The lone gunman, err, suicide bomber, err sunroof?
Okay, so we first have al Qaeda both being blamed and taking the credit for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination yesterday. Good thing too, because today we learn that after a long, exhaustive investigation (as only a Musharref government could do in a mere 24 hours), Bhutto was not assassinated by al Qaeda.
This of course leaves a dangling participle to be figured out… who the hell claimed to be al Qaeda claiming credit for the attack? Was there some confusion as to who was claiming the credit or was there some group that actually took credit for the attack? I would think that someone in the national security game might be just as curious as I am.
In any case, after we learned yesterday that it was likely gunfire that caused the fatal injury to Bhutto, we? re-learn early this AM that it was in fact shrapnel from the explosion that actually killed her.
Small problem with this, however, in that doctors had already declared where the bullet had struck and it was not where the shrapnel was said to have had hit.? The first death “rumor” was that gun shots to the neck caused the fatality, yet the shrapnel that is now being said as the cause of death is alleged to have hit her in the head, not the neck.
Now, I realize there were all sorts of things going on and it was chaos to be sure, but an emergency room doctor is not going to confuse a gunshot wound to the neck or any injury to the neck with an injury to the head.
The strange thing about this latest ruling, aside from the bizarre confusion over the head and its apparently relative position to the neck, is that this second group of doctors did not do an autopsy.
But if all of that has your head spinning, wait, there is more. We are now being told that the sunroof of Bhutto’s vehicle? - from which she emerged to wave to the crowd - was the culprit that ultimately caused the fatal head wound.
In other words, she bumped her head apparently hard enough for it to be fatal. That is to say, she bumped her head hard enough BEFORE the explosion (according to witnesses who saw her first go down and then witnessed the bombing) it seems to cause her brain to ooze out of her skull and apparently a bizarre wound to the neck (which may or may not have been caused by a bullet and which may or may not have been there in the first place).? Are you kidding me?
As if this idiocy was not enough, here are some other bizarre things surrounding the sunroof assassination/err terrorist attack/ err blah blah blah… death of Bhutto:
1. Police quit their posts shortly before the attack
2. The right wing has started a bizarre Bhutto is evil campaign.? First with various talking-heads (such as Bill O’Reilly) yesterday evening and continuing on today.
For what it is worth, Bhutto was likely very corrupt and to the bone, but let’s let the body be buried before American newspapers start claiming that Pakistan is “better off without her.” Seriously, is the New York (Propaganda) Post really hoping for even more backlash against the US and even more violence in Pakistan? Or is it damage control to spin the Musharraf is our friend crap into talking points?
At this point, I am more than comfortable with my original suspicion that the ISI (and likely Musharref) was behind the hit. Terrorist groups, for example, do not have control over police to the level of having them abandon their security posts right before an attack. A few guys bribed or sympathetic to the deadly campaign of Jihad might look the other way, but not to this level. Nor can terrorist groups have the government declare that the case was closed based on no autopsy and no further investigation a mere 24 hours after the murder.
Posted by Larisa Alexandrovna on December 28, 2007
