Prometheus 6

It's so stupid and clumsy, the hallmarks of idiot leadership.

I wonder if SHE was behind it.

A gun man goes UP to the vehicle, fires rounds, runs off, and then blows himself up. 

You think she arranged to have herself killed spectacularly? Why?

Folks who are in general agreement about what needs to be done don't need to conspire. They simply look in another direction and wait for the inevitable event to occur. Musharraf and his fellow gangsters (and they are gangsters no matter what our government says to the contrary) can always claim to have clean hands in this affair and in a legal sense they are quite correct. They knew, however, that Bhutto's number had been pulled and that her time wasn't long. It doesn't matter whether they directly gave the orders or not.

Prof. Juan Cole's early observations on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto are instructive.

security.

I believe Militant Islamists did the actual deed, but Musharraf GAVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY BY NOT PROVIDING THE CORRECT PROTECTION.

So, yeah, he's responsible.

And, as usual, we back the wrong horse until that horse is shot and the replacement horse is WAY worse than the middle horses we passed along the way trying to keep riding this ROTTEN horse.

would do that to her children. I have to believe, if nothing else, the mother in her would never allow for something like that.

Bhutto's death was inevitable. No amount of security protection, which was never going to be provided in any case, could have prevented her fate.

You think she arranged to have herself killed spectacularly? Why?

To further her cause. It's that simple. She dies and SOMETHING has to happen in that country. Maybe it will be for the better, or maybe not.

"To further her cause. It's that simple. She dies and SOMETHING has to happen in that country."

A political suicide bombing?!? Interesting theory, DS. Interesting, but waaaaay out there. If there's an autopsy that shows she was terminal, I might buy it. If she's healthy, I don't.

We South Asians Like Our Leaders Dead

Sandit Roy, New American Media 

In death, Benazir Bhutto might have managed to do what eluded her in the last years of her life. Dogged by rumors of corruption, accused of a coy dance of veils and on-again, off-again backroom deals with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, derided as Washington's choice of a dictator with a pretty face, even previous assassination attempts on her were dismissed by cynics as publicity stunts. But in death, Bhutto showed the world that democracy in her part of the world can be deadly business. In life, she was a politician. In death, she became a martyr.

South Asians like their martyrs. My great-grandfather allegedly brought home a vial of some of the ashes of a teenage revolutionary hanged by the British. Khudiram had thrown a bomb at a British magistrate and gone to the gallows with a smile. Ironically, my great-grandfather worked for the British, in their police service. But he was so awed by young Khudiram's sacrifice, he used his official connections to get that vial, which he kept in his bedroom.

Benazir Bhutto was no 15-year-old tilting at windmills in some foolhardy act of defiance. She was South Asian royalty. "Benazir is killed. I'm stunned," a friend texted me from a café in Kolkata. "I really am." As my friend says, in our feudal societies, much as we might pretend otherwise, we have a royalist streak. And when a royal goes down in a hail of bullets, it sends a collective shiver down our spines.

Macabre as it may be, this notion of sacrifice is something that thrills us, even if few of us want to really practice it anymore. It is deeply romantic. Every history book we read was all about glorious sacrifice. Stirring stories of fresh-faced young men and women who bravely went to their deaths, sometimes almost a foolhardy act of resistance that had little real political impact, became immortalized in innumerable cheesy films and patriotic songs.

The Raj is gone. Now the enemy is harder to identify - it does not wear a pith helmet and come from London. Yet the allure of sacrifice, almost the expectation of sacrifice in public life runs strong. Politics is dirty business, we are constantly told, but through assassination and execution, tainted politicians can manage an extreme makeover, redeeming not just themselves but the process itself. A real political dynasty, South Asians seem to believe, measures its worth in blood. The night before she was assassinated, Indira Gandhi said, "I don't mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation."

A political suicide bombing?!? Interesting theory, DS. Interesting, but waaaaay out there. If there's an autopsy that shows she was terminal, I might buy it. If she's healthy, I don't.

True, it is way out there. That's why it's not on my blog, yet.

Most likey she knew it was inevitable and just decided to do her thing and when it happened, it happened. 

Most likey she knew it was inevitable and just decided to do her thing and when it happened, it happened. 

Now I know that's right, DS. I heard her say as much in a radio interview.