Musharraf blames the victim

In a bold new statement that seems as if it came from Karl  Rove himself, the president of Pakistan declared that Benazir Bhutto was responsible for her own assassination.  Musharraf also said that he did everything he could to secure Bhutto’s safety, but he neglected to address the fact that many of Bhutto’s requests for additional safeguards went unheeded.  But as the unrest in Pakistan grew following Bhutto’s assassination, Musharraf reversed his earlier statements saying that the investigation would be handled internally, and now says that Scotland Yard has been asked to help with the investigation. 

Musharraf insists the fault is with Benazir Bhutto, because she stood up in her car.  And had Benazir Bhutto been driving a race car, that argument would make sense.  But seeing as how her motorcade was barely moving at the time of the attack, and since her requests for an armoured vehicle went unanswered, even if she had been seated, the attack would still have occurred.  As to how successful that attack might have been is difficult to impossible to ascertain, but considering that the previous attack had used explosives, and had killed over 100 people, it is difficult to accept that Bhutto herself should be considered responsible for being attacked.     

The Pakistani government is backing away from it’s initial claims that Bhutto was killed when she hit her head on a handle on her vehicles sunroof, as a number of eyewitnesses and bullets found would seem to make that story about as realistic as a U.S. politician keeping their campaign promises.  The really odd part about the theory about the sunroof handle causing Bhutto’s demise is that the Pakistani government were floating that theory, and blaming al-queda at the same time.  Perhaps al-queda put the handle on the sunroof, or something along those lines. 

The parliamentary election that was slated to take place on January 8 has been postponed until February 18, barring any more candidates that the people want being assassinated.  The PPP, or Pakistani People’s Party, was expected to win a significant number of votes, and in the aftermath of this attack, the PPP is expected to gain additional votes. 

The Musharraf government is still claiming to be our ally on the war on terror, but it is difficult to not see the parallel between supporting Musharraf and supporting Saddam Hussein.  In the 1980s, the U.S. and Iraq shared a common enemy in the country of Iran, and we backed Hussein with money and only God knows what else.  And if you can imagine it, this brilliant plan to back a thug who ruled his country as a dictator backfired,  after Saddam decided he wanted to “annex” Kuwait.  And now we are backing another thug that seized power in a coup in 1999, and we are sending him millions of dollars so that he’ll help us.  

  And what could possibly go wrong with this plan, it seems foolproof.  I’m sure this plan will work out just as well as it did when we backed Saddam.