Apparently the whole of Pakistan knew what her itinerary would be 24 hours in advance, plenty of time for ISI to plan.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 19 2007 16:18 utc | 3

Two sceptic pieces from Asia Times:
Bhutto bombing kicks off war on US plan

The deal between Bhutto and Musharraf was so abrupt and unexpected that even Bhutto’s PPP leaders were unable to defend it, especially as just a few weeks earlier they had been agitating against Musharraf over his suspension of the chief of the judiciary. Government ministers too were take by surprise, and when Asia Times Online asked Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kusuri about the deal, he admitted that it had been made under American pressure.
Although the PPP has released expensive advertising for Bhutto’s homecoming, feelings against her are running high in some quarters. Anti-Bhutto media have published a list of her, her husband’s, and her children’s declared assets: they amount to US$1.5 billion, including all Swiss accounts that are frozen because of corruption charges.
Western governments have long shown an affinity for shady characters in their attempts to organize the globe to their liking, though the strategy has seldom paid off in the long term. Thursday’s bombings point to enormous problems ahead if the West is to have its way in Pakistan.

Benazir’s second homecoming

Her return to Pakistan has been almost completely choreographed by Britain and the United States. The Musharraf regime needed to be dragged by the collar to the promised land of political cohabitation with Bhutto. Top officials of the George W Bush administration, laden with rich experience in making brutal despots in Latin America behave, repeatedly intervened with the Musharraf regime to play ball – at times cajoling, at times threatening, at times blackmailing.
But beyond a point, Washington cannot act as Bhutto’s mentor. From now onward, she must perform mostly on her own.
…
The house that the Bush administration has built in Islamabad, therefore, is not bereft of logic altogether. It looks imposing. It has interesting possibilities. But the main uncertainty lies in its durability. Pakistani politicians are extremely quarrelsome. Coalition politics is a very sophisticated form of governance that requires tact and accommodation. The requisite spirit of give-and-take may be lacking. Also, the corporate interests of the army are bound to cross paths with the vaulting ambitions of politicians, especially if the politicians unduly insist on civilian supremacy, as they will at some point.
…
Continued, open-ended military presence in Afghanistan increases Western dependence on Pakistan, which, in essence, increases the role of the Pakistani military. Incrementally, the army has developed a vested interest in the Western military presence in the region. But that only contributes to the assertiveness of the army in Pakistan’s political arena, and, paradoxically, it serves to undermine the foundations of the very same comely architecture that the Bush administration has erected in Islamabad in the recent days and weeks.

Posted by: b | Oct 19 2007 17:57 utc | 5

So judging from Tangerine’s information on Bhutto’s impending incarceration in a Swiss gaol, the harridan was between a rock and a hard place, gaol the rock and Musharraf’s Pakistan the hard place. No wonder she has been sounding increasingly restive almost panicked in her on again off again ‘return negotiations’.
This site here describes some of the differing opinions on the future of the Swiss case as well as making depressing reading for anyone who imagines so-called liberal democracies can be transplanted into culturally divided and/or struggling for survival nation states.
B. Bhuttos lawyer naturally claims “the situation is now crystal clear. From the moment where there is no prior crime, “there cannot be money laundering. We are heading for the end of the Geneva procedure”.
But it may not be that simple. I don’t want to criticise an institution I know little of, but if the Swiss judicial process is like 99.9% of other independent judiciaries in the western world it will be sensitive to pressure from the Swiss government. I’m sure that USuk would love to have a couple of fall backs “to keep Ms Bhutto honest”. One would be to leave the charges hanging over her head for a while which would mean that if things don’t work out with Musharraf another ‘self-imposed exile’ would be difficult. In other words she has to try and get on with the slimy prez.
The other littler incentive concerns this
The three investigating judges in Geneva who have dealt with the file for a decade found that Bhutto and her husband received $12 million (SFr14.25 million) in Swiss bank accounts belonging to companies registered in the Virgin Islands and Panama.
Assets belonging to the Bhuttos were frozen following an official Pakistani request in 1997. Following the amnesty, it is not clear who will claim these funds.”
No one, especially not a greedy corrupt politician, ever likes to knock back the opportunity to regain millions lost ‘unjustly’ (her opinion no doubt).
Of course ol Nawaz remains the fly in the ointment. USuk will consider his organisation The Pakistan Muslim League’ dodgy just because of it’s name. (So called intelligence analysts with decades of training into objective research still judge a book by its cover)
According to Swissinfo again (too lazy to hunt out the primary source)
A “reconciliation ordinance” issued by the Pakistani government last week grants across-the-board immunity for politicians who were active between 1988 and 1999.
That would include Nawaz Sharif by my reckoning although he may be stuck with a murder charge too. Does the amnesty include murder? On the surface it appears to.
Since Zia hung Bhutto’s dad for murder I would have thought that Pakistani pols would have taken some hints from amerikan organised crime about how to organise hits without being able to be proved of organising a hit but Nawaz fucked up by all accounts. Still considering the same sort of dirt could probably be dug up on Ms Bhutto or Musharraf, the amnesty may well include murder, extortion and all the other harmless little ploys an up and coming pol needs to get ahead.
Hmmmm. Interesting. Up until last night Nawaz Sharif’s homepage on the Pakistan Muslim League site said:
“Nawaz Sharif plans to fly to Pakistan again mid-November “.
But this morning, after the bombing it says nothing about Sharif’s return but it deplores the bombing.
It may just be that the piece deploring the bombing was done hurriedly and there was no room for Nawaz’s proposed Lazarus Act. Or maybe the bombing was a message for him or maybe. . . ?
Who knows. What I do know is that USuk are playing a very dangerous game one they cannot really control, if only because it is human nature of everyone including corrupt pols and wanna be military strongmen to resist another’s efforts to force them into doing something, be it by stick or carrot.
The english have been grooming B Bhutto since she was a mere slip of a gal, cast in the role of innocent victim to the nasty general Zia, poor wee lassie. Once she was the Pakistani equivalent of Aung Sung Su Kyi (what does that say about Myanmar’s chances), yet every time she has gotten into power she has done what suits her best – fuck the english, and sadly, fuck the Pakistani people. At first the western media tried to run with the line that the beautiful princess had fallen under the spell of a wicked dark prince, Asif Zardari. Complete bullshit of course. The marriage was the usual alliance between the powerful which such marriages always are and Ms Bhutto was a determined participant.
So in a piss weak attempt to stave off inevitable defeat for the empire from Pakistan, east to Saudi Arabia, the people of Pakistan will be sacrificed to decades of poverty and anarchy while USuk harvest Pakistan’s best and brightest to prop up their own tottering societies. All those bright young graduates at no cost! Isn’t life grand when you luxuriate amongst the ill-gotten gains.
Anyway enough soap opera

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 19 2007 22:08 utc | 7

Bhutto is accusing about everybody to be guilty for the bombing. Her eye seems to be especially on ISI. The NYTimes in its article does of course not mention how Bhutto used ISI to build the Taliban on demands from the U.S..

Ms. Bhutto did not blame the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for the bomb blasts and said extremist Islamic groups who wanted to take over the country were behind the attacks, which killed 134 people.
But she pointed the finger at government officials who she said were sympathetic to the militants and were abusing their powers to advance their cause.
…
While it was not possible to assess the veracity of Ms. Bhutto’s charges, she has long accused parts of the government, namely Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of working against her and her party because they oppose her liberal, secular agenda.
…
The ISI has for decades backed militant Islamic groups in Kashmir and in Afghanistan in pursuit of a military strategy established by the former military dictator, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, in the 1970s. “I know exactly who wants to kill me,” Ms. Bhutto said. “It is dignitaries of the former regime of General Zia who are today behind the extremism and the fanaticism.”
Before her return, she said a “brotherly country,” which she did not identify, warned her that several suicide squads were plotting attacks against her — one from a Taliban group, one from Al Qaeda, one from Pakistani Taliban and one from Karachi.
…
She added that there were more plots against her, including one to infiltrate police guarding her homes in Karachi and the rural district of Larkana in order to mount attacks “in the garb of a rival political party.”

And this one for citizen k: Look, the “european left” at the NYTimes thinks the US government (including the CIA) is behind Bhutto’s return. How dare they to be so anti-American …
It is, as it seems, a typical incompetent Bush/Cheney/Rice deal which the old-timers at the State Department do not believe in. The NYT piece is quite revealing:
Backstage, U.S. Nurtured Pakistan Rivals’ Deal

To lay the groundwork for Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, some of the highest ranking officials in the Bush administration lavished attention on her as they worked to broker a power-sharing arrangement between Ms. Bhutto and her longtime rival, President Pervez Musharraf.
…
On Friday, American officials acknowledged that there was no clear basis for confidence that the two leaders could work cooperatively. Now that Ms. Bhutto has returned to the country, they acknowledged that their control over events was limited, as Thursday’s bombing showed.
…
Two years ago, Ms. Bhutto could not even get the State Department’s top official for South Asia to show up at a dinner party in her honor. (A desk officer in charge of Pakistan was sent instead.)
But in recent months that began to change. The American courtship of Ms. Bhutto included a private dinner and a jet ride with Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and, over the last month, several telephone calls to Ms. Bhutto from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
…
Administration officials say that Ms. Rice stepped up her personal involvement last month, when it seemed possible that General Musharraf’s other political nemesis, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, would make his own bid to return to power, and upset the deal.
…
State Department bureaucrats also fret that her turbulent past will further inflame an already volatile country. Inside and outside the American bureaucracy, there remains deep skepticism that the arrangement between two longtime enemies has a chance for long-term success.
“This backroom deal I think is going to explode in our face,” said Bruce Riedel, who advised three presidents on South Asian issues and is now at the Brookings Institution. “Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf detest each other, and the concept that they can somehow work collaboratively is a real stretch.”
Before she left for Pakistan and since her return, Ms. Bhutto has publicly pressed an agenda that should please American policy makers: advocating democracy and attacking suicide bombing and Islamic militancy in words more forceful than those normally used by General Musharraf.
…
The sessions included a dinner for Ms. Bhutto in New York in August with Mr. Khalilzad, followed several weeks later by a shared ride on a private jet to Aspen, Colo., where both addressed a conference of corporate leaders.
…
Ms. Bhutto was first introduced to America’s political power brokers in 1984, via the dinner party circuit. Peter Galbraith, whose family was friends with the Bhutto family and who at the time was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, escorted the visiting Ms. Bhutto around Washington.
…
In 1998, Ms. Bhutto asked Mark Siegel, a well-connected Democratic Party operative, to set up a meeting for her at the White House with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One close Bhutto friend described that meeting as “intimate and warm,” and as one that had touched, at Ms. Bhutto’s prompting, on Mrs. Clinton’s personal struggles in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Posted by: b | Oct 20 2007 6:12 utc | 9

pity the people of pakistan. corruption has been at the core of their political leadership since independance. the moral bankruptcy of the opposition is unfortunately just as transparent. the religious elite also nothing other than a changing of the guard with theit horrible rhetoric & actions

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 20 2007 13:33 utc | 11

The Swiss papers are reporting that the case against B. Bhutto is a dead duck in the water covered with fleas (see Deb’ post – note duck fleas here are a major hazard, they sting horrifically) and both the Swiss Financial Crime Unit and the equivalent Pakistani organism are reported to be wringing their hands or throwing them up in despair, at all the time and work lost. Not flash news, this happens regularly. The money, now locked in a Swiss Bank, in any case, in one way or another, will (must, …) be returned to Pakistan, considered as a country.
Therefore – ‘to’ Benazir if she becomes prime minister!

Posted by: Tangerine | Oct 22 2007 17:14 utc | 13