Musharraf's Watergate?
Physicians Coerced by Military;
Nawaz: Musharraf Must Go
It looks increasingly as though someone in the military government in Pakistan may have been somehow complicit in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
An attorney for the physicians who put out the story that Ms. Bhutto died of a concussion went to CNN on Monday and said that his clients were pressured by the military. They appear not to have actually agreed with the concussion story, and felt coerced but could not speak out because they had been threatened with being fired if they did.
So what we can conclude is that elements in the Pakistani military forced government physicians to deny that Bhutto was shot. But newly surfaced videotape shows conclusively that she slumped after shots rang out; and she did not throw her head back against the sun roof lever as the physicians were coerced into maintaining.
So, why did these military elements make the physicians file a false report? About that we can only speculate. But it should be noted that lying about a crime is usually a sign of guilt. If the military was completely uninvolved, why should it care how she died?
You could construct a speculative scenario in which the shooter used a standard army issue revolver (I'm not a hardware guy, but I think that would be a .38) because he saw a target of opportunity, but that Plan A had been to detonate a belt bomb. If he used a service revolver, that would raise the question of who gave it to him and why. What if the bullet were found, say at the crime scene? If Benazir were not struck by a bullet, then the army could always maintain that it was fired by a soldier on the scene in the midst of the chaos, and was aimed at the perpetrators. But if she was killed by the army bullet, then it could not be explained away. (In fact, the bullet has not been found, but someone may have been afraid it would be).
Motive? Well, the military's suspicions of her would have been rather heightened in mid-November when she reacted heatedly to then Gen. Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency:
'“It is time for him to go. He must quit as President,” she said as police detained dozens more of her supporters on the tenth day of a state of emergency. “There are no circumstances in which I could see myself serving with General Musharraf.” '
She later reconsidered, but there are some things you cannot take back. For instance, say you threatened a Mafia don that you would pull his guts up through his nose. Then later you said you didn't really mean it.
The government stonewalling on the issue of an autopsy and the coercion of government employees to toe a pre-determined line, smells to high heaven of complicity. It could be incompetence or stupidity, of course. And the Pakistani military is not all one thing. There is the Inter-Services Intelligence, some members of whom have long ties to Muslim militants. There is the officer corps, etc.
Three further notes: The Pakistan People's Party members and other opponents of Musharraf already were thinking like this before circumstantial evidence emerged that made it even more plausible. I fear their conviction will now be unshakeable, which does not bode well for social peace. It would be a feud.
Second, the physicians would not have had their lawyer speak out about their having been coerced by the military if they thought that Musharraf was likely to continue in office. That is, they have made a bet on a PPP prime minister and are more afraid of being punished by the new government than they are of being punished by the old one. Do they think the old one is about to be overthrown?
And, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the Muslim League (N), called Monday for Musharraf to resign, saying of him, "He is a one-man calamity and the source of all the problems. The country is burning."
Oooops?
---
PS McClatchy says Benazir was about to go public with charges that the Inter-Services Intelligence had intended to fix the elections in favor of Pervez Musharraf.
PPS A kind reader pointed out that the Pakistani military had taken over security for Benazir's appearance at Liaqat Bagh, raising questions about how a gunmen and bomber got through.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/01/2008 12:26:00 AM
|
Facebook
18 Comments:
It should probably be noted as well that in totalitarian states like this (and others in the Middle-East, central Asia, and elsewhere), it is common when something bad happens for the government to not simply tell the public what to think about what they saw, but to tell them what they saw--even if it is different from the reality. Then they simply have to let the line-toers take over and public opinion shifts.
This was apparent in Egypt during the last presidential election. In Alexandria, where I live, there were simply no polling places open. My friend and I drove around looking for one, asking people where to go, hoping to see a glimpse of what voting was like here, and found nothing. However, at the end of the day, the government told a far different story.
I suppose that it is wholly possible, indeed highly likely, that Bhutto's death is simply an electioneering ploy on the part of the Musharraf government. We may never know.
I love your blog, by the way. Thank you for your insights.
A "one man calamity" is hilarious and so true. Nawaz Sharif speaks from the heart.
By the way, was Sharif talking about Musharraf or Bush?
Ooooooops
Good morning, Mr. Cole.
While I mull over this, I have wondered if the shooter may have been a military member, yet did the deed for his allegiance to Al Qaeda? Do they have sympathizers in the military's ranks?
Facts, like kites, twisting in the wind ...
Beyond some of the other news about Benazir, we have the revelation that she was about to expose something that should resonate with most Americans, that of 'fixed' elections, one of the dangers of 'democracy.' As we saw in our own U.S. elections of 2000 and 2004, the emphasis on the vote collectors and counters demonstrated the potential for a skewed poll result, one that has given us Younger George instead of Al Gore and John Kerry, respectively.
Today, in the Brit *Independent,* there is a story (as there is in the Guardian and elsewhere) that proposes that Benazir was about to upset the donkey cart on the purposeful and deliberate choosing of the next Pakistani leadership.* One of the most telling statements is, "... the party wanted to initially share it with trusted US politicians rather than the government of George Bush, which has backed Mr Musharraf." Of course, this is a direct charge against the minions of Younger George (who may still believe that he won fair and square) implicated in manipulating the voting in many several ways from 'phone calls to sequestering various groups to imposing time limits on polls to being bedfellows with the various Diebold and other software development groups. Even as I write, there is a new story circulating about Colorado being unable to certify many of the systems that the state spent some $41 Million to acquire and implement.** Now, we have to understand the sophisitication of the Americans over many other countries, especially in this time of computerisation and information transfer technology. I suppose that the country that spawned AQ Khan is able to do many technical things proficiently yet I would suspect that the average Pakistani has yet to send or receive a single email. (Pakistan is listed as having about 7.2% penetration.#)
The point remains that if the Americans can jiggle the photons and muzzle the bytes, those who are well-positioned in another but less wired nation might be able to do some pretty interesting things with a lot fewer controls and corresponding problems when it comes to vote tampering, Jimmuh Cahtuh or no.
If Benazir did indeed have some inside information about the rigging of the election, it might be of further interest to note that Nawaz Sharif has also proposed boycotting the voting process, bringing back to mind how Musharraf can win hands down much like Saddam Hussein did the last time he had his voters go to the polls. Of course, one person-one vote is supposed to be the standard for democracies but as we've seen in our own country this has had a dodgy past, what with vote buying, voters' rights denied, poll taxes, and various other irregularities, most of which have gone unnoticed under pressure of the establishments' demands that our American history remain unsullied or unassailed in the face of other countries' failure to measure up. And, to the victors, the spoils include the writing of history!
'Democracy' is, as we know, the great fraud, aside from the vote variances, taking people to the limit of supposed personal involvement in the political process, only to have something like an 'Electoral College' or massive advertising or some other institutional influence making the final difference and having the last word. Spreading the contestants out only permits greater disenchantment and disenfranchisement of much of the Voting Age Population (VAP), the VAP only sending around 50% of its elegibles to the voting booths each national election period. Chads and other anomalies in the Banana Republican State of Florida were merely diversions given that Younger George's little brother, John Ellis, was that State's Governor. We need not wait on principle-less George Tenet to describe for us what a 'slam dunk' is. And we can assume that John Ellis had warm turkey dinner that 2000 holiday season.
Of course, what has been suggested for Pakistan has already happened in the United States, the consequences for detractors adjusted for scale. Many several persons in positions to expose the corruption have, in any Adminstration, been found eliminated, expired, or extinguished. One interesting element of the recent B-52 'knucklee-uhr' incident involves untimely fatalities. The Baltimore Chronicle provides an interesting assessment, "The American Conservative has discovered that to date, more than a month after the incident, Pentagon investigators have completely ignored a peculiar cluster of six deaths during the weeks immediately preceding and following the B52 flight."^ And then there are interesting other demises that include Dr Kelly and various other scientists and knowledgeable persons in and around the governments who might serve as reminders to others as to the consequences of violating the ethics of 'politically correct' reticence.^^ And then there was the 'Kingfisher,' Huey Long.
Boycotting an election might be the simplest way of avoiding being 'assassinated,' 'suicided,' or 'disappeared' for any dissenting Pakistani (or other nationality) politician or honest citizen.
As with any sport, the final score is the accepted official result. Rarely are there accounts of how the referees and the players might have done this or that to force a loss on a team, from making questionable calls to concentrating on one particular player, perhaps injuring him (or her, recalling the Harding-Kerrigan débâcle) in the process. In politics, the stakes can be seen as quite high considering the investment of manpower, money, and materiel for which supporters demand a required result and return. The less the VAP is energised, the more likely it is for the more wiley rogues to prevail. In the case of Musharraf, he has many different - and perhaps competing -factions to face, allowing for certain 'conveniences' to help him out along the way, even if he - like Younger George - remains pure and untainted by the procession of coincidence and randomness of events. As the political calculus becomes increasingly complicated by the advent of 'democracy,' there will be those who know and understand the benefits of every surreptitious means to every questionable end, including removing rivals by methods that might be considered 'Swift Boating-on-steroids+meth.'
Why leave it at the 'character' when the whole entity can be assassinated? After all, we have Alan D. to not only defend his remarks about the Finkelsteins in the world of academia but to advocate torturing (and its (un)intended consequences) those to whom he is opposed, they who terrorise his idées fixes.@
* http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3298382.ece
1 January 2008 04:01
Home > News > World > Asia
Bhutto had 'proof' of plan to rig election
By Saeed Shah in Naudero and Andrew Buncombe
** http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7189667,00.html
States Question Electronic Vote Machines
Tuesday January 1, 2008 9:46 AM
By GEORGE MERRITT
# http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm
ASIA INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION
^ http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/112107Lindorff.shtml
The Mystery of Minot
by Dave Lindorff
^^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1131833,00.html
Our doubts about Dr Kelly's suicide
Tuesday January 27, 2004
The Guardian
@ http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=1865
Alan Dershowitz And Torture
by C. Clark Kissenger; May 31, 2002
Why aren't we hearing about recovery of the pistol, and the corpses of the shooter and bomber? Have these all just been shuffled into the trash?
And questions should be asked about the role of Bush and Rice in refusing to intervene here. We learn that Bhutto's husband tried to get State Dept. meetings about her security requests just before the assassination, but was denied.
Mrs. Bhutto's fatal mistake was to trust Bush and Rice, not understanding that everyone and everything they touch is ruined.
Happy New Year to you Professor.
On Pakistan, I ran across this posting from the noted British lefty blog Lenin. In spite of the British slant, I think Lenin makes some devastating points.
Pakistan more closely resembles another chip out of the pillar of US foreign policy in South Asia, a pillar slowly being reduced to a post through some very poor policy decisions and Bush's self-imposed handicap which is the Iraq War.
Again, Happy New Year, and further comment from you would be most welcome.
boilerman10
"If the military was completely uninvolved, why should it care how she died?"
This is not a very bright question. If Bhutto was killed by shrapnel from or the force of a bomb blast, the Islamabad government can reasonably claim that suicide bombers are very difficult to defend against, and so the government-provided security cannot be taken so completely to task. If Bhutto was killed by bullets fired at close range, the government-provided security would appear woefully inadequate and so bring the government's role under closer examination. THAT is why the government should "care why she died."
I'm very curious about the thwarted meeting between Bhutto and Specter and Kennedy. Now the word is that the Bhutto faction were attempting to spill election fraud info to "trusted American politicians" rather than submit it to Bush administration officials who were behind Musharraf. This doesn't make sense to me on a number of levels.
I suspect lieutenant Specter was sent to Pak to impress Bhutto with the seriousness of sticking to the power-sharing plan. Possibly others used more certain means of persuasion before Specter got his chance?
Our man in Islamabad
Aljazeera author’s “we killed Bhutto” can look naive and pathetic, but actually Mr.Khouri knows exactly what he is doing. The fact that he does not put all dots on all i’s should not prevent us from figuring out who is really naïve and who is blank sinister.
Everybody familiar with Graham Greene’s noir novels should not fail to recognize his brand theme of Western “idealism” and its gloomy consequences on the ground. If history teaches us anything, its lesson is clear: whatever theory of Bhutto’s killing Pakistani authorities will produce, is better than nothing.
Rice got Bhutto killed. Bhutto had no business being in Pakistan but for Rice. Rare indeed does a government policy end in so spectacular a failure as having the bloody brains blown out of a former and potentially future head of state before millions of onlookers. It was in the name of the State Department's "Freedom and Democracy" agenda that Rice first conceived of the purely cosmetic notion of having the telegenic and politically pliable Bhutto pose as the duly elected spokesmodel, for what was to remain a brutal, military tyranny directed by the US to root out, torture, and exterminate every deemed pro-Taliban/Al-Queda lifeform in Pakistan from lizard up. Even in an Administration infamous for using plausible gullibility to exonerate its members from personal responsibility and guilt for catastrophic failures, surely this last, in a long, long line, of world historical blunders should compel that rarest of occasions in the Bush White House, a resignation for failure. Rice has got to go.
As one looks back on the unremitting gross blunders of this White House, the offical media narrative designed to minimize personal liability has always featured the supposed rivalry between the Pentagon and State for control of America's agenda abroad. The subvertion of the State Department by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and their neocon cohorts in the Pentagon with respect to the prosecution and management of America's ridiculous "War on Terror" and the fraudulent Iraq War is well documented. The horrendous fiascoes, and more importantly, the personal embarassment, which resulted led to the political necessity of re-establishing some semblance of authority and control to formulate and implement foreign policy at State. Thus, the Department was butressed with the appointment of a man with undoubted gravitas and authority, and with a long record of dirty deeds for further credibility, to work beside Condoleeza Rice, namely John Negroponte.
In contradistinction to the Pentagon's eternal reply to, what LBJ onced complained of, was for every foreign policy conundrum, specifically "Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!", and its blind faith in Musharaff and the Pakistan military to keep things in order, Rice's State Department appeared to be the only entity on the face of the planet to take seriously the Bush alibi and mantra of "Freedom and Democracy". And no where was America's insistence that all of the blood spilt and money spent was done for "Freedom and Democracy" more utterly exposed for the ugly truth of its detestable hypocrisy than in Pakistan. In cruel contrast to all of the sanctimonious talk of reversing America's traditional support of the most vicious of tinpot dictators and their tyrannical regimes with Bush's Born Again inspiration for freedom-lovin' people all around the world, oft-quoted to justify our recent relish for criminality, there stood the spectre of our active support for General Pervez Musharaff, our "most important ally in America's War on Terror", with his guns and ammo, tanks and torturers, who toppled a civillian government legally elected in a peaceful and ordered way by a nation of 170,000,000 people. Yet, even he was aware of the bad optics of it all. Thus, he claimed, he promised, he decried, he re-promised, he swore, he warned, he guaranteed, he apologized, he excused, and for over 8 years, he sat on top. But at the end of the day, when he had played all of his cards, with an American ace in his back pocket, he was still in danger of being trumped by his enemies, and far worse than any fantastical Taliban or mythical Al-Queda conspiracy, stood his greatest enemy: the people of Pakistan. Thus, he suspended, he declared, he abolished, he imprisoned, and in the end, he assassinated. And with that ace still in his pocket, he continues to sit on top.
Dr. Condoleeza Rice, once a limp academic and present Bush sycophant, after suffering personal ignominy and public ridicule for her strangely dyslexic command of her portfolios, took over the reigns of the State Department. She disappointed no one with a repeat perfomance of utterly ineffectual stewartship, her chief accomplishment being little else but the accumulation of frequent flyer points. And so in watching the time run out in this her last stint in the vainglorious sunshine of power and celebrity, where shopping for shoes or scolding a clerk made her more headlines than her foreign policy, she seized a last chance for redemption and gratitiude from her host ego, George Bush, by thinking up a way to put a smiley face over the glowering scowl of Musharaff, in the vain hope that the hopelessly naive, i.e. the people of Pakistan, would fall in love with its perfect makeup, its perfect hair and its oh so western love for conspicuous consumption. That face was Benazir Bhutto.
Therefore, as only the truly empowered and enrich can do, with nary a care or concern for principles, or victims, Condoleeza Rice began to play house with real people, a Paris Hilton on steroids. In collusion with Negroponte, her chaperon, and Gordon Brown, her footman, the plot was hatched: foist a corrupt and reliable figurehead upon a gullible electorate, get it voted in by hook or crook, ensure it abides by any marching orders emanating from DC, and keep it happy like a Digimon Pet with regular feeding and affection until we can can all flee the jurisdiction this January, 2009 with our amnesties, pardons and most importantly, our contracts intact.
Yet alas, this 54-year-old smiley face came with wrinkles, and to be rude, specifically $1.5 billion-dollar wrinkles, tucked away in various Swiss bank accounts, chiefly embezzled from the horrendously impoverished people of Pakistan. Let no one dare doubt the plaintive professions of love for her people, the regular declamations of the evil of Musharaff, the tireless tirades against the terrorist Taliban, versus the nice Taliban of yesteryear she supported when last in power, all voiced in that perfectly cadenced politician's cant, bred by the best bastions of olde English imperialism: Oxford AND Cambridge. Nothing could keep her back from running to Her People in Their Time of Need. But what money don't buy, she don't need. Hence, the awkward need for an amnesty from a compliant judiciary. For Condy, it would just not do to have Benazhir's trademark glasses and many flounces of fabric flying over who gets the top bunk with an Islamabad hooker in a Pakistani correctional facility ("The people of Pakistan demand I get it!"). Enter Musharaff.
From Vietnam, through Iran to Iraq unto Pakistan: as every deposed US-backed dictator in the history of the post-WW II world would ruefully report, once that proverbial American ace in the back pocket is withdrawn, you may as well pack your bags and start googling all countries with air conditioning and no extradiction treaties. Musharaff knows as well as any corporate shyster how to do "the Google", but he would much rather stay at home than absquatulate to a foreign jurisdiction. Hence, "one amnesty coming right up, Ms. Rice." Presto, the National Reconciliation Ordinance, shoved through an obeisant legislature and soon to be ratified by a "new and improved" Pakistani Supreme Court. And in keeping with the spirit of the matter, Musharaff expanded the amnesty to cover not just the "innocent" Bhutto, but heavens to betsy, everyone everywhere who at anytime embezzled funds from the people of Pakistan, the vast majority being former members of his military. For some, can a silver lining have a silver lining?
Yet in spite of all of these machinations, truth has a terrible way of interfering with the plans of mice and men, ...and women. The woman Rice lured to return to Pakistan to save the day for George Bush and his idea of Freedom'n'Democracy is now dead, possibly murdered with the silent instigation of Rice's rivals in the Defence Department, and by the Pentagon's undoubted Man of the Moment, Musharaff. She is now far more useful to everyone in death than ever in life.
Bhutto was never as popular as her own press releases alleged. Indeed, local polling put her rival, Nazwar Sharif, ahead. Revelations concerning the much vilified amnesty, which legalised grand larceny upon some of the poorest people in the world, knocked down her numbers, and fatally destroyed any legitimacy she might have otherwise held. Furthermore, suspicions concerning both her collusion in an American-brokered deal with Mushraraff, and her ultimate loyalty in Bush's silly "War on Terror", alienated much of her base. She would have lost the election, if and when it would ever had been held.
Ms. Rice has failed in her mad experiment to revive this Pakistani Frankenstein to decorate the already politically dead corpse of the Musharaff regime. She failed with 911, she failed with the Iraq War, and now, most dangerously, she has failed in Pakistan.
-Neocynic
It's so confusing. The government spokesman said that the force of an explosion drove Bhutto to the left causing her to hit the left side of her head on the left roof latch, whereas videos and photographs show an explosion (and shooting) on the left side, which might have forced Bhutto to the right. The medical report mentions no injury on the left side and describes a wound on the right side.
Anyhow the evidence has been destroyed.
Neocynic-
What were Specter and Kennedy doing there?
Going too far. The government might have put out a different story to escape blame for the lax security, and/or to diminish Bhutto's status as a martyr for democracy in Pakistan.
It's hardly so glorious to be killed by your own guards' mishandling you (the story I saw was that, at the sound of shooting, her guards tried to pull her back down into the car, making her head strike the sunroof lever.)
P.S. Don't reckon I would go sticking my head out of a sunroof in her circumstances; I've been reading how she was notoriously lax about her personal security. RIP.
Here's a thought - what if the Cheney gang already knew the vote was being rigged, because they were actually on the ground advising Musharraf's people? What if they knew the funds were being diverted? What if the real reason why Pakistan gets US money is not to fight Bush's bogus "war" on terrrrrsts, but to support the Cheney gang's oil and power grab in the Middle East? What if Bhutto's big mistake was to invite Arlen Specter to that meeting?
Keep an open mind. The truth might be worse than you think.
Juan, you've been singing the foreign policy expertise praises of Sen Clinton of late (this despite her unstinting four year support of the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History)
Maybe you should reconsider..It is past time to turn the page on US policy in the Middle East and South Asia
Ben Smith, thepolitico.com Reports:
Clinton errs on Pakistan
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was criticized for stumbling over details.
But in two confident television appearances, on CNN and ABC, Clinton made an elementary error about Pakistani politics: She described President Pervez Musharraf as a "candidate" who would be "on the ballot."
In fact, Musharraf was reelected to the presidency in October. The upcoming elections are for parliament, and while Musharraf's party will be facing off against opposition parties, the president himself is not a candidate.
"He will NOT be on the ballot," said a Pakistan scholar at Columbia University, Philip Oldenburg, in an e-mail. "These are parliamentary elections, where the contests are for a seat in the national assembly.
The prime ministerial candidate typically fights for victory in a local constituency, as well as lead[ing] the party in a national campaign."
She's only reading what her handlers give her, and two of them are Richard Holbrooke and Madeline Albright, not to mention Gen Egan (AEI-Surge Architect)
All governments lie, reflexively
Don't overthink this one. The govt of Pakistan didn't need any large, dramatic or decisive motivation, such as covering up their own complicity, to invent a story about Mrs. Bhutto's manner of death. They probably just wanted to deny the involvement of a gun, and leave it all on the suicide bomb, because suicide bombing suggests militant Islamists, and that's who the govt wanted blamed. Of course, it is quite possible that the govt was involved, it's just that I think they would lie anyway, even if they weren't trying to conceal their own involvement, so the fact of their mendacity doesn't prove anything. Well, nothing we didn't know already about them.
The whole point of having a coherent govt, one that stands above the people rather than being of, by and for the people, is precisely the lack of faith that events will work out well unless they are carefully controlled. The govt of Pakistan is even more "together" in this sense than our own, and so of course they had to control the story of Bhutto's death so as to "guide" the people's reaction along the "correct" path of attributing it to the "terrorists". The irony is that it is still most likely that it was militant extremists, but the govt simply doesn't trust that truth to emerge without its "help". They could no more allow the truth to emerge on its own than they could allow the people of Pakistan to govern themselves.
I agree with Alan Krondstadt in that you aren't taking into account very plausible reasons for the military to care how she died.
What about the psychological effect of martyrdom? If Bhutto is portrayed as a coward, ducking from the blast, her death will have a much weaker impact on the upcoming election than if her death is presented as it truly occurred.
I think you are reaching the conclusion of military complicity a little prematurely.
Haroldo9: Well the first "official" version stated Bhutto died of heart-failure caused by hearing the "sound" of the blast. That press conference also claimed there were no external injuries to Ms. Bhutto. So you are right in saying they want to portray her as a coward...
Second, it is NOT news for any of us here in Pakistan that ISI rigs elections. It si common knowledge and accepted fact. Rigging is their primary job during elections -- kidnap and torture and murder being their main job during other periods -- and the proof is that people like Musharraf get 97% votes in referendums :)
Post a Comment
<< Home