I imagine I'll stop following this story soon, unless the MSM starts reporting on the active war fronts.
I get sick of political bullshit fooleys after a while, readers:
"U.S. Isn’t Ready to Accept Pakistan’s Initial Findings" by ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — United States intelligence analysts are not convinced by the evidence offered so far by Pakistani authorities that a militant linked to Al Qaeda was responsible for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, American officials said Tuesday.
Pakistani authorities, working from a single intelligence intercept collected the day after Ms. Bhutto’s death, have identified a militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, as the chief suspect behind the attack.
A senior State Department official, who, like other officials contacted for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation:
“As far as I know, the Pakistanis are saying this is it, this is the proof. Before our guys say yes or no, they need a hell of a lot more than one thing, even if it is a substantial piece of evidence.”
As American officials disclosed Tuesday that the Bush administration had differed with Ms. Bhutto’s representatives over how best to improve security for her, questions surrounding her assassination mounted, adding to the pressure for outside involvement in the inquiry.
A Pentagon official said that American analysts were examining several other potential enemies of Ms. Bhutto, including elements of Pakistani Taliban groups and other Islamic extremists.
The official:
“There are so many people who’d want to kill her, it’s difficult to ascribe any one agency.”
Pfffffffffttttt!
Yeah, especially if it is one of ours!
American officials said that the United States did not have access to all the information available to Pakistani authorities, and that in the end, Mr. Mehsud might well be held responsible for the attack on Ms. Bhutto. Based in the South Waziristan tribal areas near the Afghan border, Mr. Mehsud has been accused by Pakistani officials of being behind most of the suicide attacks on government, military and intelligence targets in recent months.
Yup, and if you scan my labels, you will find that it "has become the norm for the government to blame Mr. Mehsud for just about any attack, without providing real evidence."
On Tuesday, American officials said they had provided a constant flow of threat reports to Ms. Bhutto and her political advisers, even before she returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18 after a self-imposed exile. American intelligence officials said they never received a credible threat of an attack with a specific date, time or place.
The State Department official said diplomats at the United States Embassy in Islamabad, including Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, were in daily contact with officials from Ms. Bhutto’s party. The Americans passed along information and specific advice on private security contractors to hire, counsel that Ms. Bhutto and her aides apparently spurned, the official said.
Diplomats and security experts at the American Embassy, for example, discouraged Ms. Bhutto from hiring American or British private security firms, fearing that a Western guard detail would draw too much attention to her and become a target.
Security officers at the embassy instead recommended the names of half a dozen Pakistani security companies that the United States and other Western countries had used to protect their personnel, the State Department official said.
The official: “The local companies employed guards who spoke the language and knew the landscape.”
But Ms. Bhutto and her husband rejected that suggestion, the official said, apparently fearing that even the reputable Pakistani firms might be infiltrated by extremists.
Almost sounds like the AmeriKan MSM is BLAMING HER for getting killed, readers!
Or is that just me?
Oh, well, on to more important things:
"Pakistan Vote Delayed to February" by JANE PERLEZ
LAHORE, Pakistan — Parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8 have been postponed by the government until February, the secretary of the Election Commission said Tuesday.
Furor continues over the Musharraf government’s assertion that Ms. Bhutto died not from gunfire or shrapnel from a suicide bomber’s explosion on Thursday, but from striking her head as she tried to duck during the attack. Many of her supporters blame the government for her death, some accusing it of poor security and others of outright complicity.
On Tuesday, an aide to Ms. Bhutto, Senator Latif Khosa, said Ms. Bhutto had been planning to give two visiting American lawmakers a 160-page report accusing the Musharraf government of taking steps to rig the Jan. 8 vote, according to The Associated Press. The meeting, with Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, was scheduled for a few hours after she was killed.
And CUI BONO, readers?
Wowee!
"Pakistan opposition considers protests; Government puts off election set for next week" by Griff Witte and Emily Wax, Washington Post | January 2, 2008
KARACHI - Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party is set to meet today to formally decide whether to call supporters out to the streets in protest. If it does, there is a risk of resumed violence, just days after enraged Bhutto supporters went on a rampage in cities and towns across the country. The rioting caused tens of millions of dollars in damage, and left more than 50 people dead.
Tariq Azim Khan, spokesman for the major pro-Musharraf party, said security forces had been slow to react last week because they wanted to allow Bhutto supporters to vent their rage over her death. But he said that they would respond more forcefully the next time.
Opposition parties have said they fear the government will use the threat of political violence - ever-present in Pakistan - to delay the elections indefinitely.
Bhutto had been scheduled to meet hours later with US Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.
Senator Latif Khosa, a lawmaker from Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, said she had planned to give the lawmakers a report outlining complaints on "pre-poll rigging" by Musharraf's government and the military-run Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
Khosa said he did not know whether Bhutto's killing was linked to her plans to release the document. Officials at the Information Ministry and the Interior Ministry declined comment. The government has denied charges of vote rigging and said it had nothing to do with Bhutto's death.
The dossier outlined several instances of electoral interference, including one case where an officer from the intelligence services sat nearby as an election official rejected nomination papers from opposition candidates, Khosa said. Another official stopped a candidate from filing his nomination in the southwestern Baluchistan Province, said Khosa, who wrote the report as head of the party's election team.
The evidence was based on complaints by party candidates and information from sources in the security services, he said."
Pakistan's elections are just like everyone else's: RIGGED!
