Besides the clip from CNN below, American journalists seem to be taking the party line from Pakistan with regards to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. First they said she was shot in the neck and chest. Then it was a piece of shrapnel. Then it was a neck fracture. Now they’re saying she died of a fractured skull after ducking into her sunroof too quickly. Her aide, who brought her body to the hospital, called this “bizarre, dangerous nonsense … it’s beginning to look like a cover-up.” The aide claimed that in addition to the gunman carrying the bomb, there was also a sniper on a nearby building. Of course, it doesn’t really matter how she died. Thankfully, the London Times and the Guardian are covering the far more prescient issue: could Bhutto’s assassins have been backed up by the ISI? Do we have any reason to believe anything this Brigadier General tells us, about intelligence intercepts or her cause of death? These are the same people who tried to show western journalists a video of the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed only to have it mocked as a forgery by the few reporters allowed to see it.

Email Bhutto told CNN not to report on unless she was killed.

I bring up this point because not only did Khalid Sheikh Mohammad fund the attempt on Bhutto’s life in 1993 when she was running for re-election, but he was protected by the ISI after he did it. Reports show KSM sent his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who planned the WTC bombing 5 months before, to carry out the assassination. But before Bhutto’s rally began, Yousef was caught by a police patrol and the bomb went off prematurely. Later that year US Agents found photos of KSM and Yousef with associates of Bhutto’s political rival, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a longtime friend to the ISI famous for receiving millions of dollars from Bin Laden. This is the same guy who underscored yesterday’s assassination with “it is not a sad day, it is a dark, darkest, gloomiest day in the history of this country. Something unthinkable has happened. Something inconceivable, unthinkable has happened.”
First off, this was arguably the most conceivable, forseeable assassination in the history of assassinations. In a park named after an assassination. How many times does a person have to narrowly escape being assassinated before they get some police escorts who don’t abandon their posts right before the shooting starts? This woman’s main security were a bunch of guys wearing white tees inscribed “willing to die for Benazir.” Second, it’s not like people didn’t know the ISI was targeting her just cause Wolf Blitzer was sworn to secrecy about her email. Her party has been the main opposition to the ISI since her dad founded it. But probably the biggest indication of a plot to kill her would be the the bombing of her last rally in Karachi, which she claimed her security detail could have prevented if all the street lights weren’t mysteriously turned off right before the attack. 136 people dead, no investigation, and all the forensic evidence lost after the police brought in firehoses to wash away the crime scene. You can’t tell me that Al Qaeda has the power to influence police to destroy evidence, abandon their posts, turn off the streetlights, and block an independent investigation. And it appears that Bhutto even knew who in the government was behind the bombing. In her letter to Musharraf, in which Bhutto was careful not to implicate Musharraf personally, she accused three senior officials in his regime for financing and organizing the attacks. One of these guys was Ijaz Shah, Director General of the Intelligence Bureau. You might remember Ijaz Shah from a Nicholas Kristof column where he threatened to have a Pakistani rape victim killed if she wouldn’t shut up. (”We can do anything. … We can just pay a little money to some black guys in New York and get people killed there.”)

Previous assassination attempt in Karachi.

In the 1990’s Ijaz Shah was also the handler for Omar Saeed Sheikh, 9/11 paymaster and alleged murderer of Daniel Pearl. They were so close in fact that after Pearl’s murder, Sheikh turned himself into Shah, and stayed with him for one week before being handed over to the police for his trial. The fact that Bhutto named Ijaz Shah as one of her suspects in the Karachi bombing might indicate that he gave the order for yesterday’s assassination. Maybe not. It’s important to note that in her letter, Bhutto also named another politician and Hamid Gul, a former ISI Chief, who has recently been marching against Musharraf (and, most likely, on behalf of Nawaz Sharif). This would back up what the Times said about it being unlikely that Musharraf actually gave the order. However, there’s enough entrenched interests in the military regime and its Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence willing to kill civilians in order to stop a power-sharing agreement, even without the consent of the General.

So did he give the order? Most likely not. Did he do anything to stop it? Well, her email implies that she was stopped from taking her own cars, getting her own security, using tinted windows, or even using jammers to disrupt bombs. Whether this means she wasn’t allowed to get her own jammers, or they just weren’t provided for her, is uncertain. More importantly, did Musharraf have a reason to let it happen? Yes. Don’t forget he owes the success of his coup to the ISI, and his power to the unquestioned authority of the Pakistani army - something Bhutto would undoubtedly be challenging if she were to win. And after the military puts the riots down, which they will, you could say it’s pretty much win-win for the regime. After all, what could be better for securing Pakistan’s military aid than a friendly reminder to the Americans about the threat Al Qaeda still poses, and Pakistan’s vital role in the war against terrorism. Just look at the coverage on CNN. With a nuclear arsenal at stake, nobody’s going to really care about where all the billions went or an independent investigation or even democracy. Americans are going to look to Pakistan and say, well at least there’s order. Now let’s help them beat Al Qaeda. At least, that’s what the General is counting on.

Back to how she was killed though (CNN’s preferred issue). “We provided excellent security to Ms. Bhutto, but our expert advice was ignored by her,” the Ministry spokesman said. This whole business of whether Bhutto “unfortunately” killed herself, recalls something Musharraf said about Daniel Pearl, who himself was investigating links between the ISI and terrorist groups. “Perhaps Daniel Pearl was over-intrusive. A mediaperson should be aware of the dangers of getting into dangerous areas. Unfortunately, he got over-involved … He got caught up in intelligence games.” Just goes to show you, whenever anyone in this government says the word “unfortunately,” they’re saying it with their tongue in cheek.

Brigadier Javed Cheema licks his lips for the 20th time. This is what poker players call a tell. Or a Ministry Spokesman with severely chapped lips.