is going to have to be carefully managed so that it doesn't sow the seeds of new tension and instability," he said.
Along with the increase in American troops, Iraq's lessening violence has been attributed to a self-imposed freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army — the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another important change was the quick growth of mostly Sunni anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups, or "awakening councils," who once fought against U.S. and Iraqi forces but now point their guns toward the insurgents.
Of the more than 70,000 fighters in the awakening councils, only 20 percent are expected to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces. The rest are to receive job training through a joint $300 million program Iraqi and American officials are creating.
That program is in its beginning stages and there are few details about how it will be carried out, but analysts say it must succeed or the Sunni fighters who do not join Iraq's military may sell their services to the insurgents.
On Saturday, a new audiotape by Osama bin Laden warned Iraqi Sunnis against fighting al-Qaida, saying "the most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life."
Keeping the militia of al-Sadr and other powerful Shiite leaders on the sidelines also means keeping Iran to its promise to halt the flow of weapons and training to them, officials say.
"How lasting a phenomenon that will be and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 I think is going to be very important to the long-term future of the country," Crocker said.
Iraqi civilian deaths also peaked in May with 2,155 killed. That fell to 718 in November and 710 in December. For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed.
Civilian deaths are compiled by the AP from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths were not included. Other counts differ and some have given higher civilian death tolls.
Those numbers paint an increasingly optimistic picture, but James Carafano, a security expert with the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, D.C., warned dangers lurk.
"The number of people who have the power to turns things around appears to be dwindling," he said regarding extremists. "But there are still people in Iraq that could string together a week of really bad days."
While that might not mean a return to the bloodiest moments of the Iraq war, Carafano said it could seriously rattle the Iraqi government as it tries to bring about some form of political reconciliation in 2008, a key to long-term security.
"People have to be really careful about over-promising that this is an irreversible trend — I think it is a soft trend," he said of the declining violence.
Carafano pointed to the problem of integrating the Sunni awakening councils into Iraqi society and keeping the Shiite militias out of the fight. If either of those situations changes, he said, increased bloodshed in the country is likely.
Those warnings in mind, Carafano said he thought the "surge" in U.S. troops had to a large extent met one of its important goals: to allow the Iraqi government to focus on questions of governance instead of dealing only with security.
He likened the increase in troops to the Marshall Plan that largely rebuilt Europe after World War II and demonstrated U.S. commitment to that continent.
"I think the surge made that statement to Iraqis," Carafano said. "Here's America, fighting an unpopular war and things aren't going so well and we turn around and send more troops in. To the good guys and the bad guys is was a reaffirmation that Americans aren't going to walk away from this."
___
The Associated Press News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.
2007 deadliest for US troops in Iraq
By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer
12-30-7
The second half of 2007 saw violence drop dramatically in Iraq, but the progress came at a high price: The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.
American commanders and diplomats, however, say the battlefield gains against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq offer only a partial picture of where the country stands as the war moves toward its five-year mark in March.
Two critical shifts that boosted U.S.-led forces in 2007 — a self-imposed cease-fire by a main Shiite militia and a grassroots Sunni revolt against extremists — could still unravel unless serious unity efforts are made by the Iraqi government.
Iran also remains a major wild card. U.S. officials believe the neighboring country has helped quiet Iraq by reducing its flow of suspected aid to Shiite fighters, including materials needed for deadly roadside bombs.
But Iran's apparent hands-off policies could come under strain as Shiite factions — some favoring Iran, others not — battle for control of Iraq's oil-rich south.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, will increasingly look to the uneven Iraqi security forces to carry the load in 2008 as demands for an American exit strategy grow sharper during the U.S. election year.
Britain, the main U.S. coalition partner in Iraq, is gradually drawing down its forces and other allies, including Poland and Australia, are contemplating full-scale withdrawals in the coming year.
"We're focusing our energy on building on what coalition and Iraqi troopers have accomplished in 2007," Gen. David Petraeus told a group of Western journalists on Saturday. "Success will not, however, be akin to flipping on a light switch. It will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days."
That arc of progress played out in the raw statistics of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.
American military deaths peaked in May with 126 troops killed. It was then that the U.S. began ramping up its attacks against insurgent strongholds, leading to increased clashes in Baghdad and other key areas across central Iraq.
Seven months on, commanders and analysts say America's aggressive strategy of targeting al-Qaida in Iraq strongholds is paying off: U.S. casualties have dropped sharply. As of Sunday night in Baghdad, 21 deaths were reported in December, one more than in February 2004, which was the lowest monthly total of the war.
The 899 deaths in 2007 surpassed the previously highest death toll in 2004, when 850 U.S. soldiers were killed. The total for 2007 could rise slightly; occasionally the military reports new casualties a few days after they occur. The military reported the non-combat related death of a soldier on Sunday.
At least 3,902 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war. Of those, at least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Iraqi civilian deaths have tracked that decline and overall violence across the country is down roughly 60 percent, American commanders say.
Since the influx of some 30,000 U.S. troops that began in June, the lessening violence has meant that new problems have emerged.
"There certainly are ample challenges out there in the new year. In some respects, the positive developments in the latter half of 2007 also represent the challenges of 2008," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during a recent briefing.
An example, Crocker said, is how the improving security situation is in part luring back Iraqis who took refugee in neighboring Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.
"The return of refugees — a good thing obviously, but a process is going to have to be carefully managed so that it doesn't sow the seeds of new tension and instability," he said.
Along with the increase in American troops, Iraq's lessening violence has been attributed to a self-imposed freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army — the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another important change was the quick growth of mostly Sunni anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups, or "awakening councils," who once fought against U.S. and Iraqi forces but now point their guns toward the insurgents.
Of the more than 70,000 fighters in the awakening councils, only 20 percent are expected to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces. The rest are to receive job training through a joint $300 million program Iraqi and American officials are creating.
That program is in its beginning stages and there are few details about how it will be carried out, but analysts say it must succeed or the Sunni fighters who do not join Iraq's military may sell their services to the insurgents.
On Saturday, a new audiotape by Osama bin Laden warned Iraqi Sunnis against fighting al-Qaida, saying "the most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life."
Keeping the militia of al-Sadr and other powerful Shiite leaders on the sidelines also means keeping Iran to its promise to halt the flow of weapons and training to them, officials say.
"How lasting a phenomenon that will be and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 I think is going to be very important to the long-term future of the country," Crocker said.
Iraqi civilian deaths also peaked in May with 2,155 killed. That fell to 718 in November and 710 in December. For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed.
Civilian deaths are compiled by the AP from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths were not included. Other counts differ and some have given higher civilian death tolls.
Those numbers paint an increasingly optimistic picture, but James Carafano, a security expert with the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, D.C., warned dangers lurk.
"The number of people who have the power to turns things around appears to be dwindling," he said regarding extremists. "But there are still people in Iraq that could string together a week of really bad days."
While that might not mean a return to the bloodiest moments of the Iraq war, Carafano said it could seriously rattle the Iraqi government as it tries to bring about some form of political reconciliation in 2008, a key to long-term security.
"People have to be really careful about over-promising that this is an irreversible trend — I think it is a soft trend," he said of the declining violence.
Carafano pointed to the problem of integrating the Sunni awakening councils into Iraqi society and keeping the Shiite militias out of the fight. If either of those situations changes, he said, increased bloodshed in the country is likely.
Those warnings in mind, Carafano said he thought the "surge" in U.S. troops had to a large extent met one of its important goals: to allow the Iraqi government to focus on questions of governance instead of dealing only with security.
He likened the increase in troops to the Marshall Plan that largely rebuilt Europe after World War II and demonstrated U.S. commitment to that continent.
"I think the surge made that statement to Iraqis," Carafano said. "Here's America, fighting an unpopular war and things aren't going so well and we turn around and send more troops in. To the good guys and the bad guys is was a reaffirmation that Americans aren't going to walk away from this."
___
The Associated Press News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
