Bhutto Murder

[Paul Rigby]

An unwitting dupe. There are plenty about.

Edited January 9, 2008 by Paul Rigby

[Paul Rigby]

From the POV of the beneficiaries of the war on abstract nouns, the assassination is such a timely boon:

the nascent Caliphate gets nukes...

“The project to establish "a pan-Islamic Caliphate" is part of a carefully devised intelligence operation.”

Pakistan and the "Global War on Terrorism”

Part II of a Two Part Article

(Part I: The Destabilization of Pakistan)

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 8, 2008

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7746

The photos are priceless. Do have a look.

[Paul Rigby]

Mush has asked Scotland Yard to investigate the assassination and come up with a report about it.

I wonder if Knacker of the Yard and cohorts will ever get past the first gunman to the second? Or compile a comprehensive list of eyewitnesses and - perish the thought - interview them?

Nope, I don't think so either.

http://unitepakistan.blogspot.com/2008/01/...n-pakistan.html

Conspiracy Theories Thrive in Pakistan

BY PETER WONACOTT

Wall Street Journal

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- As the probe into Benazir Bhutto's assassination deepens, many Pakistanis already have strongly held theories about who killed her. The problem for President Pervez Musharraf's government: Few share its version of what happened.

Iktiadar Ali Shah, a 52-year-old who served in the former prime minister's security detail in the 1980s, says he doesn't doubt how Ms. Bhutto died. He says that while moving toward her white bulletproof car as it crawled through throngs of supporters after a Dec. 27 campaign rally, he heard three or four shots from two guns. Then Mr. Shah saw a huge blast…

Conspiracy theories thrive in Pakistan? Incredible. Can't think why.

[Paul Rigby]

I wonder at the depth of resistance within the Pakistan military to US imperialism? If great, expect to see a great deal more film on the assassination from Pakistan media - well, the bits with strong CIA backing anyway - appearing within and on mainstream Anglo-American media.

CIA steers us in the Right direction. Very helpful, I must say:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_intellige...hutto_0107.html

[Paul Rigby]

From the POV of the beneficiaries of the war on abstract nouns, the assassination is such a timely boon:

the nascent Caliphate gets nukes...

http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina...=4239&blz=1

John Berlin: Why the US Wants the Collapse of Pakistan + UPDATE

2008-01-04

The death of Ms Bhutto, who would certainly have become Pakistan’s new Prime minister, throws Pakistan into deeper chaos. It even brings the prospect of the possible collapse of Pakistan as a national state within our horizon. Whereas the Taliban, al-Qa’ida and ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence service) all had a significant interest in killing her, the US government benefits the most from Ms Bhutto’s death.

Some things about Ms Bhutto were not very favourable. Over the years, there were several heavy allegations of corruption (in particular: making illegal profits from government contracts) and abuse of power (in particular: the laundering of money that was gained by government contract profiteering) - and investigations in these matters did indeed come up with serious indications of wrongdoings worth hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other hand, some of the evidence supporting the allegations appears to have been fabricated by Ms Bhutto’s political opponents - but such things somehow “belong” to Pakistan’s political system; real corruption as well as the manufacturing of “evidence” against political competitors are part of Pakistan’s internal political gameplay.

Killing off a high-profile competitor is something very different; it doesn’t fit Pakistani political culture and it will not bring anyone within the present political system any enduring political gain, not even Ms Bhutto’s arch-opponent, President Musharraf. The President may, perhaps, use the situation for a new clampdown on the country, in order to prevent further destabilization, but in the somewhat longer run this pro-Western President of this Islamic country would create only more violent opposition to his rule. In the long run, Ms Bhutto’s assassination does not bring any real advantage for Musharraf.

Destabilization

On the contrary, Ms Bhutto’s assassination only furthers the destabilization of Pakistan, the last thing Musharraf wants. His regime’s eight years of harsh military rule, its lack of success in raising economic conditions, its open disregard for legality and perhaps most of all its professed pro-Western stance in combating “Islamist” terrorism in this country where a majority adheres to a strict interpretation of Islam, have made Pakistan’s President very unpopular.

Under enormous internal and international pressure, Musharraf recently agreed to put an end to military rule and to hold parliamentary elections in January, which would most probably have been won by his greatest opponent, Ms Bhutto. Ms Bhutto’s death is more a blow to the re-emergence of a functioning democratic system than a win for Musharraf. He would have had a far greater chance of disabling her influence within the system, either by manufacturing new corruption “evidence” against her or by unveiling real evidence, or perhaps by making her into a close ally (which would have taken away most of her credibility), than by having her killed like this. Without the acknowledged political opposition leader who - at least in the eyes of “the masses” - strove for real democracy, the political system is further disabled and political life for Musharraf becomes much, much more difficult.

The Taliban, al-Qa’ida, ISI - and the US

If we want to know who had Ms Bhutto killed, we must ask who of those involved with Pakistani politics can professionally plan and carry out such an attack, and who of those that can do this most benefit from her death.

It has become a kind of established tradition to point fingers at India when there’s trouble in Pakistan, since the two countries have been more-or-less at each others’ throats for over half a century. India certainly likes to see its neighbour in serious disarray, but it really cannot be expected to have an interest in seeing at its north-western borders the chaos and anarchy that ultimately may result from the serious destabilization of Pakistan.

Was it then, perhaps, a lone gunman? Some madman with a deadly grudge and a gun? That is out of the question. Raw footage and eyewitness accounts of the assassination make it clear that there were two explosions and several gunshots; clearly it was not the work of a lone gunman.

Quite the contrary: an explosion, followed by gunshots and another explosion are indications of a military-style operation. Images of a man with a handgun firing at close range have been widely televised, but raw footage, as well as multiple eyewitness-accounts, paint a different picture. Eyewitnesses saw “men with long-barrelled rifles” before the attack; they saw someone firing from the roof of a nearby cinema, as well as from two other directions. Whoever the man with the handgun was and whatever his involvement, this was a well-planned and surgically executed operation.

A rough chronology seems to be that first there was an explosion as a decoy, to draw attention and create chaos; then Ms Bhutto was fired upon from several directions (so as to minimize her chances of survival), followed by the quick detonation of a second pack of explosives (so as to enhance chaos, as well as destroy the crime scene).

So who can carry out such an operation and who seeks the destabilization of Pakistan?

That limits the number of candidates to four: the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, ISI, and the US government. The Taliban are on the rise in Afghanistan again, and they already effectively control significant parts of the northern Pakistani regions of North and South Waziristan, which share a largely open border with Afghanistan - and the Taliban are looking to spread their brand of extremist Islamic fundamentalism further into Pakistan. For them, further destabilization of the country is very helpful. The Musharraf regime has not taken much hard action against the Taliban, for fear of further alienating the population of the northern provinces, which has very strict Islamic views, as well as cultural and family ties to the adjoining Afghan border region. Ms Bhutto, proponent of a secular civil democracy, was a principled opponent of the Taliban. It was expected that she would, when Prime Minister, organize tougher action against the Taliban - and she would certainly have become Prime Minister.

Nuclear weapons

al-Qa’ida wanted Ms Bhutto dead for years. There exist today many “regional” al-Qa’idas around the globe, but here we mean the original of that name. Ms Bhutto was high on this al-Qa’ida’s target list, partly for the same reasons, the Taliban have, but more so for other reasons. It was Ms Bhutto’s often stated intention to allow US troops to hunt al-Qa’ida more actively on Pakistani soil and to allow the IAEA to question Mr. A.K. Khan on his nuclear arms trade. Mrs Bhutto, from al-Qa’ida’s point of view, was even more “Westernized” than President Musharraf and therefore a very valuable ideological target.

Moreover, “Westernized” though she was, she was able to unite a substantial part of the population and thus prevent or delay the desired collapse of the Pakistani political system and the country’s possible subsequent fragmentation. Whereas the Taliban, as a regional force, sees the collapse of Pakistani central government a goal in itself; for al-Qa’ida, which has a global strategy, it would open up a real chance of getting control of one or more weapons from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan’s nuclear command structure is somewhat decentralized, in order to prevent the nuclear weapons from being inoperable in case the President is killed – yet, so far, the President’s national authority keeps the system in place. If you destabilize the country, you may weaken the national authority and hence the command structure sufficiently to get control of one or more of the country’s 60-odd nuclear weapons. The Taliban lack the expertise to handle nuclear devices; al-Qa’ida certainly does not.

Certainly, ISI, Pakistan’s large and powerful intelligence service, had an interest in the execution of Ms Bhutto. Remember, Islam in Pakistan is largely of a very strict kind - so it should not be surprising that such “fundamentalism” also runs through ISI. That doesn’t hamper ISI in being a very good (i.e. effective) intelligence service. ISI did - and does - support a wide range of shady groups and organizations in Asia and in the Middle East, so as to keep abreast of developing trends and to have a good foothold in many places. ISI has long supported the Taliban.

For example, in 1979, it began to facilitate extensively a long-term CIA operation in Afghanistan to help the Taliban and others (among whom was Osama bin Laden) fight the Soviets (nowadays people tend to forget that Osama once was a de facto CIA operative.) After the retreat of the Soviets, ISI kept strong, sympathetic, religion-based ties to the Taliban and other “Islamist” groups. This should have stopped after September 11, 2001, but it didn’t.

For example, only a few years ago, NATO forces captured a large number of Pakistani Taliban fighters in an Afghan-Pakistani border region, many of whom provided details about ISI funding and running Taliban training camps (even in Pakistan) and about ISI providing documents, money, and weapons. It is not surprising that a leaked report from the British Ministry of Defence in 2006 stated that “(...) indirectly, Pakistan, through the ISI, has been supporting terrorism and extremism” [emphasis is mine - JB]. Among experts, it is an accepted fact that the “sophistication” of al-Qa’ida, in comparison to the Taliban, has a specific attraction to fundamentalist members of the higher echelons of ISI.

According to several reliable Western intelligence sources, ISI is riddled with al-Qa’ida sympathisers. Obviously, ISI (or elements of that organization) had a significant interest in stopping Ms Bhutto. Given the level of influence ISI has with the Taliban and with al-Qa’ida in Pakistan, neither would assassinate a prominent political figure in Pakistan without, at the very least, ISI’s consent - but since ISI is also strongly influenced and partly funded by the CIA, it is nearly inconceivable that the high-profile execution of Ms Bhutto would have been possible without American approval.

A much larger scale

So let’s widen the view. There are those outside of the Pakistani “domain” who benefit, and who benefit on a much larger scale. The White House has long accused President Musharraf (whose Presidency is a tight-rope-act between Westernism and Pakistani Islam) of not doing enough in the “War on Terror”, but they can not intervene as long as Pakistan is a coherent state with a lot of anti-Americanism filling the state structure. So, rather than wait until Ms Bhutto would become Prime Minister and allow US forces under Pakistani “guidance” to hunt al-Qa’ida - and go through all the troubles of having US forces be “associated” with Pakistani politics - the US government would gladly see the state of Pakistan collapse.

That would enable larger deployment of US forces, for example, based upon the argument that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would no longer be safe. At the same time, the pretext of “bringing democracy to the Muslim world” would again be used, knowing full well that this would create more terrorists.

American military planning is already under way for a larger-scale intervention, this year; troops are already being prepared; for example, despite the official position that there are less than a hundred US military personnel in Pakistan, in Punjab, there are secret US military bases with troop levels totalling, at present, a few thousand - and Punjab isn’t the only region that has US combat troops present.

Traditional mainstream media are being fed stories that underline the “need” for US intervention. Scenarios are already being floated to carve up Pakistan into “Greater Baluchistan” (which is now Pakistan’s largest province) and some other new “states” in which to install puppet regimes.

All in all, the White House needs terrorism as its blanket excuse for intervention. Since ISI is both strongly CIA-influenced, as well as riddled with al-Qa’ida, it is not only that the Bhutto assassination could not plausibly have been organized without the ISI, it is also ISI which carried out American orders.

If the plan works, the weakening or even collapse of the state of Pakistan will create a new battlefield badly needed by the White House. The “War on Terror” (as the War on Islam is often termed), like most wars, needs expansion or it collapses. If you project an “Enemy”, you also need the “Enemy” to be successful at times.

Don’t be surprised if al-Qa’ida suddenly has nuclear weapons.

Without success for the Enemy, you may no longer be sufficiently able to instill fear in the people and have them follow you.

The White House needs the destabilization of Pakistan to continue the “War on Terror”. Ms Bhutto’s execution is one big step towards that goal.

John Berlin

U.N. OBSERVER & International Report

[Paul Rigby]

From the POV of the beneficiaries of the war on abstract nouns, the assassination is such a timely boon:

the nascent Caliphate gets nukes...

http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina...=4239&blz=1

John Berlin: Why the US Wants the Collapse of Pakistan + UPDATE

2008-01-04

The death of Ms Bhutto, who would certainly have become Pakistan’s new Prime minister, throws Pakistan into deeper chaos. It even brings the prospect of the possible collapse of Pakistan as a national state within our horizon. Whereas the Taliban, al-Qa’ida and ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence service) all had a significant interest in killing her, the US government benefits the most from Ms Bhutto’s death.

Some things about Ms Bhutto were not very favourable. Over the years, there were several heavy allegations of corruption (in particular: making illegal profits from government contracts) and abuse of power (in particular: the laundering of money that was gained by government contract profiteering) - and investigations in these matters did indeed come up with serious indications of wrongdoings worth hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other hand, some of the evidence supporting the allegations appears to have been fabricated by Ms Bhutto’s political opponents - but such things somehow “belong” to Pakistan’s political system; real corruption as well as the manufacturing of “evidence” against political competitors are part of Pakistan’s internal political gameplay.

Killing off a high-profile competitor is something very different; it doesn’t fit Pakistani political culture and it will not bring anyone within the present political system any enduring political gain, not even Ms Bhutto’s arch-opponent, President Musharraf. The President may, perhaps, use the situation for a new clampdown on the country, in order to prevent further destabilization, but in the somewhat longer run this pro-Western President of this Islamic country would create only more violent opposition to his rule. In the long run, Ms Bhutto’s assassination does not bring any real advantage for Musharraf.

Destabilization

On the contrary, Ms Bhutto’s assassination only furthers the destabilization of Pakistan, the last thing Musharraf wants. His regime’s eight years of harsh military rule, its lack of success in raising economic conditions, its open disregard for legality and perhaps most of all its professed pro-Western stance in combating “Islamist” terrorism in this country where a majority adheres to a strict interpretation of Islam, have made Pakistan’s President very unpopular.

Under enormous internal and international pressure, Musharraf recently agreed to put an end to military rule and to hold parliamentary elections in January, which would most probably have been won by his greatest opponent, Ms Bhutto. Ms Bhutto’s death is more a blow to the re-emergence of a functioning democratic system than a win for Musharraf. He would have had a far greater chance of disabling her influence within the system, either by manufacturing new corruption “evidence” against her or by unveiling real evidence, or perhaps by making her into a close ally (which would have taken away most of her credibility), than by having her killed like this. Without the acknowledged political opposition leader who - at least in the eyes of “the masses” - strove for real democracy, the political system is further disabled and political life for Musharraf becomes much, much more difficult.

The Taliban, al-Qa’ida, ISI - and the US

If we want to know who had Ms Bhutto killed, we must ask who of those involved with Pakistani politics can professionally plan and carry out such an attack, and who of those that can do this most benefit from her death.

It has become a kind of established tradition to point fingers at India when there’s trouble in Pakistan, since the two countries have been more-or-less at each others’ throats for over half a century. India certainly likes to see its neighbour in serious disarray, but it really cannot be expected to have an interest in seeing at its north-western borders the chaos and anarchy that ultimately may result from the serious destabilization of Pakistan.

Was it then, perhaps, a lone gunman? Some madman with a deadly grudge and a gun? That is out of the question. Raw footage and eyewitness accounts of the assassination make it clear that there were two explosions and several gunshots; clearly it was not the work of a lone gunman.

Quite the contrary: an explosion, followed by gunshots and another explosion are indications of a military-style operation. Images of a man with a handgun firing at close range have been widely televised, but raw footage, as well as multiple eyewitness-accounts, paint a different picture. Eyewitnesses saw “men with long-barrelled rifles” before the attack; they saw someone firing from the roof of a nearby cinema, as well as from two other directions. Whoever the man with the handgun was and whatever his involvement, this was a well-planned and surgically executed operation.

A rough chronology seems to be that first there was an explosion as a decoy, to draw attention and create chaos; then Ms Bhutto was fired upon from several directions (so as to minimize her chances of survival), followed by the quick detonation of a second pack of explosives (so as to enhance chaos, as well as destroy the crime scene).

So who can carry out such an operation and who seeks the destabilization of Pakistan?

That limits the number of candidates to four: the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, ISI, and the US government. The Taliban are on the rise in Afghanistan again, and they already effectively control significant parts of the northern Pakistani regions of North and South Waziristan, which share a largely open border with Afghanistan - and the Taliban are looking to spread their brand of extremist Islamic fundamentalism further into Pakistan. For them, further destabilization of the country is very helpful. The Musharraf regime has not taken much hard action against the Taliban, for fear of further alienating the population of the northern provinces, which has very strict Islamic views, as well as cultural and family ties to the adjoining Afghan border region. Ms Bhutto, proponent of a secular civil democracy, was a principled opponent of the Taliban. It was expected that she would, when Prime Minister, organize tougher action against the Taliban - and she would certainly have become Prime Minister.

Nuclear weapons

al-Qa’ida wanted Ms Bhutto dead for years. There exist today many “regional” al-Qa’idas around the globe, but here we mean the original of that name. Ms Bhutto was high on this al-Qa’ida’s target list, partly for the same reasons, the Taliban have, but more so for other reasons. It was Ms Bhutto’s often stated intention to allow US troops to hunt al-Qa’ida more actively on Pakistani soil and to allow the IAEA to question Mr. A.K. Khan on his nuclear arms trade. Mrs Bhutto, from al-Qa’ida’s point of view, was even more “Westernized” than President Musharraf and therefore a very valuable ideological target.

Moreover, “Westernized” though she was, she was able to unite a substantial part of the population and thus prevent or delay the desired collapse of the Pakistani political system and the country’s possible subsequent fragmentation. Whereas the Taliban, as a regional force, sees the collapse of Pakistani central government a goal in itself; for al-Qa’ida, which has a global strategy, it would open up a real chance of getting control of one or more weapons from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan’s nuclear command structure is somewhat decentralized, in order to prevent the nuclear weapons from being inoperable in case the President is killed – yet, so far, the President’s national authority keeps the system in place. If you destabilize the country, you may weaken the national authority and hence the command structure sufficiently to get control of one or more of the country’s 60-odd nuclear weapons. The Taliban lack the expertise to handle nuclear devices; al-Qa’ida certainly does not.

Certainly, ISI, Pakistan’s large and powerful intelligence service, had an interest in the execution of Ms Bhutto. Remember, Islam in Pakistan is largely of a very strict kind - so it should not be surprising that such “fundamentalism” also runs through ISI. That doesn’t hamper ISI in being a very good (i.e. effective) intelligence service. ISI did - and does - support a wide range of shady groups and organizations in Asia and in the Middle East, so as to keep abreast of developing trends and to have a good foothold in many places. ISI has long supported the Taliban.

For example, in 1979, it began to facilitate extensively a long-term CIA operation in Afghanistan to help the Taliban and others (among whom was Osama bin Laden) fight the Soviets (nowadays people tend to forget that Osama once was a de facto CIA operative.) After the retreat of the Soviets, ISI kept strong, sympathetic, religion-based ties to the Taliban and other “Islamist” groups. This should have stopped after September 11, 2001, but it didn’t.

For example, only a few years ago, NATO forces captured a large number of Pakistani Taliban fighters in an Afghan-Pakistani border region, many of whom provided details about ISI funding and running Taliban training camps (even in Pakistan) and about ISI providing documents, money, and weapons. It is not surprising that a leaked report from the British Ministry of Defence in 2006 stated that “(...) indirectly, Pakistan, through the ISI, has been supporting terrorism and extremism” [emphasis is mine - JB]. Among experts, it is an accepted fact that the “sophistication” of al-Qa’ida, in comparison to the Taliban, has a specific attraction to fundamentalist members of the higher echelons of ISI.

According to several reliable Western intelligence sources, ISI is riddled with al-Qa’ida sympathisers. Obviously, ISI (or elements of that organization) had a significant interest in stopping Ms Bhutto. Given the level of influence ISI has with the Taliban and with al-Qa’ida in Pakistan, neither would assassinate a prominent political figure in Pakistan without, at the very least, ISI’s consent - but since ISI is also strongly influenced and partly funded by the CIA, it is nearly inconceivable that the high-profile execution of Ms Bhutto would have been possible without American approval.

A much larger scale

So let’s widen the view. There are those outside of the Pakistani “domain” who benefit, and who benefit on a much larger scale. The White House has long accused President Musharraf (whose Presidency is a tight-rope-act between Westernism and Pakistani Islam) of not doing enough in the “War on Terror”, but they can not intervene as long as Pakistan is a coherent state with a lot of anti-Americanism filling the state structure. So, rather than wait until Ms Bhutto would become Prime Minister and allow US forces under Pakistani “guidance” to hunt al-Qa’ida - and go through all the troubles of having US forces be “associated” with Pakistani politics - the US government would gladly see the state of Pakistan collapse.

That would enable larger deployment of US forces, for example, based upon the argument that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would no longer be safe. At the same time, the pretext of “bringing democracy to the Muslim world” would again be used, knowing full well that this would create more terrorists.

American military planning is already under way for a larger-scale intervention, this year; troops are already being prepared; for example, despite the official position that there are less than a hundred US military personnel in Pakistan, in Punjab, there are secret US military bases with troop levels totalling, at present, a few thousand - and Punjab isn’t the only region that has US combat troops present.

Traditional mainstream media are being fed stories that underline the “need” for US intervention. Scenarios are already being floated to carve up Pakistan into “Greater Baluchistan” (which is now Pakistan’s largest province) and some other new “states” in which to install puppet regimes.

All in all, the White House needs terrorism as its blanket excuse for intervention. Since ISI is both strongly CIA-influenced, as well as riddled with al-Qa’ida, it is not only that the Bhutto assassination could not plausibly have been organized without the ISI, it is also ISI which carried out American orders.

If the plan works, the weakening or even collapse of the state of Pakistan will create a new battlefield badly needed by the White House. The “War on Terror” (as the War on Islam is often termed), like most wars, needs expansion or it collapses. If you project an “Enemy”, you also need the “Enemy” to be successful at times.

Don’t be surprised if al-Qa’ida suddenly has nuclear weapons.

Without success for the Enemy, you may no longer be sufficiently able to instill fear in the people and have them follow you.

The White House needs the destabilization of Pakistan to continue the “War on Terror”. Ms Bhutto’s execution is one big step towards that goal.

John Berlin

U.N. OBSERVER & International Report

[Paul Rigby]

...the US protection racket can rachet up a level to ensure the newly-menaced Gulf States continue to trade oil in dollars; and spend their vast reserves on yet more US weaponry they will likely never use and will never really control...

Oil, sweet oil...and the CIA.

http://moinansari.wordpress.com/2008/01/06...he-elephants-d/

Moin Ansari’s Disquisitions & Fulminations: A fresh and independent analysis of events different from the stale cookie cutter news zone

CIA connection… BENAZIR BHUTTO’S ASSASSINATION WAS PRE-PLANNED: THE ZIA MODEL WITH A TWIST: The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan.

THE GREAT GAME CONTINUES: When the Elephants dance, the grass gets crushed. The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan. Another Pakistani leaders falls to an international game between the USA, and China and Russia, and Pakistanis again pay the price

Extract:

OLD CIA DIRTY TRICKS DEPT. & CIA DOLLARS CREATE DEMONSTRATIONS:

Tons of money was sent to Pakistan for a well organized campaign to launch street demonstrations against President Musharraf. As in 1979, during the PNA demonstration millions of dollars were dispersed among professional agitators. Uzbek and Tajiks were recruited to create mayhem in Pakistan.

A shadowy group called the BLA, a Cold War relic, rose from the dead to restart a separatist war in southwestern Pakistan. Bugti’s death was a blow to neo-BLA, but the shadowy group’s backers didn’t repent. His grandson, Brahmdagh Bugti, is currently enjoying a safe shelter in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he continues to operate and remote-control his assets in Pakistan.

Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been inserted into Pakistan to aggravate extremist passions here, especially after the Red Mosque operation.

Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by individuals pretending to be Islamists, when no known Islamic group has claimed responsibility. . A succession of “religious rebels” with suspicious foreign links have suddenly emerged in Pakistan over the past months claiming to be “Pakistani Taliban”. Some of the names include Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and now the Maulana of Swat. Some of them have used, and are using, encrypted communication equipment far superior to what the Pakistani military owns.

Money and weapons have been fed into the religious movements and al-Qaeda remnants in the tribal areas.

Exploiting the situation, assets within the Pakistani media started promoting the idea that the Pakistani military was killing its own people. The rest of the unsuspecting media quickly picked up this message. Some botched US and Pakistani military operations against al-Qaeda that caused civilian deaths accidentally fed this media campaign. This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a correspondent for “Jane’s Defence Weekly”, a private intelligence service founded by experts close to British intelligence.

(Ahmed Quraishi is an investigative reporter, currently hosting a weekly political talk show titled Worldview from Islamabad.)

PAKISTAN IS FULLY AWARE OF THE INDIAN INTERFERENCE IN PAKISTAN WITH THE CIA:

The four Indian consulates in Afghanistan are disproportionate to the number needed for a very small population. Compare to number of Indian consulates in the USA.

In the Pakistani consulate, diplomats have a very different take on what the Indians are up to here, deep in Afghanistan’s Pushtun belt, which Pakistan considers its own backyard. They think the Indians are spying, stirring up ethnic trouble in Pakistan and generally undermining the security of its lightly defended western border.

At the end of 2002 India reopened four consulates in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s reaction to the Indians’ arrival in Jalalabad and Kandahar recalls that of America when Soviet “advisers” turned up in Cuba in 1961.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky says the following:

Pakistan’s Oil and Gas reserves

Pakistan’s extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.

Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.

The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world’s daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)

Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, and Australia’s BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists

Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.

The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to “Liberation Armies” ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.

The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo’s KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).

The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.

Baloch population: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan

Washington favors the creation of a “Greater Balochistan” which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.

“The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province. The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy” (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).

Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan” (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.

In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan “because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity”. This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)

“Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.” (Ibid)

It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf. (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006).

Plus ca change…

Editorial, “People-to-People Help Better Than Espionage,” The Charleston Gazette, 3 October 1963, p.4:

In addition, the CIA has played a dangerous game of activating anti-Pakistani groups within India whose ties in Pakistan are strong. This action was initiated in retaliation for Pakistan agreements with China.”

[Paul Rigby]

...the US protection racket can rachet up a level to ensure the newly-menaced Gulf States continue to trade oil in dollars; and spend their vast reserves on yet more US weaponry they will likely never use and will never really control...

Oil, sweet oil...and the CIA.

http://moinansari.wordpress.com/2008/01/06...he-elephants-d/

Moin Ansari’s Disquisitions & Fulminations: A fresh and independent analysis of events different from the stale cookie cutter news zone

CIA connection… BENAZIR BHUTTO’S ASSASSINATION WAS PRE-PLANNED: THE ZIA MODEL WITH A TWIST: The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan.

THE GREAT GAME CONTINUES: When the Elephants dance, the grass gets crushed. The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan. Another Pakistani leaders falls to an international game between the USA, and China and Russia, and Pakistanis again pay the price

Extract:

OLD CIA DIRTY TRICKS DEPT. & CIA DOLLARS CREATE DEMONSTRATIONS:

Tons of money was sent to Pakistan for a well organized campaign to launch street demonstrations against President Musharraf. As in 1979, during the PNA demonstration millions of dollars were dispersed among professional agitators. Uzbek and Tajiks were recruited to create mayhem in Pakistan.

A shadowy group called the BLA, a Cold War relic, rose from the dead to restart a separatist war in southwestern Pakistan. Bugti’s death was a blow to neo-BLA, but the shadowy group’s backers didn’t repent. His grandson, Brahmdagh Bugti, is currently enjoying a safe shelter in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he continues to operate and remote-control his assets in Pakistan.

Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been inserted into Pakistan to aggravate extremist passions here, especially after the Red Mosque operation.

Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by individuals pretending to be Islamists, when no known Islamic group has claimed responsibility. . A succession of “religious rebels” with suspicious foreign links have suddenly emerged in Pakistan over the past months claiming to be “Pakistani Taliban”. Some of the names include Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and now the Maulana of Swat. Some of them have used, and are using, encrypted communication equipment far superior to what the Pakistani military owns.

Money and weapons have been fed into the religious movements and al-Qaeda remnants in the tribal areas.

Exploiting the situation, assets within the Pakistani media started promoting the idea that the Pakistani military was killing its own people. The rest of the unsuspecting media quickly picked up this message. Some botched US and Pakistani military operations against al-Qaeda that caused civilian deaths accidentally fed this media campaign. This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a correspondent for “Jane’s Defence Weekly”, a private intelligence service founded by experts close to British intelligence.

(Ahmed Quraishi is an investigative reporter, currently hosting a weekly political talk show titled Worldview from Islamabad.)

PAKISTAN IS FULLY AWARE OF THE INDIAN INTERFERENCE IN PAKISTAN WITH THE CIA:

The four Indian consulates in Afghanistan are disproportionate to the number needed for a very small population. Compare to number of Indian consulates in the USA.

In the Pakistani consulate, diplomats have a very different take on what the Indians are up to here, deep in Afghanistan’s Pushtun belt, which Pakistan considers its own backyard. They think the Indians are spying, stirring up ethnic trouble in Pakistan and generally undermining the security of its lightly defended western border.

At the end of 2002 India reopened four consulates in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s reaction to the Indians’ arrival in Jalalabad and Kandahar recalls that of America when Soviet “advisers” turned up in Cuba in 1961.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky says the following:

Pakistan’s Oil and Gas reserves

Pakistan’s extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.

Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.

The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world’s daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)

Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, and Australia’s BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists

Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.

The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to “Liberation Armies” ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.

The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo’s KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).

The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.

Baloch population: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan

Washington favors the creation of a “Greater Balochistan” which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.

“The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province. The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy” (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).

Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan” (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.

In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan “because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity”. This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)

“Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.” (Ibid)

It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf. (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006).

Plus ca change…

Editorial, “People-to-People Help Better Than Espionage,” The Charleston Gazette, 3 October 1963, p.4:

In addition, the CIA has played a dangerous game of activating anti-Pakistani groups within India whose ties in Pakistan are strong. This action was initiated in retaliation for Pakistan agreements with China.”

[Paul Rigby]

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists

Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides.

Long-term US plans for Pakistan and Balochistan...Or, how the spooks appear wise:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/article...6,prtpage-1.cms

Pak will be failed state by 2015: CIA

13 Feb 2005, 1011 hrs IST,PTI

NEW DELHI: Pakistan will be a "failed" state by 2015 as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons, premier US intelligence agencies have said in an assessment report.

Forecasting a "Yugoslavia-like fate" for Pakistan, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a jointly prepared Global Futures Assessment Report have said "by year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation".

"Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction," said the report quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hasan in an article in the ' South Asia Tribune '.

Titled 'Will Pakistan Army invade Balochistan as per the NIC-CIA Plan', the former senior diplomat said "in the context of Balochistan, one would like to refer to the 2015 NIC report. It forecast a Yugoslavia-like fate for Pakistan.

"The military operation that has been put in motion there would further distance the Baloch people from rest of the country. That perhaps is the (NIC-CIA) Plan," Hasan said.

"Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government's control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi," the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.

Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, "are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?"

His article comes in the backdrop of growing violence between the Balochis and the Pakistani security forces stationed in the gas-rich province.

The recent moves by the security forces to evict all residents within a 15-km radius of the Pakistan's biggest Sui gas plant and the decision to create a cantonment near it has given a fillip to the anti-Islamabad insurgent activities of Balochi groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army, reports said.

The reports said Pakistan was taking the "most drastic step yet" in its bid to crush a deadly tribal rebellion by forcibly evicting all residents from around 500 dwellings within 15 kilometres of the country's biggest Sui gasfield.

The Army says such a step would prevent further attacks and protect residents from the devastating consequences of a major explosion, the reports said.

[Paul Rigby]

Fascinating piece from Global Research site:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7709

The plan to topple Pakistan's military?

By Ahmed Quraishi

Global Research, December 30, 2007

The New Nation, Pakistan - 2007-12-12

Another outstanding piece from the Global Research crew:

Using Benazir Bhutto for Imperial Gain

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, January 14, 2008

Benazir Bhutto led the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) as "chairperson for life" until her death. She was the privileged daughter of former Pakistan President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 at the likely behest of Washington and replaced by military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. He later outlived his usefulness and died in a "mysterious" plane crash. The CIA may have arranged the crash that allowed Bhutto to become Prime Minister in 1988.

She sought the post to avenge her father's death and twice held it as the first ever woman PM of an Islamic state - first from 1988 - 1990, then again from 1993 - 1996. In the end, she was too clever by half and it cost her. She lost out thinking she'd cut a binding deal with the Bush administration to return her to power a third time as Pervez Musharraf's number two and fig leaf democratic face in the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed. On November 6, she may have been right when she returned from self-imposed exile. Like now, the country was in turmoil, and Washington arranged a power-sharing deal (so it seemed) to restore stability in the wake of this series of events:

-- Musharraf suspended Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in March, falsely accused him of "misconduct and misuse of authority," and used that excuse to remove a key official likely to block his plan for another five year term as President while illegally remaining chief of army staff (COAS) where the real power lies.

-- The response was outrage from opposition parties, lawyers organizations and human rights groups. They called the action unconstitutional and publicly rallied against it.

-- On October 6, Musharraf held a bogus election like all others in a country where democracy is a joke. It was stage-managed by the military, clearly unconstitutional, and Musharraf won all but five parliamentary votes and swept the Provincial Assembly balloting.

-- Afterwards, Pakistan's Supreme Court said no winner could be declared until it ruled if Musharraf could run for office in his joint COAS capacity. Constitutionally, he can't, protests erupted, the country has been in turmoil since, and Musharraf lost all credibility;

-- That was Bhutto's chance to return, again serve in the post she twice before held, and she thought her Washington allies arranged it. Maybe yes or maybe not. It didn't matter that she was being used - to be a democratic face and fig leaf adjunct to Musharraf's dictatorship, but whatever was then clearly changed by December 27 without Bhutto's knowledge. Now she's gone, and Musharraf nominally transferred his army chief post to close ally General Ashfaq Kayani last November. He also lifted a six week long state of emergency in mid-December ahead of the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed after Bhutto's assassination until February 18 as of this writing.

Today, she's bigger in death than life, spoken of reverentially as a populist, and her 19 year old son, Bilawal (in school at Oxford), now heads the PPP as its figurehead leader and third generation family dynasty standard-bearer with his father, Asif Zardari, co-party chairman and de facto chief. More on him below.

Who Was Benazir Bhutto and Why Is She Important

Who was this woman, why the worldwide attention, and why another article with so many written and more likely coming? Bhutto was an aristocrat, privileged in every respect, and raised in opulence as the Harvard and Oxford-educated daughter of a wealthy landowning father who founded Pakistan's main opposition party (Pakistan Peoples Party - PPP) that Bhutto headed after his death.

While in office, she was no democrat in a military-run nation since its artificial creation in 1947. Elections, when held, are rigged, and the army runs things for Washington as a vassal state in a nation called a military with a country, not a country with a military. Its Army strength is 550,000, its Air Force and Navy 70,000, and 510,000 reservists back them with plenty of US-supplied weapons for the "Global War on Terrorism."

Today, FBI agents freely roam the streets, the Pentagon operates out of Pakistan military bases, and it has de facto control of its air space as part of the Bush administration's permanent state of war "that will not end in our lifetime." Pakistan is a client state, but what choice does it have. Post-9/11, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage warned Musharraf to comply or be declared a hostile power and "bombed back to the stone age." He got the message and a multi-billion dollar reward as well.

Bhutto knows the game, too, and the New York Times explained that she "always understood Washington more than Washington understood her" in a feature December 30 article called "How Bhutto Won Washington." Her relationship began in the spring of 1984 on her first "important trip" to the Capitol. At the time, she tried to persuade the Reagan administration it would be better served with her in power, but to do it she had to overcome her father's anti-western reputation. With considerable help she succeeded by assuring congressional members she was on board and supported Washington's proxy war on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Faults aside, she had her attributes, and The Times called her "completely charming," very beautiful, and a woman "who could flatter the senators," understand their concerns, and better serve US interests than the man who hanged her father, General Zia-ul-Haq. At the same time, she began working with the Democratic National Committee's Executive Director, Mark Siegel, who later lobbied for her government when she was Prime Minister. Early on, he walked her through the halls of Congress, helped her develop relationships, and made her understand that to get along she had to go along.

She caught on fast, and it made her Prime Minister in December, 1988 after she ran for the post, won a plurality but not a majority, and got Reagan administration officials to arrange with Pakistan's acting President to have her form a government. According to a Washington insider, it was the "direct result of her networking, of her being able to persuade the Washington establishment, the foreign policy community, the press, the think tanks, that she was a democrat," a moderate, and that she backed the US Afghanistan agenda against the Soviets. Public rhetoric aside, she was on board ever since, but she paid with her life by not understanding how Washington operates: like other rogue states - using leaders and aspiring ones, then discarding them.

In the end, it didn't matter that she twice survived dismissal from office on corruption charges or that she managed to co-exist with her country's military and intelligence service (ISI) that deeply mistrusted her. Until her luck ran out, she maintained ties to Washington and key members of the press. She politicked well and "understood the nature of political life, which is to stay in touch with (key) people whether you're in or out of office" and let them know you back them.

Like others of her stature, she also relied on a PR firm to arrange meetings with the powerful and had plenty of resources to do it. She "kept up her networking," but she paid with her life. She tried to convince Washington that Musharraf's "war on terrorism" failed, she could do it better as a loyal ally, and she would eliminate extremist elements (meaning the Taliban and Al-Queda) by a determined effort to maintain pressure.

It sounded good but was risky and dangerous. Pakistan's army opposes it, especially in the ranks; a stepped-up effort assures a huge public outcry; disrupting the Taliban benefits India; and trying and failing might embolden their forces as the US occupation learned in Afghanistan. In the end, Washington and Pakistan's ISI may have concluded Bhutto was more a liability than an asset and had to go. Things came to a head on December 27, she's now a martyr, and larger than life dead than alive.

It wasn't that way as Prime Minister, however, when her tenure was marked by nepotism, opportunism, scheming, corruption, poor governance and selling out to the West. Her early popularity faded, especially when word got out about her businessman husband's dealings. Asif Zardari was known as "Mr. Ten Percent" (by some as "Mr. Thirty Percent") because he demanded a cut from deals as the Prime Minister's spouse and in some cases wanted more.

He was also reportedly into drugs trafficking and was investigated for it. With his wife in power, he amassed billions including what he stole in public funds that was even excessive by Pakistan standards and enough to get the country's President to sack Bhutto after 20 months in office. Whether personally culpable or not didn't matter. As Prime Minister, she made her husband a cabinet minister, gave him free rein to dispense favors in return for kick-backs, had to know about them, there was no evidence she objected, and she enjoyed the riches in office and thereafter.

In spite of it, Bhutto got a second chance. She returned as Prime Minister in 1993 for another three years, but was again dispatched on even greater corruption and incompetence charges than in her first term - this time by President Farooq Leghari, a member of the PPP and someone she thought was an ally. He certainly had cause as the amount stolen earlier was prologue for the fortune she and her husband (as Minister of Investment) amassed in her second term.

It was enough to get Transparency International, an independent watchdog group, to name Pakistan the second most corrupt country in the world in 1996 (Bhutto's last year in office). It also got her convicted in Switzerland of money laundering and bribe-taking and made her a fugitive with charges pending in Spain, Britain and her native Pakistan. That was until Musharaff signed a US-brokered "reconciliation ordinance," absolved her of all outstanding offenses, and allowed her to run for Prime Minister a third time as part of a power-sharing deal with her as number two.

Bhutto's earlier tenure had another notable feature as well. It was when Pakistan's military and ISI established the Taliban with covert CIA help. The link still exists, and at a September, 2006 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, General James Jones, former NATO Supreme Commander (who oversaw US-NATO Afghanistan operations), testified that it was "generally accepted" that Taliban leaders operated out Quetta, Pakistan, the capital of Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.

Musharraf and other Pakistani officials deny it, but there's no hiding the facts or that nothing of consequence happens in Pakistan without Washington's knowledge and/or consent. It's also no secret that Pakistan's ISI is a CIA branch, and their regional activities are closely linked. Bhutto was on board, but what choice did she have.

All along, she was a daughter of privilege, acted like one, and enjoyed the good life the way billions allow. Today, the major media lionize her, but omit her dark side: as Prime Minister, she lusted for power, was arrogant and contemptuous, ignored the poor and Pakistani women, allowed outrageous laws to be enforced, gave the Army free reign including over nuclear weapons, and considered Pakistan her personal fiefdom. Her home was a $50 million mansion on 110 acres, and she ruled like a feudal overlord. The family still owns a 350 acre UK estate complete with helipad and polo pony stables, a mansion in Dubai, two Texas properties, six in Florida, more homes in France and large bank accounts strategically stashed around the world, including in the US and France.

From the time of her father's death to her own, Bhutto had close ties to Washington, the CIA, Pakistan's military, its ISI, as well as to the Taliban (established in her second term), "militant Islam" and Big Oil interests. She was a servant of power and pocketed billions for her efforts. In the end, she lost out and paid with her life on December 27.

Who Killed Bhutto and Why

Bhutto's now dead, shot in the back of the head by one or more assassins at close range, plus the effects of a suicide bombing that killed two dozen or more and wounded many others tightly packed around her. It happened in Rawalpindi, "no ordinary city" as Michel Chossudovsky explains. It's the home of Pakistan's military, its CIA-linked ISI, and is the country's de facto seat of power. Chossudovsky adds: "Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country's elite forces."

Rawalpindi and the country's capital, Islamabad, are sister cities, nine miles apart. They swarm with intelligence operatives including from CIA, and Chussodovsky stresses that Bhutto's assassination "was (no) haphazard event." Blaming Al-Queda misses the point, but that's how these schemes work. They're also clearer when convincing video is broadcast as UK's Channel 4 did on December 30. It debunked the official story and exposed Musharraf as a xxxx - that Bhutto died from a fractured skull "when she was thrown by the force of the (explosion's) shock wave (and) one of the levers of (her car's) sunroof hit her."

The video contradicts this. It shows a clean-shaven man in sunglasses watching close by with a concealed gun and the suspected suicide bomber behind him dressed in white. The gunman then approaches Bhutto's car and at point blank range fires three shots. Immediately after, the suicide bomber detonates his device, killing and wounding dozens nearby.

The question then is - not who killed her, but who ordered her killed and who profits from it? Musharraf quickly named the usual suspect - Al-Queda but ignored what William Engdahl observed in his January 4 Global Research article called "Bhutto's Assassination: Who Gains?" He notes how well protected political leaders are so it's no simple task killing them. "It requires agencies of professional intelligence training to insure the job is done" right, and no one can reveal who ordered it or the motive.

Engdahl also states that naming Al-Queda serves Musharraf and Washington. It increases public fear, revs up the "war on terror," and provides justification for it to continue. It also reinforces the Al-Queda myth as well as "enemy number one" bin Laden, and ignores the evidence that the CIA created both in the 1980s for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It's just as silent on the possibility bin Laden is dead, killed (as Bhutto told David Frost last fall) by Omar Sheikh whom the London Sunday Times called "no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan's military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles" of bin Laden and Al-Queda.

If true, a dead bin Laden disrupts Washington's national security doctrine that needs enemies to scare the public, eliminates "enemy number one" as the main one, and exposes strategically released bin Laden tapes as made-in-Washington frauds. Today, we're told that bin Laden-led Islamic terrorists endanger the West, but at the same time we use them for imperial gain as we did against the Soviets, in the Balkans and now do in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. If Al-Queda operatives killed Bhutto, it means Pakistan's ISI and CIA were involved, and what's more likely than that. Forget a lone gunman theory, a lose cannon terrorist or a sole anti-Bhutto assassin. Consider "Cui bono," examine the evidence, and it points to Washington and Islamabad.

Today in Pakistan, intrigue abounds, and the country is destabilized as Michel Chossudovsky observes in his December 30 Global Research article called "The Destabilization of Pakistan." Assassinating Bhutto contributes to it, and Chossudovsky sees a US-sponsored "regime change" ahead. Musharraf is so weak and discredited "continuity under military rule is no long the main thrust of US foreign policy." Musharraf's regime "cannot prevail," and Washington's scheme is "to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation."

From it, a new political leadership will emerge that will be "compliant," have "no commitment to (Pakistan's) national interest," and will be subservient to "US imperial interests, while concurrently....weakening....the central government (and fracturing) Pakistan's fragile federal structure."

It makes perfect sense as part of Washington's broader Middle East-Central Asia agenda. Pakistan is a key frontline state, a "geopolitical hub," with a central role to play in the "Global War on Terrorism." It includes "balkanizing" the country Yugoslavia-style the way it's planned for Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran - a simple divide and conquer strategy. Chossudovsky adds: "Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence (that worked up to now) has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization." The scheme is to foment "social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup" of the country.

It's a common US strategy with covert intelligence support, and consider The New York Times article on January 6 called "US Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan" to exploit Bhutto's death. It states that senior national security advisers (including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen) may "expand the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan" against Al-Queda and the Taliban to counteract their efforts and "destabilize the Pakistani government."

The article states that Musharraf and the military are on board, gives the usual boiler plate reasons, but omits what's really at stake even as it admits Musharraf is unpopular and a US intervention could "prompt a powerful popular backlash against" both countries.

Chussodovsky fills in the blanks and explains that US strategy aims to trigger "ethnic and religious strife," abet and finance "secessionist movements while also weakening" Musharraf's government. "The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State....redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan" and replace Musharraf in the process. He's unpopular, damaged goods and has to go.

Bhutto was an unwitting part of the scheme but not the way she planned. She thought Washington needed here, and she was right - not as Prime Minister but as a martyr to destabilize the country and break it up if the plan works. It may as internal secessionist elements are strong, especially in energy rich (mostly gas) Balochistan province, and "indications" are they're supported by "Britain and the US." The idea is a "Greater Balochistan" by integrating Baloch areas with those in Iran and southern Afghanistan.

Chossudovsky explains that it was not "accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council-CIA report predicted a 'Yugoslav-like fate' for Pakistan" through internally and externally manufactured "economic mismanagment." Remember also that the country split before in 1971 when East Pakistan became Bangladesh following months of civil war and against India that took a million or more lives. Pakistanis may face that prospect again as US plans unfold.

Future Outlook Remains Uncertain

Big questions remain, and key ones are will breakup plans work, who'll emerge with enough popular support to lead it, and will the public go along. They've got no incentive to do it once anger over Bhutto's death subsides, and recent polling data show overwhelming public opposition to US or other foreign intervention that's very much part of the scheme. In the end, their views don't count, and it may happen anyway through political intrigue and Washington-led brute force.

Reports prior to Bhutto's assassination point that way. They suggest US Special and other forces already operate in Pakistan, and head of US Special Operations Command, Admiral Eric Olson, arranged with Musharraf and Pakistan's military last summer and fall to substantially increase their numbers early this year. Involved as well is what The New York Times reported in November that the "US Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Queda" in the country's "frontier areas."

The scheme is similar to the effort in Iraq's al-Anbar province with bribes and weapons to seal a deal apparently now finalized. US Central Command Commander Admiral William Fallon alluded to it in a recent Voice of America interview by saying we're ready to provide "training, assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies," but he left out the bribing part that's part of these deals.

Where this will lead is speculation, but consider a feature Wall Street Journal January 8 article. It's headlined "Bhutto Killing Roils Province, Spurring Calls to Quit Pakistan" and calls Bhutto's native Sindh province (second largest of Pakistan's four provinces) the "Latest Fault Line In a Fractured Country; Like Occupied Territory."

Mourners filed past Bhutto's grave chanting "We don't want Pakistan," and in the wake of her death "Sindh has been swept by nationalist rage." Many in the province are "calling for outright independence," and support for separation has grown among rank and file PPP members. There's even talk of an "armed insurgency" as anger is directed against neighboring Punjab, the largest province, and home of the military, ISI and government.

The Journal quotes Qadir Magsi, head of the nationalist Sindh Taraqi Passand movement saying...."Bhutto was the last hope (for unity). Now this Pakistan must be broken up." The article continues saying what's happening in Sindh is already in play in the Northwest Frontier province where central government authority withered in recent years. In addition, Pakistan's Army has been embroiled in Baluchistan's insurgency for the past few years adding to overall instability. The theme of the Journal article is that calls for unity are falling on deaf ears, and one PPP veteran sums it up: "What we need is separation."

That suits Bush administration officials fine, they're likely stoking it, and one thing is clear. US forces are in the region to stay, and Washington under any administration (Democrat or Republican) intends to dominate this vital part of the world with its vast energy reserves. The strategy appears similar to the divide and conquer one in Yugoslavia. There it worked, but the Middle East and Central Asia aren't so simple. Stay tuned as events will likely accelerate, the media will highlight them, and it looks like stepped up conflict (and its fallout) is part of the plan.

Stephen Lendman is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.

© Copyright Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2008

The url address of this article is:

www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7791

[Paul Rigby]

Fascinating piece from Global Research site:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7709

The plan to topple Pakistan's military?

By Ahmed Quraishi

Global Research, December 30, 2007

The New Nation, Pakistan - 2007-12-12

Another outstanding piece from the Global Research crew:

Using Benazir Bhutto for Imperial Gain

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, January 14, 2008

Benazir Bhutto led the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) as "chairperson for life" until her death. She was the privileged daughter of former Pakistan President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 at the likely behest of Washington and replaced by military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. He later outlived his usefulness and died in a "mysterious" plane crash. The CIA may have arranged the crash that allowed Bhutto to become Prime Minister in 1988.

She sought the post to avenge her father's death and twice held it as the first ever woman PM of an Islamic state - first from 1988 - 1990, then again from 1993 - 1996. In the end, she was too clever by half and it cost her. She lost out thinking she'd cut a binding deal with the Bush administration to return her to power a third time as Pervez Musharraf's number two and fig leaf democratic face in the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed. On November 6, she may have been right when she returned from self-imposed exile. Like now, the country was in turmoil, and Washington arranged a power-sharing deal (so it seemed) to restore stability in the wake of this series of events:

-- Musharraf suspended Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in March, falsely accused him of "misconduct and misuse of authority," and used that excuse to remove a key official likely to block his plan for another five year term as President while illegally remaining chief of army staff (COAS) where the real power lies.

-- The response was outrage from opposition parties, lawyers organizations and human rights groups. They called the action unconstitutional and publicly rallied against it.

-- On October 6, Musharraf held a bogus election like all others in a country where democracy is a joke. It was stage-managed by the military, clearly unconstitutional, and Musharraf won all but five parliamentary votes and swept the Provincial Assembly balloting.

-- Afterwards, Pakistan's Supreme Court said no winner could be declared until it ruled if Musharraf could run for office in his joint COAS capacity. Constitutionally, he can't, protests erupted, the country has been in turmoil since, and Musharraf lost all credibility;

-- That was Bhutto's chance to return, again serve in the post she twice before held, and she thought her Washington allies arranged it. Maybe yes or maybe not. It didn't matter that she was being used - to be a democratic face and fig leaf adjunct to Musharraf's dictatorship, but whatever was then clearly changed by December 27 without Bhutto's knowledge. Now she's gone, and Musharraf nominally transferred his army chief post to close ally General Ashfaq Kayani last November. He also lifted a six week long state of emergency in mid-December ahead of the scheduled January 8 elections, now postponed after Bhutto's assassination until February 18 as of this writing.

Today, she's bigger in death than life, spoken of reverentially as a populist, and her 19 year old son, Bilawal (in school at Oxford), now heads the PPP as its figurehead leader and third generation family dynasty standard-bearer with his father, Asif Zardari, co-party chairman and de facto chief. More on him below.

Who Was Benazir Bhutto and Why Is She Important

Who was this woman, why the worldwide attention, and why another article with so many written and more likely coming? Bhutto was an aristocrat, privileged in every respect, and raised in opulence as the Harvard and Oxford-educated daughter of a wealthy landowning father who founded Pakistan's main opposition party (Pakistan Peoples Party - PPP) that Bhutto headed after his death.

While in office, she was no democrat in a military-run nation since its artificial creation in 1947. Elections, when held, are rigged, and the army runs things for Washington as a vassal state in a nation called a military with a country, not a country with a military. Its Army strength is 550,000, its Air Force and Navy 70,000, and 510,000 reservists back them with plenty of US-supplied weapons for the "Global War on Terrorism."

Today, FBI agents freely roam the streets, the Pentagon operates out of Pakistan military bases, and it has de facto control of its air space as part of the Bush administration's permanent state of war "that will not end in our lifetime." Pakistan is a client state, but what choice does it have. Post-9/11, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage warned Musharraf to comply or be declared a hostile power and "bombed back to the stone age." He got the message and a multi-billion dollar reward as well.

Bhutto knows the game, too, and the New York Times explained that she "always understood Washington more than Washington understood her" in a feature December 30 article called "How Bhutto Won Washington." Her relationship began in the spring of 1984 on her first "important trip" to the Capitol. At the time, she tried to persuade the Reagan administration it would be better served with her in power, but to do it she had to overcome her father's anti-western reputation. With considerable help she succeeded by assuring congressional members she was on board and supported Washington's proxy war on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Faults aside, she had her attributes, and The Times called her "completely charming," very beautiful, and a woman "who could flatter the senators," understand their concerns, and better serve US interests than the man who hanged her father, General Zia-ul-Haq. At the same time, she began working with the Democratic National Committee's Executive Director, Mark Siegel, who later lobbied for her government when she was Prime Minister. Early on, he walked her through the halls of Congress, helped her develop relationships, and made her understand that to get along she had to go along.

She caught on fast, and it made her Prime Minister in December, 1988 after she ran for the post, won a plurality but not a majority, and got Reagan administration officials to arrange with Pakistan's acting President to have her form a government. According to a Washington insider, it was the "direct result of her networking, of her being able to persuade the Washington establishment, the foreign policy community, the press, the think tanks, that she was a democrat," a moderate, and that she backed the US Afghanistan agenda against the Soviets. Public rhetoric aside, she was on board ever since, but she paid with her life by not understanding how Washington operates: like other rogue states - using leaders and aspiring ones, then discarding them.

In the end, it didn't matter that she twice survived dismissal from office on corruption charges or that she managed to co-exist with her country's military and intelligence service (ISI) that deeply mistrusted her. Until her luck ran out, she maintained ties to Washington and key members of the press. She politicked well and "understood the nature of political life, which is to stay in touch with (key) people whether you're in or out of office" and let them know you back them.

Like others of her stature, she also relied on a PR firm to arrange meetings with the powerful and had plenty of resources to do it. She "kept up her networking," but she paid with her life. She tried to convince Washington that Musharraf's "war on terrorism" failed, she could do it better as a loyal ally, and she would eliminate extremist elements (meaning the Taliban and Al-Queda) by a determined effort to maintain pressure.

It sounded good but was risky and dangerous. Pakistan's army opposes it, especially in the ranks; a stepped-up effort assures a huge public outcry; disrupting the Taliban benefits India; and trying and failing might embolden their forces as the US occupation learned in Afghanistan. In the end, Washington and Pakistan's ISI may have concluded Bhutto was more a liability than an asset and had to go. Things came to a head on December 27, she's now a martyr, and larger than life dead than alive.

It wasn't that way as Prime Minister, however, when her tenure was marked by nepotism, opportunism, scheming, corruption, poor governance and selling out to the West. Her early popularity faded, especially when word got out about her businessman husband's dealings. Asif Zardari was known as "Mr. Ten Percent" (by some as "Mr. Thirty Percent") because he demanded a cut from deals as the Prime Minister's spouse and in some cases wanted more.

He was also reportedly into drugs trafficking and was investigated for it. With his wife in power, he amassed billions including what he stole in public funds that was even excessive by Pakistan standards and enough to get the country's President to sack Bhutto after 20 months in office. Whether personally culpable or not didn't matter. As Prime Minister, she made her husband a cabinet minister, gave him free rein to dispense favors in return for kick-backs, had to know about them, there was no evidence she objected, and she enjoyed the riches in office and thereafter.

In spite of it, Bhutto got a second chance. She returned as Prime Minister in 1993 for another three years, but was again dispatched on even greater corruption and incompetence charges than in her first term - this time by President Farooq Leghari, a member of the PPP and someone she thought was an ally. He certainly had cause as the amount stolen earlier was prologue for the fortune she and her husband (as Minister of Investment) amassed in her second term.

It was enough to get Transparency International, an independent watchdog group, to name Pakistan the second most corrupt country in the world in 1996 (Bhutto's last year in office). It also got her convicted in Switzerland of money laundering and bribe-taking and made her a fugitive with charges pending in Spain, Britain and her native Pakistan. That was until Musharaff signed a US-brokered "reconciliation ordinance," absolved her of all outstanding offenses, and allowed her to run for Prime Minister a third time as part of a power-sharing deal with her as number two.

Bhutto's earlier tenure had another notable feature as well. It was when Pakistan's military and ISI established the Taliban with covert CIA help. The link still exists, and at a September, 2006 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, General James Jones, former NATO Supreme Commander (who oversaw US-NATO Afghanistan operations), testified that it was "generally accepted" that Taliban leaders operated out Quetta, Pakistan, the capital of Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.

Musharraf and other Pakistani officials deny it, but there's no hiding the facts or that nothing of consequence happens in Pakistan without Washington's knowledge and/or consent. It's also no secret that Pakistan's ISI is a CIA branch, and their regional activities are closely linked. Bhutto was on board, but what choice did she have.

All along, she was a daughter of privilege, acted like one, and enjoyed the good life the way billions allow. Today, the major media lionize her, but omit her dark side: as Prime Minister, she lusted for power, was arrogant and contemptuous, ignored the poor and Pakistani women, allowed outrageous laws to be enforced, gave the Army free reign including over nuclear weapons, and considered Pakistan her personal fiefdom. Her home was a $50 million mansion on 110 acres, and she ruled like a feudal overlord. The family still owns a 350 acre UK estate complete with helipad and polo pony stables, a mansion in Dubai, two Texas properties, six in Florida, more homes in France and large bank accounts strategically stashed around the world, including in the US and France.

From the time of her father's death to her own, Bhutto had close ties to Washington, the CIA, Pakistan's military, its ISI, as well as to the Taliban (established in her second term), "militant Islam" and Big Oil interests. She was a servant of power and pocketed billions for her efforts. In the end, she lost out and paid with her life on December 27.

Who Killed Bhutto and Why

Bhutto's now dead, shot in the back of the head by one or more assassins at close range, plus the effects of a suicide bombing that killed two dozen or more and wounded many others tightly packed around her. It happened in Rawalpindi, "no ordinary city" as Michel Chossudovsky explains. It's the home of Pakistan's military, its CIA-linked ISI, and is the country's de facto seat of power. Chossudovsky adds: "Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country's elite forces."

Rawalpindi and the country's capital, Islamabad, are sister cities, nine miles apart. They swarm with intelligence operatives including from CIA, and Chussodovsky stresses that Bhutto's assassination "was (no) haphazard event." Blaming Al-Queda misses the point, but that's how these schemes work. They're also clearer when convincing video is broadcast as UK's Channel 4 did on December 30. It debunked the official story and exposed Musharraf as a xxxx - that Bhutto died from a fractured skull "when she was thrown by the force of the (explosion's) shock wave (and) one of the levers of (her car's) sunroof hit her."

The video contradicts this. It shows a clean-shaven man in sunglasses watching close by with a concealed gun and the suspected suicide bomber behind him dressed in white. The gunman then approaches Bhutto's car and at point blank range fires three shots. Immediately after, the suicide bomber detonates his device, killing and wounding dozens nearby.

The question then is - not who killed her, but who ordered her killed and who profits from it? Musharraf quickly named the usual suspect - Al-Queda but ignored what William Engdahl observed in his January 4 Global Research article called "Bhutto's Assassination: Who Gains?" He notes how well protected political leaders are so it's no simple task killing them. "It requires agencies of professional intelligence training to insure the job is done" right, and no one can reveal who ordered it or the motive.

Engdahl also states that naming Al-Queda serves Musharraf and Washington. It increases public fear, revs up the "war on terror," and provides justification for it to continue. It also reinforces the Al-Queda myth as well as "enemy number one" bin Laden, and ignores the evidence that the CIA created both in the 1980s for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It's just as silent on the possibility bin Laden is dead, killed (as Bhutto told David Frost last fall) by Omar Sheikh whom the London Sunday Times called "no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan's military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles" of bin Laden and Al-Queda.

If true, a dead bin Laden disrupts Washington's national security doctrine that needs enemies to scare the public, eliminates "enemy number one" as the main one, and exposes strategically released bin Laden tapes as made-in-Washington frauds. Today, we're told that bin Laden-led Islamic terrorists endanger the West, but at the same time we use them for imperial gain as we did against the Soviets, in the Balkans and now do in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. If Al-Queda operatives killed Bhutto, it means Pakistan's ISI and CIA were involved, and what's more likely than that. Forget a lone gunman theory, a lose cannon terrorist or a sole anti-Bhutto assassin. Consider "Cui bono," examine the evidence, and it points to Washington and Islamabad.

Today in Pakistan, intrigue abounds, and the country is destabilized as Michel Chossudovsky observes in his December 30 Global Research article called "The Destabilization of Pakistan." Assassinating Bhutto contributes to it, and Chossudovsky sees a US-sponsored "regime change" ahead. Musharraf is so weak and discredited "continuity under military rule is no long the main thrust of US foreign policy." Musharraf's regime "cannot prevail," and Washington's scheme is "to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation."

From it, a new political leadership will emerge that will be "compliant," have "no commitment to (Pakistan's) national interest," and will be subservient to "US imperial interests, while concurrently....weakening....the central government (and fracturing) Pakistan's fragile federal structure."

It makes perfect sense as part of Washington's broader Middle East-Central Asia agenda. Pakistan is a key frontline state, a "geopolitical hub," with a central role to play in the "Global War on Terrorism." It includes "balkanizing" the country Yugoslavia-style the way it's planned for Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran - a simple divide and conquer strategy. Chossudovsky adds: "Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence (that worked up to now) has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization." The scheme is to foment "social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup" of the country.

It's a common US strategy with covert intelligence support, and consider The New York Times article on January 6 called "US Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan" to exploit Bhutto's death. It states that senior national security advisers (including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen) may "expand the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan" against Al-Queda and the Taliban to counteract their efforts and "destabilize the Pakistani government."

The article states that Musharraf and the military are on board, gives the usual boiler plate reasons, but omits what's really at stake even as it admits Musharraf is unpopular and a US intervention could "prompt a powerful popular backlash against" both countries.

Chussodovsky fills in the blanks and explains that US strategy aims to trigger "ethnic and religious strife," abet and finance "secessionist movements while also weakening" Musharraf's government. "The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State....redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan" and replace Musharraf in the process. He's unpopular, damaged goods and has to go.

Bhutto was an unwitting part of the scheme but not the way she planned. She thought Washington needed here, and she was right - not as Prime Minister but as a martyr to destabilize the country and break it up if the plan works. It may as internal secessionist elements are strong, especially in energy rich (mostly gas) Balochistan province, and "indications" are they're supported by "Britain and the US." The idea is a "Greater Balochistan" by integrating Baloch areas with those in Iran and southern Afghanistan.

Chossudovsky explains that it was not "accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council-CIA report predicted a 'Yugoslav-like fate' for Pakistan" through internally and externally manufactured "economic mismanagment." Remember also that the country split before in 1971 when East Pakistan became Bangladesh following months of civil war and against India that took a million or more lives. Pakistanis may face that prospect again as US plans unfold.

Future Outlook Remains Uncertain

Big questions remain, and key ones are will breakup plans work, who'll emerge with enough popular support to lead it, and will the public go along. They've got no incentive to do it once anger over Bhutto's death subsides, and recent polling data show overwhelming public opposition to US or other foreign intervention that's very much part of the scheme. In the end, their views don't count, and it may happen anyway through political intrigue and Washington-led brute force.

Reports prior to Bhutto's assassination point that way. They suggest US Special and other forces already operate in Pakistan, and head of US Special Operations Command, Admiral Eric Olson, arranged with Musharraf and Pakistan's military last summer and fall to substantially increase their numbers early this year. Involved as well is what The New York Times reported in November that the "US Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Queda" in the country's "frontier areas."

The scheme is similar to the effort in Iraq's al-Anbar province with bribes and weapons to seal a deal apparently now finalized. US Central Command Commander Admiral William Fallon alluded to it in a recent Voice of America interview by saying we're ready to provide "training, assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies," but he left out the bribing part that's part of these deals.

Where this will lead is speculation, but consider a feature Wall Street Journal January 8 article. It's headlined "Bhutto Killing Roils Province, Spurring Calls to Quit Pakistan" and calls Bhutto's native Sindh province (second largest of Pakistan's four provinces) the "Latest Fault Line In a Fractured Country; Like Occupied Territory."

Mourners filed past Bhutto's grave chanting "We don't want Pakistan," and in the wake of her death "Sindh has been swept by nationalist rage." Many in the province are "calling for outright independence," and support for separation has grown among rank and file PPP members. There's even talk of an "armed insurgency" as anger is directed against neighboring Punjab, the largest province, and home of the military, ISI and government.

The Journal quotes Qadir Magsi, head of the nationalist Sindh Taraqi Passand movement saying...."Bhutto was the last hope (for unity). Now this Pakistan must be broken up." The article continues saying what's happening in Sindh is already in play in the Northwest Frontier province where central government authority withered in recent years. In addition, Pakistan's Army has been embroiled in Baluchistan's insurgency for the past few years adding to overall instability. The theme of the Journal article is that calls for unity are falling on deaf ears, and one PPP veteran sums it up: "What we need is separation."

That suits Bush administration officials fine, they're likely stoking it, and one thing is clear. US forces are in the region to stay, and Washington under any administration (Democrat or Republican) intends to dominate this vital part of the world with its vast energy reserves. The strategy appears similar to the divide and conquer one in Yugoslavia. There it worked, but the Middle East and Central Asia aren't so simple. Stay tuned as events will likely accelerate, the media will highlight them, and it looks like stepped up conflict (and its fallout) is part of the plan.

Stephen Lendman is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.

© Copyright Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2008

The url address of this article is:

www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7791

[Paul Rigby]

More dupery. It's catching.

Edited January 14, 2008 by Paul Rigby

[Paul Rigby]

From the POV of the beneficiaries of the war on abstract nouns, the assassination is such a timely boon:

India is compelled to move even further into the sea powers embrace;

the MIC gets a huge shot in the arm.

And they're off in the Great Arms Bonanza Stakes…into the lead goes Uncle Sam…

http://news.oneindia.in/2008/01/14/high-le...ooperation.html

High-level Indo-US talks on defence cooperation

Monday, January 14 2008 18:15(IST)

Washington, Jan 14: India and the United States are holding four-day high-level talks from today to expand defence cooperation, including production and procurement of arms and equipment.

The Indian delegation, led by Defence Secretary Vijay Singh, will be holding parleys with US officials led by Ambassador Eric Edleman, the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, at the Defence Policy Group (DPG) meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. Before this, the Defence Production and Procurement Group meeting will be held with the Indian side headed by the Director General of Acquisitions, S K Sharma.

This will be the eighth meeting of the defence policy group, which continues to be the primary mechanism to guide the India-US defence relationship.

At the seventh meeting of the policy group held in November 2007, the two sides exchanged intensive views on the international, strategic and security situation.

They also held discussions on the further development of bilateral defence cooperation as envisaged under the June 28, 2005 Defence Framework set in place by former US Secretary for Defence, Ronald Rumsfeld, and former Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

The two sides are likely to look at increasing the transfers of military equipment and technology.

The US has indicated it is ready to renew the supply of defence items, lifting the sanctions, which were imposed after India conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

ANI

[Paul Rigby]

Another outstanding piece from the Global Research crew:

Using Benazir Bhutto for Imperial Gain

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, January 14, 2008

Musharraf and other Pakistani officials deny it, but there's no hiding the facts or that nothing of consequence happens in Pakistan without Washington's knowledge and/or consent. It's also no secret that Pakistan's ISI is a CIA branch, and their regional activities are closely linked.

http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.p...r=0&thold=0

Musharraf had handlers in Mossad-US Agency since the 80s

Articles / Serving Colonial Masters

Jan 18, 2008 - 06:51 PM

It is possible that Musharraf could be under the control of these handlers even now?..... It shows that as an Army officer, Pervez Musharraf covered the connection of a lady to a foreign intelligence agency. Normally one is supposed to tell the authorities. That gives credence to the well founded allegations that he also had, and still has, foreign handlers.

Musharraf had handlers in Mossad-US Agency since the 80s

By Abid Ullah Jan

It is possible that Musharraf could be under the control of these handlers even now? If you are aware of WTC-Building 7 controlled demolition on September 11, 2001, then you know there is something fishy – that it was an inside job . Like the other two towers, Building 7 came down in seconds [1] defying gravity (100 metres in 4.5 seconds) which was a controlled demolition [2] and BBC read [3] the demise of the Building 20 minutes before [4] it happened.

However, how does it connect to Musharraf and him being the agent of foreign intelligence agencies long before he even thought that he would be the Commander in Chief?

Here are some tips for thoughtful, resourceful and brave researchers to find the truth about the real Musharraf and bring him to justice for treason and betrayal under his own Army Act [5]:

- Question: Why was Musharraf fired in Oct. 1999?

- Tip –1 : Musharraf's illegal foreign contacts [6] are not so hidden either [7] . Some were revealed [8], but no one will talk. They became state secrets. See the case of Javed Hashmi [9], for example.

- Tip – 2: In the 80s, there was a Journalist John Doe and his wife Agent Jane Doe, in Rawalpindi.

John Doe was divorcing his wife. It was in court. Musharraf was the representative of the lady Jane Doe in the court. Divorce happened but Mush made sure that John Doe did not open his mouth about the real reason behind the divorce in Public Court.

The real reason behind the journalist John Doe divorcing his wife was that she was an agent of a foreign intelligence agency. As John Doe discovered it, he no longer wanted to continue the marriage. Interestingly, journalist John Doe's wife was a very close relative of Musharraf.

- Tip – 3: This is authentic story. But to find out about the journalist John Doe and his wife Jane Doe in detail, one has to check the family court record in Rawalpindi. During the divorce proceedings Musharraf was the representative of the lady Jane Doe.

It shows that as an Army officer, Pervez Musharraf covered the connection of a lady to a foreign intelligence agency. Normally one is supposed to tell the authorities. That gives credence to the well founded allegations that he also had, and still has, foreign handlers.

How is it connected to 9/11? When I was doing my research into the ISI connection to 9/11, I gave General Musharraf a huge benefit of the doubt in the book, From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues [10]. However, the deeper one goes, the more he realizes that it is almost impossible

that ISI would be using its human assets [11]; its human assets will be linked to the CIA, M16 and others; the human assets will be meeting Osama and the foreign agencies at the same time; the Chief of the ISI will also be meeting his human assets as well as the high level officials in the US around the same time and also wiring money ($100,000 [12]) to the lead "hijacker” in the Operation 9/11.

Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad was never questioned by 911 commission, is a Tableeghi Jamaat member with a long beard now. He maintains a house at Mai de Khoi, Faisalabad and one in Islamabad. He was chairman of a government entity like fertilizer corporation. Musharraf was never asked as to why he said," Daniel Pearl got over intrusive [13]......". Why Omar Sheikh was never produced in an open court? And why Benazir talks of Omar Shiekh as the murderer of Osama [14] with David Frost on November 2,2007?

Musharraf was the Director Military Intelligence when the CIA supported the creation of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Brig. Gen. Ejaz Shah [15] was the handler of Omar Sheikh per Benazir. This shows Musharraf was very much part of 911 and cover up (of it being inside job with Dick Cheney at Command [16]. [1]

Musharraf's connections to foreign intelligence agencies since the early period [17] of his carrier suggests that he is not out of the loop when it comes to operation 9/11. He is one of the main culprits. If any other individual had sent even a dime to Atta, he might have died of waterboarding and

other torture techniques by now. However, General Mohamoud is a free main in Pakistan. So despite deep connections to the alleged hijackers to the ISI, nothing happens to the Pakistani Generals or Pakistan as such. To the contrary, remember how former CIA director James Woolsey tried to prove [18] Atta met Iraq security officials, but could not. That was the time when they were looking for justifications for the war of aggression on Iraq.

Eqbal Ahmad in 1998 said [19] that Osama was just the excuse to go into the Oil lands......Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan. And his observation seems true. The warlords needed time. They needed moles at the highest positions, such as the Chief of Pakistan armed forces. Musharraf had to kill the Chief of Air staff Mushaf Ali Mir because he won't agree with Musharraf's policy and planning (Mushaf was a patriot). He had to depart. Mushaf died in a plane crash in clear weather in the safest plane, along with his wife and closest confidants. Controversial author Gerald Posner implies that all of these events are linked together and the deaths are not accidental, but have occurred because of the testimony of captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida in March 2002 (see Early April 2002 [20]). The deaths all occurred not long after the respective governments were told of Zubaida’s confessions [21]. This simply confirms foreign hand in Mushaf’s murder.

Benazir did not agree to Musharraf policies. Note that Musharraf says that she was "very unpopular in the Army [22]". Musharraf thinks he alone is the Army. Benazir would not budge on his uniform issue. She had to go.

Musharraf has violated his Oath five times. It is up to the Patriotic Army men to understand the situation and use the Army Act on Musharraf [23] to protect Pakistan from internal aggression.

Abid Ullah Jan is the author of "The Musharraf Factor" and edit www.dictatorshipwatch.com [24].

Notes:

[1] Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney [25] URL: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...lify_case.shtml [26]

Norman Mineta Confirms That Dick Cheney Ordered Stand Down on 9/11 [27]

URL: http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html [28] A testimony left out of the 9/11 report.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Links in this article

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqqhX8gkhE0

[5] http://rediff.co.in/news/2007/nov/12pakemergency10.htm

[6] http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.p...r=0&thold=0

[7] http://www.newtrendmag.org/ntma1182.htm

[8] http://www.forward.com/articles/12080/

[9] http://www.dukandar.com/baaghihoon.html

[10] http://www.icssa.org/article_detail_parse....id=806&rel=

[11] http://www.icssa.org/article_detail_parse....k=8&m_id=57

[12] http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Docum...tageISIatta.htm

[13] http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/07pak.htm

[14]

[15] http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-...rs_1002416.html

[16] http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html

[17] http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.p...r=0&thold=0

[18] http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jtaylor.php?articleid=12208

[19] http://www.middleeast.org/interview/ahmad1.htm

[20] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/item.js...102zubaidatrick

[21] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19098.htm

[22] http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p...14-1-2008_pg1_1

[23] http://www.icssa.org/article_detail_parse....55&rel=1015

[24] http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/

[25] http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...lify_case.shtml

[26] http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/...lify_case.shtml

[27] http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html

[28] http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html

[Guest David Guyatt]

Norman Mineta Confirms That Dick Cheney Ordered Stand Down on 9/11 [27]

URL: http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html [28] A testimony left out of the 9/11 report.

That nicely puts paid to Len Colby's earlier misstatements, misremembering and subsequent evasions when challenged about his contorted version of events regarding Mineta's testimony to the 911 Commission.

You can fool some of the people some of the time. But only for some of the time.