WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHO KILLED BHUTTO-- DESPITE WHAT BUSHARRAF CLAIMS

In the 5th grade my friend Larry Goldstein had a real dullard of a canary named Perry. Perry wasn't much but he certainly could have been as effective a CNN Pentagon correspondent as Barbara Starr, who's an excruciating embarrassment even to CNN-style pretend-journalism. Within minutes of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Starr was on CNN worldwide-- and in Myanmar where I was at the time, real news channels are banned and only CNN is allowed, so I had no choice-- spewing out the official Bush Regime line about how the bogeyman al-Qaeda killed her, with subtle implications that they'll kill you too if you don't elect an Insider Establishment hack as the next president of the U.S. Was it al-Qaeda? Maybe. Was it Musharraf? Just as likely-- if not more so. He certainly had the most to lose by what was shaping up as a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) landslide in the elections. Aside from his job and his status, Musharraf stands to lose the source of the immense wealth he has managed to amass as head of state, as well as his freedom and even his life. (Recall that several former Pakistani heads of state came to violent ends, not least of whom was Benazir's father, who was hung by the military.)

Do I know Musharraf had her killed? Of course not-- no more than Perry, CNN, Barbara Starr and the Bush Regime know Osama bin-Laden had her killed. [Factoid: a recent poll in Pakistan showed that 48% of the people there support bin-Laden; not sure what the margin of error is on that number.] Musharraf's regime sure is acting like they killed her! Within hours of the murder they had the site hosed down, destroying potential forensic evidence. There was no autopsy and the government is now claiming she died by hitting her head on the sunroof-- and discounting the eye-witness reports of bullets entering the neck and bullets exiting from the back of the skull... and all the blood. Must have been one nasty bump! Doctors at the hospital where she was taken are being told to keep their mouths shut.

Pakistan isn't exactly a country built on laws. It was created as a Muslim state and has been a hellhole ever since. Recently the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was arrested for being independent and all the Supreme Court judges were replaced by the military dictatorship. You want to believe anything these people say-- even if their pals in the Bush Regime and the corporate media demand we do?

At the urging of the Bush Regime-- apparently not distracted from it's simultaneous efforts to destabilize the recently elected actual democratic government of Bolivia, possibly even plunging that country into civil war (a hallmark of Bush Regime foreign policy)-- Musharraf says he's going to have the "elections" staged on schedule. Bush's spokesman says anything else will be a victory for terrorism and bin-Laden. Problem is, the next 10 days is unlikely to offer up a viable opponent to... Musharraf.

Now look, I have barely a jot of admiration for Benazir Bhutto. She was as corrupt as Musharraf-- if less brutal-- as much an American puppet, another collaborator with Islamic fundamentalist maniacs and completely ineffective as a leader-- speaking a populist game while playing a hierarchical/aristocratic/oligarchical one. Still, I'm not rejoicing at her death-- which serves the interests of all the bad guys. And the ideas of her 19 year old son taking over as head of the PPP would be nearly as absurd as Jenna Bush taking over as head of the GOP.

I just got back to Bangkok from Yangon. Myanmar's junta appears-- at least to westerners-- as clownish and heavy-handed in their propaganda, which seeks to connect those who espouse democracy and basic human rights to evil foreign powers existentially threatening all that the Burmese hold sacred and dear. They are a danger to the nation! Some buy the line-- although, according to the last discarded election, not that many. The U.S. government propaganda is far smoother, far more subtle and far more sophisticated... and far more successful. Pakistani propaganda lies somewhere in between. Authoritarian governments by their nature are never to be believed about anything. They shouldn't be tolerated-- not for a moment. When Bush stole the 2000 election and American citizens let it pass with barely a whimper from any quarter, we earned all that was to come. I hope we learned something-- but I doubt it, which is why Pelosi is a criminal for taking impeachment off the table.


UPDATE: MOTIVE?

Musharraf says there is "no need" for an international investigation into the assassination of Bhutto. According to one of her aides, she was planning to expose Muharraf's plans to use the Pakistani version of the KGB to rig the elections. That might have been a motive, no? Notice how many "democracies" have taken to vote rigging since Bush stole the 2000 presidential? Does Pelosi?