no surprise...

in the first attack witnesses said the streetlights went out and police pulled back...


Police abandoned security posts before Bhutto assassination
Nick Juliano
Raw Story
Saturday, December 29, 2007

No autopsy performed on body; docs say bullet wounds not found

Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.

Pakistan's Interior Minister on Friday said that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, as had been widely reported, and doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she died, say there were no bullet marks on the former prime minister's body, according to India's IBNLive.com. Furthermore, according to the news agency, there was no formal autopsy performed on Bhutto's body before she was buried Friday.

CNN is now reporting that it wasn't gunshots or shrapnel that killed Bhutto, but that she died from hitting the sunroof of the car she was riding in. The network said sources in Pakistan's Interior Ministry said nothing entered her skull, no bullets or shrapnel.


Apparently there was some kind of lever on the sunroof she was standing through, and she hit her head on that CNN reported Friday morning.

Earlier in the day Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel, “The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that," according to IBNLive.

Perhaps more shockingly, an attendee at the rally where Bhutto was killed says police charged with protecting her "abandoned their posts," leaving just a handful of Bhutto's own bodyguards protecting her.

"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"

While some intelligence officials, especially within the US, were quick to finger al Qaeda militants as responsible for Bhutto's death, it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.

"GHQ (general headquarters of the army) killed her," Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, told Shah at the hospital.

Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.

Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants, but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told The Associated Press on Friday that "we have the evidence that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."

He said investigators had resolved the "whole mystery" behind the opposition leader's killing and would give details at press conference later Friday.

DEVELOPING...

maybe it's me , maybe it's just the cultural divide , but isn't this a bit much?

found this ad in the india online news sites






I Love Benazir Bhutto T-Shirt

This is a High Quality I Love Benazir Bhutto T-Shirt. This T-Shirt is made of the finest Material. We offer all variations of text on this T-shirt and other shirts. Color = White. Purchase this shirt for someone as a gift or purchase it for yourself. Short Sleeve, Pre-shrunk, great quality and an Amazing price. See our Free Shipping coupons and other promotions to save even more. Size Specifications: In Inches: Size S M L XL XXL Chest 34-36 38-40 42-44 46-48 50-52 Body Length 27 29 30 31 31.5 All T-Shirts are 100% pre-shrunk cotton! We can custom make any T-shirt! Tell us what Name you want and we will make it! We can write almost anything you need! These are custom made for each order name, no returns allowed.
to buy this shirt click HERE

interviews with late benizir bhutto

at 6:10 into the above interview did she say omar sheik murdered osama bin laden ?

'A Wrong Must Be Righted'
An interview with Benazir Bhutto
By Gail Sheehy
Published: December 27, 2007


Benazir Bhutto

Editor's note: We are all saddened by the murder this morning of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto. The assassination adds more danger and confusion to the already chaotic situation in the region.

In late November, PARADE sent Contributing Editor Gail Sheehy to Pakistan. Sheehy traveled with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned through her home provinces. Sheehy had two long interviews with her—the first in Bhutto’s home in Islamabad, a second at her residence outside Karachi. Bhutto told Sheehy that she had long been a target of terrorists. She knew she was also now a target of the Musharraf government. Today’s suicide bombing mirrors the earlier attempt on her life that Bhutto described to Sheehy.

The interview with Bhutto will be the cover story of PARADE on January 6, 2008.

. . .

Dust spirals from village to village across the countryside of Pakistan. Drums lead men to dance in the streets as they witness the reappearance of their revered leader. No matter how long and hard I look, there are no women. Except her.

Ben-a-zir, zindabd! the men chant. Long live Benazir!

Benazir Bhutto has returned to her fractured country to run for prime minister this Tuesday. She has ruled twice before—and twice been overthrown. Her caravan continually switches direction to foil suicide bombers. Only a few weeks earlier, she narrowly escaped blasts that slaughtered 170 of her supporters. Now I watch her stand tall atop a truck, waving, white-scarved. Serenely smiling.

That evening, Bhutto invites me to her ancestral home in Larkana, where she still presides over several thousand acres of feudal lands. Meeting me alone on the men’s side, she is ready to let down her veil.

Today I saw you campaigning essentially unprotected, I say. How do you do it?

In answer, she invokes her late father, Zulfikar Bhutto, a populist reformer and the nation’s first democratic prime minister. “From the day my father was hanged—I was 25—whenever there is a crisis, I go into a kind of detachment. ‘What should I be doing?’ I just start ticking off steps. I don’t feel.”

Like her country, Bhutto is a riddle. Brilliant, beautiful, fearless, she is also ruthlessly ambitious, devious and corrupt. The first question that perplexes an American: How could Bhutto — Harvard- and Oxford-educated, unapologetically secular — have become the first woman elected to lead a Muslim country? In part, the answer is that in dynastic Pakistan, she is effectively royalty. The second question: Why should this election matter so much to America? That answer is simpler. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Also, the most dangerous place in the world is Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan. It is a Ho Chi Minh Trail of terrorism where Osama bin Laden is believed to enjoy sanctuary.

Bhutto maintains that the Pakistani army’s decision to overthrow her in 1996 came after she announced plans to crack down on terrorism. “I am what the terrorists most fear,” she tells me, “a female political leader fighting to bring modernity to Pakistan. Now they’re trying to kill me."

Talat Masood, a retired general who has advised Bhutto, foresees his nation breaking in half. “ The only option left to the people of Pakistan,” he says, “is the military or the militants.”

Or another try at democracy under Bhutto.

. . .

During our talk in Larkana, Bhutto weeps in describing her struggles after being ousted 12 years ago on charges of plundering the treasury. Her husband was jailed without charges. She faced constant harassment by the courts. Even while living with her three children in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai, she could not open a bank account or use a credit card because of the charges against her in Pakistan. “I didn’t have the press, I didn’t have the judiciary, I was all alone,” she whimpers. As if on cue, tears fall. “I only had God,” she moans.

Bhutto still insists that there are no foreign bank accounts in her name. I suggest that most are in the names of her mother or of friends. She feigns surprise—what could others’ finances have to do with her? “I’m an independent legal entity!” she protests. “What’s the difference between you and me?”

“One point five billion dollars,” I reply—the amount the Pakistani government contends that she and her husband pocketed while in power. She also allegedly siphoned funds from the U.N. Oil for Food program. Her defense: “Six other companies in Pakistan did it. Nobody investigated them.”

Beneath the theatrics Bhutto uses to such effect is an ominous reality. “She’s the No. 1 target of the terrorists right now,” says Humayun Gauhar, a confidant of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Bhutto says she first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1989, when he sent $10 million to the ISI, Pakistan’s infamous intelligence service, to help it overthrow her first government. The ISI has close ties to radical Islamists and was responsible for the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan. America’s CIA, which also supported the Afghan holy warriors in their guerrilla struggle against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, continues to work with the ISI today—theoretically in suppressing the very terrorist legions it helped to create.

“Benazir tried to push the intelligence service out of politics in her first term,” acknowledges America’s ambassador to Pakistan at the time, Robert Oakley. “It was a bold move, but it failed."

“I was ignorant of the extremist war of these new radical Islamists until my second term,” Bhutto tells me. Upon re-election in 1993, she learned of more attempts to assassinate her from the interrogation of a Pakistani terrorist named Ramzi Yousef—the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center. That investigation also revealed to her the existence of madrassas, or Islamic schools, preaching jihad against the West.

Bhutto tried once more to break the ISI. Again, she failed and was overthrown—and, with ISI support, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan became the staging ground for 9/11.

. . .

To understand why Bhutto is so driven, one must imagine her huddling with her mother in a cold jail cell through a long April night in 1979, waiting for her father to be hanged by the military strongman who had overthrown him. The young woman and her mother subsequently lived through repeated raids, arrests and solitary confinement.

Have you healed? I ask this 54-year-old survivor. Or is avenging your father your solace?

“I feel that a wrong must be righted,” she says. She recalls her father’s parting words: “You can walk away. You’re young. You can go to live in London or Paris or Geneva.”

“No,” she told him. “I have to keep up this mission of yours, of democracy.”

Bhutto’s own family dismisses her little-girl-lost script. “Her father’s death was enormously convenient for her politically,” her American-educated niece, Fatima Bhutto, tells me. “She has no legacy of her own except for corruption and violence, so she rests on her father’s laurels.” Fatima blames her aunt for her own father’s assassination in 1996.

Reflecting on the lessons of her two terms as prime minister, Bhutto tells me, “It’s only now that America has awakened to what we were already fighting—Islamic jihadis.” Fortunately for her, the West’s urgent fear of Pakistan as a breeding ground for terrorists has given Bhutto the chance to redefine herself. During most of her exile, she was considered irrelevant by Washington. Then she hired Hillary Clinton’s image-maker, Mark Penn, and began playing up to Musharraf.

When Musharraf’s popularity dove in 2007 after his jailing of judges, lawyers and journalists, Bhutto suddenly emerged as America’s “ideal.” U.S. politicians needed her—progressive, secular, female, willing to compromise—to put a face of democracy on their support for Musharraf’s autocratic rule.

True to form, Bhutto manipulated Musharraf to erase the charges against her, promising not to return to Pakistan until after national elections. She then broke that promise. But once she sensed that even her stalwarts were appalled at an arranged political marriage to a dictator, she spurned Musharraf and became her own woman again.

I sense a dark reflection in both Bhutto’s psychological history and her country’s constant turmoil—a compulsion to repeat past traumas. A prime example is the way she returned to her country on Oct. 18.

Ignoring warnings of terrorist cells plotting to kill her, Bhutto presided from atop a caravan over a parade that took 10 hours to snake through Karachi. Near midnight, the streetlights went out. The police disappeared. Her feet swollen from standing, Bhutto ducked below into a steel command center to remove her sandals. Moments later, a bomb went off. “I had a sickening, sickening feeling,” she tells me. She now believes the bomb was wired to an infant that a man had been trying to hand to her. She recalls saying to the people with her, “Don’t go outside—another blast will follow.” It did.

When she finally emerged, Bhutto saw bits of brain and flesh and fingers from 20 members of Benazir’s Brigade—the young guards who wear red shirts proclaiming “I Give My Life for Bhutto” — decorating the platform from which she had waved. All told, 170 of her supporters died. Tellingly, the Musharraf government has mounted no investigation.

Her friend Abida Hussain, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., tells me that Bhutto later felt sad and asked, “How many lives did I risk?” Bhutto herself indignantly protests this anecdote to me. “I said no such thing! We must be out on the streets, or the terrorists win.”

Such is politics in Pakistan.

. . .

Musharraf called the attempt on Bhutto a suicide attack by Islamic extremists. Bhutto believes it was the work of Musharraf’s allies. “There are rogue elements within ISI that are ideologically jihadist and less than enthusiastic about Benazir Bhutto becoming prime minister a third time,” says a Bhutto adviser. However, Musharraf’s confidant Gauhar argues to me: “We don’t want a dead Benazir on our hands! She’d be just another unlikely martyr that we don’t need.”

If Bhutto returns to power this week, Gauhar predicts the U.S. will finally get what Musharraf has refused it: “She will allow NATO boots on the ground in our tribal areas and a chance to neuter our nuclear weapons.” Yet President Bush remains reluctant to give up on Musharraf, despite the fact that two-thirds of Pakistanis want him to resign immediately. If the election is rigged, as expected, public outrage is likely to erupt. Bhutto says she won’t join an illegitimate government. But her niece, Fatima Bhutto, says, “She’ll work with anyone to get back into power.”

Despite the corrosion of her reputation by corruption and compromise, Bhutto appears to be America’s strongest anchor in the effort to turn back the extremist Islamic tide threatening to engulf Pakistan. What would you like to tell President Bush? I ask this riddle of a woman.

She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf’s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. “I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years.”

in the news ...the sinking Us greenback ...the michael vick and scooter libby cases...

michael vick goes to jail. no surprise here...


Iran abandons dollar in oil deals
PRESS TV - IRAN

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:40:51

Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil deals in dollar fallowing the OPEC proposal to trade crude in non-dollar currencies.

"The dollar is no longer a reliable currency, considering its devaluation and the loss suffered by oil exporters," said Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari.

"Iran proposed in the last OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) summit that member states use a reliable currency in their oil transactions to prevent further losses," he said, adding that the organization will come to a decision on the issue in the Vienna meeting on February 2.

Meanwhile, the organization decided to keep oil output unchanged at the Abu Dhabi summit on December 5, arguing that there was enough oil in the market to meet winter fuel demand.

while back in the USA , 12-10-07 --former atlanta falcons quarterback Michael Vick gets sentenced to 23 months in jail for personally killing 8 dogs and bankrolling a dog fighting enterprise .

vick also loses as well , about $100 million dollars in salary and commercial endorsements ...while ALSO in today's news , scooter libby drops his appeal concerning his own conviction involving perjury in the bush administration's deliberate leak of valerie plame's covert cia identity .

hmm... pardon my blatant alliteration , but does something seem slightly askew here ?

according to the news , the federal sentencing guidelines for the crime vick pled guilty to was 12 to 18 months . He got almost twice the minimum --no doubt he will serve his time . he clearly deserves some type of punishment for cruelty to animals .

but scooter libby gets off...no surprise here either...



good old boy scooter libby had his sentence commuted by george dubya --And even with a felony conviction on his record there is no doubt that he will continue to make good money --probably give speeches , write books and articles --perhaps even become a media personality and minor celebrity--ala watergate burglar g. gordon liddy or admitted central american drug lord and murderer oliver north .

vick killed dogs and deserves punishment --BUT scooter helped cover up what can only honestly be described as an act of treason on part of the whitehouse--the outting of a covert intelligence agent in time of war --done in a revenge campaign against ms plame directly AND SOLELY because her husband , ambassador joe wilson wrote a new york times piece that shot holes in the pre-iraq war spin bubbles (lies) told by the bush administration about saddam hussein seeking yellow cake uranium from niger .

anyone besides deskRat remember that line of shit for attacking iraq spouted repeatedly by dubya , cheney and lying ass condoleezza about iraq's make believe nuclear weapons program ?

"WE DON"T WANT THE SMOKING GUN TO BE A MUSHROOM CLOUD !"

remember that one ?

scooter got 30 months for lying to protect the bush-cheney administration --bush commuted the sentence so scooter wouldn't do hard time --the good old boy network will insure that old scooter doesn't suffer too much economically --the reasoning being the humiliation he's suffered is already punishment enough --according to bush ,anyway.

but think about it : vick killed dogs---outting plame may have killed people.

according to an article by ex nsa officer and bush administration critic wayne madsen --when plame was outted her covert network was rolled up and even people she casually met overseas were arrested as spies--some were believed killed --plame's network was gathering intel on illegal weapons of mass destruction programs .

so killing 8 dogs is more serious than committing treason by revealing classified national security secrets IN A TIME OF WAR , ratting out people and getting some of them imprisoned or killed in the process--all as part of a dirty policy to get the whitehouse's political enemies --enemies who were enemies SOLELY FOR A SMACK DOWN THEY GAVE TO THE ADMINISTRATION'S LIES TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ? ? ?

is something backwards going on here when sports stars are held to a higher standard of conduct than the people running the whitehouse ?


valerie plame and husband joe wilson--case against bush whitehouse thrown out of court by bush appointed judge...sounds like the election of 2000...any surprise ???



7-19-07
Judge tosses out ex-spy's lawsuit against Cheney in CIA leak case

Story Highlights

Ex-spy had accused members of Bush administration of leaking her identity

Judge tosses out lawsuit from Valerie Plame, husband Joseph Wilson

Bush-appointed judge said couple failed to show case belongs in federal court

Plame's identity as a CIA operative was exposed in July 2003

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by outed spy Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Dick Cheney and other top Bush administration officials.

Plame had accused members of the Bush administration of leaking her identity. To knowingly disclose classified information to unauthorized recipients is a crime, and Plame's position was classified.U.S. District Judge John Bates said the lawsuit raises "important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials." But in a 41-page decision, he found Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, failed to show the case belongs in federal court.

Plame's identity as a CIA operative was exposed in July 2003 after Wilson publicly challenged a key argument in the Bush administration's case for the invasion of Iraq. The couple argued the disclosure destroyed her career and was done to retaliate against Wilson, who said the administration had "twisted" the evidence used to justify the invasion.

Bates, a Bush appointee, agreed with defense arguments that federal law protects Cheney and the other top administration officials from being sued for actions taken as part of their official duties.

The way the defendants handled criticism from Joseph Wilson "may have been highly unsavory," the judge wrote, but "there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism ... by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level executive branch officials."

Valerie Plame's exposure ignited a criminal probe that led to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's conviction in March on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents investigating the leak. President Bush commuted Libby's 30-month prison term earlier this month, calling it "excessive," but let the verdicts stand.Melanie Sloan, the Wilsons' lawyer, said the couple plans to appeal Thursday's ruling.

"While we are obviously very disappointed by today's decision, we have always expected that this case would ultimately be decided by a higher court. ... We disagree with the court's holding and intend to pursue this case vigorously to protect all Americans from vindictive government officials who abuse their power for their own political ends," she said in a statement.

Joseph Wilson said the decision was "just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle."

"This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me," he said in a statement issued to reporters. "We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation."

Lea Ann McBride, Cheney's spokeswoman, said "the vice president is pleased that the court has dismissed the lawsuit."

The Libby defense team declined to comment. Libby, with his appeal still pending, has deferred to defense attorney Ted Wells to speak for the Libby family. Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman, told CNN "there will be no statement."

In addition to Libby and Cheney, the lawsuit also named former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser.

During the course of the leak probe, Rove and Armitage were found to have been the two "senior administration officials" columnist and former CNN contributor Robert Novak cited in identifying Plame as a CIA operative. Both cooperated with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, and neither was charged with a crime.

" the case they gave me..."

i used to laugh at that snoop dog song "murder was the case they gave me " recorded if recall is correct , in response to a murder indictment and trial he faced and eventually was acquitted of .



i believe his lawyers made the statement that ole snoop may have exercised poor judgement , but was innocent of the charges.



well , after hearing the results of my own "case" of sorts today , i don't laugh any gottdamm more .



though facing nothing anywhere nearly as serious as murder --i got a taste of american justice today--and i don't fuckin like it at all .



from the sorry-ass useless piece of shit calling himself a lawyer who misrepresented me , to the halucinating , bi-polar , self inflicted wounds bearing little fuck who started all this shit in the first place and then lied on me , to the motherfucking bitchass pretend-to-be-supervisor who shouldn't be allowed to even run water into a glass much less run somebody's office--who made the call that initiated all this shit , to the vile little prosecuting bitch who hid her brain in the sand and ignored the evidence that shot holes in my accuser's lies --godamm you all .



may you all die painfully and eternally rot in hell .



you each --in your own special way -- suck shit and i would not bother to soil piss by urinating on any of your sorry asses if you were drenched in fire ....i'd just laugh and say , "good gottdamm riddance . "



i don't have to do anything to you --living with your own incompetance and your miserable selves are the most fitting punishments for you --although when i saw one of you with your dislocated shoulder in a sling today it did act to reaffirm my faith in karma .







long story short--i got off on the bullshit "assault" charges , but it was placed in my file that i "exercised poor judgement " in this incident . this information will be forwarded to my employer and my employer , " may or may not feel free to use this judgement in deciding whether he should face reprimand , punishment or whether his employment should be continued ."



fuck you and die bitch .



since i am not ambidexterous , did it not seem strange to you that the claimant's so-called "wounds" indicate someone whose dominant hand is the opposite of mine ?



suck the tailpipe of a broken down old city bus , you fuckin asshole .







better yet find the asshole in this video and suck his tailpipe --asshole .