Benazir Bhutto Takes On A Powerful Enemy (ISI)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 10-21-2007 | Colin Freeman

[gandalftb]

The Paki military hierarchy is very seniority driven, a vestige of the colonial origins of their army. Even Musharraf had to wait until retirements occurred to get his loyalist in control of the ISI.

[gandalftb]

Tactics of the bombing were such that whenever Bhutto left her armored truck to speak, a security cordon at least 50 feet deep kept everyone away and there were outer rings of security that repulsed the bomber twice (he had pretended to be a party supporter and part of the entourage).

When the truck started to move the first bomber threw a grenade in order to scatter the crowd and open a path for the main bomber to get close.

The grenades didn't have the intended effect and the main bomber got as close as he could and detonated. The crowd took most of the blast, minimal damage to the truck except for one killed on top of the truck.

The truck had secretly been seriously armored and Bhutto was quite safe.

Bhutto knew that any attack would benefit her and her alone, no other way to gain that much power so early on.

[AdmSmith]

The Bhutto Attacks
Cold comfort is the best we can hope for.

By Aaron Mannes

http://terrorwonk.blogspot.com/2007/10/aaron-mannes-in-nro-on-attack-on-bhutto.html

[AdmSmith]

Guess what - he is released:

A man found guilty of masterminding two suicide attacks in the Pakistani city of Karachi in which 45 people died has had his conviction overturned. Gul Hasan was originally sentenced to death in June 2005, for the attacks on two Shia mosques the previous year.

But the High Court in the province of Sindh has now reversed that judgement, saying there was not enough evidence. The prosecution had said that Mr Hasan was a member of a banned Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

He has denied being a member of the group. The two attacks were on Karachi’s Masjid-e-Haideri mosque on 7 May, 2004, and on the Imambargah Ali Raza mosque on 31 May 2004.

As well as the 45 deaths, some 130 people were wounded.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7060191.stm

[Billthedrill]

When you attempt to kill a King, don't fail. Al Qaeda was widely blamed for the 2004 assassination attempt on Musharraf and that cost the ISI some considerable backing and filling. Normally they would be able to play Musharraf and Bhutto off against one another, or use the death of one as a warning to the other. Not now.

The ISI is by all accounts compromised at a very high level, which has protected it up to this point. Systematic reform may be impossible, but it is entirely possible to lop off a few top-ranking heads pour encourager les autres. In fact, in this particular case I'd say it's just about mandatory.