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'Benazir wanted retaliatory strikes on Indian nuke sites' August 31, 2009 12:12 IST Slain Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto [ Images ] had asked the Pakistan Air Force to be ready for attacking India's nuclear facilities, when reports surfaced in 1990 that United States, Israel and India were planning to strike Pakistan's nuclear establishments. In an interview with a private television channel, former Chief of Army Staff Mirza Aslam Beg revealed that Bhutto had directed the PAF to prepare itself for attacking India. Beg said Bhutto remained 'rock solid' amid reports that US, Israel and India were planning to attack...

Produced by Wild Eyes Prods. Executive producers, Carl H. Lindahl, David Keane; producers, Ryan Spyker, Aaron Cowden; director, Keane; writers, Bowden, Terrence Henry. Narrator: Bill Lloyd. Editor, Justin Inda; music, Michael Plowman. Running time: 120 Min. “Charlie Wilson’s War” (Wide Release Theater Movie) Genres: Comedy, Drama, Adaptation, Biopic and War Running Time: 1 hr. 37 min. Release Date: December 21st, 2007 MPAA Rating: R for strong language, nudity/sexual content and some drug use. Distributors: Universal Pictures Distribution Production Co.: Icarus Productions, Participant Productions, Relativity Media, Playtone Studios: Universal Pictures Filming Locations: Morocco Los Angeles, California USA Produced in: United...

More Dangerous Than Osama Militant Leader Claims He Is Fighting a 'Defensive' Jihad to Destroy the White House ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN: He is more dangerous to Pakistan than Osama bin Laden, analysts say. He may be the single most important person in Pakistan's fight for its future. And for the first time, he has described the goals and the details of the network of militants responsible for the most violent time in Pakistan in 60 years. During a 25-minute sit-down with al Jazeera, Baitullah Mehsud, the man Pakistan blames for killing former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, claims he is fighting a...

After her death, Ms Bhutto has emerged as an icon of secularism and modernity in the Islamic world, a courageous political leader and a champion democrat, a champion of women’s rights, and a fighter against the Jihadists. Her death has been compared to Gandhi’s and her political struggle to Aung San Suu Kyi’s. She was going to replace the rogue dictatorship of President Musharraf to institute democracy and secularism in Pakistan. In a thoughtful analysis, however, it turns out that the majority of these epithets bestowed on her career and legacy are not accurate. Her most devastating action, not only...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was criticized for stumbling over details. But in two confident television appearances, on CNN and ABC, Clinton made an elementary error about Pakistani politics: She described President Pervez Musharraf as a "candidate" who would be "on the ballot." In fact, Musharraf was reelected to the presidency in October. The upcoming elections are for parliament, and while Musharraf's party...

GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson is warning the biggest threat facing America isn't economic or social or even political: It's the danger from nuclear terrorism. "That the years ahead will be dangerous needs no elaboration from me," Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, says in a new video prepared for Iowa voters who will caucus later this week. "Most Americans know the forces of terrorism will not rest until a mushroom cloud hangs over one of our cities," he said. Thompson, who is trailing several other candidates in Iowa, said those other issues, such as "economy, taxes, protecting our...

One of the natural and negative consequences of political assassinations is that they personalize the general and simplify the complex. Policies formed in the aftermath of assassinations are rarely wise and tend to focus on secondary - personal - issues while ignoring larger strategic ones. It is fairly clear that this is what is happening in the international reaction to last Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadawi and her teenage son have now taken charge of her political party in the interest of maintaining her "legacy." Backed by the Bush administration, they...

The assassination of former and potentially future Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has left Pakistan in complete turmoil. Elections were scheduled for Tuesday, January 8, and no one is certain as of this writing whether they will go forward or not. Nor is it clear who the candidates on the ballot will be, much less which of them might win. And then there's the issue of whether President Pervez Musharraf will step aside or even share power no matter the result.

The now-martyred Benazir Bhutto was far from perfect in her two stints a Pakistan’s prime minister, and she would probably have been far from perfect had she served a third. But she didn’t need to be perfect. Bhutto was the only person who represented the serious hope of a democratic Pakistan, and that’s why those most threatened by democracy murdered her.

Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto's assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I'm not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as that country is, but rather the lesson - as if we needed any more - for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast. The following is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said it was obvious. "The Russians," he said, "they kill...

It’s tempting to rerun my column on Pakistan from a month ago. Not because I predicted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto or offered any other great insight, but rather for the opposite reason: “Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything: General Musharraf should do this, he shouldn’t have done that, the State Department should lean on him to do the other… Well, I dunno. It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad.” Oh, well. In the stampede of instant experts unveiling their Pakistani solutions-in-a-box, some contributions are worthy...

They have killed a woman. A beautiful woman. A visible, indeed a conspicuously, spectacularly visible woman. A woman who made a point not only of holding rallies in one of the world's most dangerous countries, but did so with her face uncovered, unveiled--the exact opposite of the shameful, hidden women, the condemned creatures of Satan, who are the only women tolerated by these apostles of a world without women. They killed a Jew, Daniel Pearl. They killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the great guerilla leader against the Taliban, a moderate Muslim, a cultivated man and free spirit. They tried for years...

On an earlier post, I made the comment that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination should remind voters that we still live in a very dangerous world, and we need a grown-up as president with the wisdom and the strength of character to utilize our military to protect our interests and our citizens. I went on to say that this rules out all Democrat candidates. Since some either do not understand what this means (or PRETEND not to understand), lets explore this further. All through the 1990’s, a Democrat administration dealt with Islamic terrorism as if it were a problem for the civilian...

Excerpt - "Long live Bhutto," Benazir Bhutto shouted, waving to the crowd surging around her car. They were her last words before three gunshots rang out and she slumped back on to her seat. "She did not say anything more," said Safdar Abbassi, her chief political adviser, who was sitting behind her. In the first eyewitness account from inside the car, Dr Abbassi told The Sunday Telegraph: "All of a sudden there was the sound of firing. I heard the sound of a bullet."I saw her: she looked as though she ducked in when she heard the firing. We did...

OSKALOOSA, Iowa - Fred Thompson has shied from directly criticizing his Republican rivals seeking the presidential nomination. He's also not been part of the daily lineup of television ads jamming Iowa's airwaves. Both changed Friday. Thompson called on Mike Huckabee to explain why he wants the United States to apologize for Thursday's killing of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The former Tennessee senator said he was concerned what people around the world "will think when they see a presidential candidate was apologizing" for the assassination. "That's hard to understand," he said. Huckabee on Thursday offered "our sincere concern and apologies...

Bhutto Killing Puts EuroLeaders On Notice: Time to Choose Friday, December 28, 2007 10:05 AM by Scott Ott The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has put on notice the leaders of every European nation. Your secularism, your democracy will not stand. The growing Muslim populations in your own lands that you have done so much to tolerate, protect and celebrate, will soon rise up against you. Sharia law shall become your law. The Caliph shall rule you. It remains only for you to choose submission or assassination. This bullet to the neck of democracy in Pakistan should cause a twinge in...

OTTUMWA — Fred Thompson’s campaign slogged through yet another winter storm to get to Ottumwa supporters on Friday. His reward was a packed room at Hotel Ottumwa. The audience was younger than that for most campaign events. It helped that school is out for the winter break. And it helped that Thompson’s visit was in the middle of the day. That was part of what convinced Phil and Constance Cavanaugh to bring their three children. Not that the Cavanaughs follow the school schedule. They home school the kids. “It’s the timing of the event, and he’s my second choice,” Phil...

Bhutto aide says bathed body, saw bullet wound AFP Saturday, December 29, 2007 13:07 IST ISLAMABAD: A close aide to Benazir Bhutto told on Saturday she saw a bullet wound in the Pakistani opposition leader's head when she bathed her body after her assassination. Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who said she was in the former premier's motorcade at the time of the gun and suicide attack, rejected government claims that the death was caused when Bhutto's head hit her sunroof. "I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral," said Rehman, who added that her...

Excerpts - ~ snip ~ Bhutto told this reporter two weeks before she flew home on Oct. 18 about her plans to flush the Taliban and al-Qaida out of FATA. She wanted to open up FATA to the country's principal political parties to compete with a coalition of six politico-religious parties, known as Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, now the only ones allowed to campaign there. The objective was to wean Pashtun tribesmen from MMA, Taliban and al-Qaida control. This was to be done in conjunction with some $750 million in U.S. aid already authorized to bring basic improvements to mountain villages that...

Four cardinal principles of security violated, say Indian experts Praveen Swami New Delhi: While Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, maintains that Pervez Musharraf’s government provided “unprecedented security” to Benazir Bhutto, Indian security experts disagree. Speaking to The Hindu, a senior Special Protection Group official who reviewed available footage of the attack described Ms. Bhutto’s security as “dismal, almost as bad as if it was designed to facilitate her assassination.” Set up in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the elite SPG provides security to both serving and past Indian Prime Ministers and their families. e-mail to...

G.K. Chesterton once stated, “When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.” I believe that sentiment defines the way many people — including me, on occasion — look at our world today. As we prepare to enter the year 2008, our world is encountering widespread turmoil and confusion. The shocking assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto rekindles the fears we have of militant terrorists who will recklessly sacrifice their own lives to carry on their reign of terror. And while the experts and pundits and politicians continue to weigh...

Benazir Bhutto discusses her murderers

Bhutto died trying to duck from blast, not bullet or bomb: ministry ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan's interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found in her. Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said the opposition leader had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof's lever as she tried to shelter inside the car. "The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull," Cheema said. "There was no bullet or metal shrapnel...

Times Online December 28, 2007 Pakistan military can deliver security, but not a long-term solution Bronwen Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator of The Times The burning barricades set up across Karachi today by Benazir Bhutto's supporters do not have to presage civil war. Pakistan has gone through a year of crisis, as eight years of military rule has unravelled, yet enough of the country's institutions work well to have provided a powerful steadying influence through the growing turmoil. The military itself, the strongest organisation in the country, is the biggest insurance against widespread sectarian violence. The civil service, the judiciary (even...

After the shock Greg Sheridan, foreign editor | December 29, 2007 The West is failing to keep alive its friends in the Muslim world. Foreign editor Greg Sheridan writes that Thursday's murder also underlines the failures of Pakistan's dictatorial President THE assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a catastrophe for Pakistani democracy and society. It is also a savage setback in the larger war on terror. To assassinate a two-time prime minister, a moderate and liberal woman leader in the world's only Islamic nuclear power, is a signal victory for the terrorists. Bhutto's assassination also has wide geo-strategic consequences. It leaves...

Benazir and Rajiv, linked by dynasty and death RADHIKA RAMASESHAN New Delhi, Dec. 27: A still-young former Prime Minister, faced with a make-or-break election, is killed in a suicide attack at a rally venue. Benazir Bhutto, or Rajiv Gandhi? Sonia Gandhi’s condolence message to Benazir’s family today reflected one of the many threads that link the two most illustrious political dynasties of India and Pakistan. Benazir’s assassination is “a painful reminder of the threat posed by the forces of violence and terror to the civilised world”, the Congress president said. “Her life’s unrealised potential has been cut short. For the...

Benazir Bhutto [Mark Steyn] Dec. 27, 2007 Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I'm asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of...

Call it the Brzezinski Variation of the Some-Say Gambit. In the wake of the Bhutto assassination, Morning Joe panelist Mika Brzezinski has broken out a "friend" to put the blame on George Bush. Joe Scarborough dialogued with Mika from Florida, where he has been spending the week. View video here. Excerpts:

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"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" was initially all that Dr. Amna Buttar could say this morning, stunned to find out that former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a political rally in Rawalpindi today. Buttar, until recently an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, had been in Pakistan since October, joining Bhutto on the former prime minister's triumphant return to her native country after eight years in exile. "Everyone is in shock," Buttar said. "It is very sad." Bhutto was killed following a rally for...

Today the President spoke from his raunch in Crawford Texas on the death of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He also telephoned Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Amin Fahim, who is Benazir Bhutto successor as the head of the Pakistani People's Party and also called Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, to express her condolences, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. During a Press gaggle with Scott Stanzel many comments and questions arose regarding her death etc - Click here for further details Pray for President Bush -- Day 2660 Enjoy your visit to...

Islamabad, Pakistan (LifeNews.com) -- The world mourned the loss of assassinated Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday, but her death was more than a setback for those hoping for democracy in this war-torn nation. Bhutto was a member of an international pro-life women's movement that understood abortion causes medical, mental health and other problems for women.When Bhutto was the prime minister of Pakistan, she helped lead a delegation to the 1994 Cairo population conference that confronted abortion advocates looking to make abortion an international right."I dream ...of a world where we can commit our social resources to the development...

Benazir Bhutto is dead, assassinated Thursday at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan: "Bhutto, 54, was leaving the rally in her bulletproof vehicle when she asked that the rooftop hatch be opened so she could bid supporters farewell, aides who were with her said. She leaned her head through the hatch, and several gunshots rang out, an aide seated next to her said. Just as Bhutto sank into her seat, a large bomb detonated outside the vehicle. The left side of Bhutto’s face was badly bloodied, aides said, but it was not clear whether she’d been hit by bullets or...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Suspects in the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto number in the tens of thousands. Some 800 Pakistanis have been killed by suicide bombers in the past year. Bhutto had a close brush with death Oct. 18, a few hours after returning from eight years of self-imposed exile in Dubai and London. The suicide bomber killed more than 140 people and injured 350, some a few feet from where she was sitting in a large vehicle. Bhutto knew of at least three extremist leaders who had ordered her assassination. She had received a letter...

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HARRIS FAULKNER : Senator, your reaction, first, to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. FRED THOMPSON : It is a tragedy, of course. It reminds us that things can happen in faraway places of the world that can affect the United States. I think this should be of great concern to us. It is almost a perfect storm in a very bad sense because two forces are operating against each other that are both desirable. One is democracy: they were making progress in that regard in that country. Former prime minister Bhutto was an important part of that process. But the...

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said. "The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred," Bhutto's lawyer Babar Awan said.

BLAST HEARD OUTSIDE BHUTTO RALLY IN PAKISTAN'S RAWALPINDI - REUTERS WITNESS PAKISTANI OPPOSITION LEADER BENAZIR BHUTTO IS SAFE - DAWN TV

Will Benazir have control of nukes if returns to power? * Report says Benazir saw Dr AQ Khan as a potential ally * She reacted differently to sharing N-technology with Iran, N Korea By Khalid Hasan WASHINGTON: If Benazir Bhutto assumed power, it remains an open question if she would be willing to exert civilian control over Pakistan’s nuclear programme, or would even have the ability to do so, according to a report published here. According to an article by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on a 1989 visit...

Should I be worried? I just agreed with something Neal Gabler said. On yesterday's Fox News Watch, the liberal media critic opined that the MSM is backing Benazir Bhutto over Pervez Musharraf in the current Pakistan crisis -- and not for the loftiest of motives . . . [Also includes interesting historical footnote on Willie Horton episode.] View video here.

Veering from the accusatory to the adoring, there was only one constant in Ann Curry's interview of Benazir Bhutto aired on this morning's "Today": an over-the-top emotionalism that had the show's news anchor lurching from shouted accusations to the verge of tears. Curry is in Pakistan this week, and scored an exclusive with Bhutto, whose triumphal return to the country where she has served as Prime Minister ended in tragedy as terrorist bombs on her motorcade route killed about 140 people. Curry began her interview by focusing on Bhutto's feelings of responsibility for those deaths. While the words are telling,...

I did not come this far in life to be intimidated by suicide bombers. There is a battle raging in Pakistan for the hearts and minds of a new generation. It is a battle for the future of Pakistan as a democratic nation. The new generation will choose moderation or extremism; it will choose education or illiteracy; it will choose dictatorship or democracy; it will choose tolerance or bigotry; and it will choose peace or war. I returned to Pakistan this week to lead the fight for democracy. With the blood of my supporters on the streets and on...

via translation - Mrs. Bhutto accuses supporters of the former military regime PARIS-Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accused the supporters of the former military regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq to have instigated the attack have referred Thursday in Karachi, in an interview broadcast Friday by online french weekly Paris Match. "I know exactly who wanted to kill me. These are the dignitaries of the former regime of General Zia who are now behind extremism and fanaticism, "said Mrs. Bhutto in the interview given in the night from Thursday to Friday Karachi and published on the website of the journal...

Excerpt - DUBAI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was heading home on Thursday to end eight years in self-exile, making a comeback that could eventually lead to power sharing with President Pervez Musharraf. Waved off by supporters in Dubai, and accompanied by her sister, Sanam, Bhutto was due to land around 2:00 p.m. (0900 GMT) in Karachi, where al Qaeda-linked militants have threatened to assassinate her. For years Bhutto vowed to return to Pakistan to end military dictatorship, yet she is coming back as a potential ally for General Musharraf, the army chief who took...

Breaking on Fox...they are reporting 3 explosions near Bhutto....she is reported safe....but scores are dead and wounded.

The Talk Shows Sunday, January 29nd, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean; former Commerce Secretary Don Evans. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. FACE THE NATION (CBS): President Bush. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; Dominique Dawes, Olympic gymnast. LATE EDITION (CNN) : White House counselor Dan Bartlett; Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; former President Carter; former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Zaynab Khadr claims she didn’t know that terrorist Osama bin Laden would attend her wedding in Pakistan. Now the 25-year-old says she didn’t know clips of bin Laden’s voice calling for the killing of Americans were on the laptop computer seized by the RCMP at Pearson airport when she returned to Canada last February.

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

Just a year ago, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to shed his uniform and give up his position as head of the armed forces by the end of 2004. It seems unlikely he'll will meet that pledge. Musharraf made the promise as part of a deal under which opposition parties validated his presidency and accepted constitutional amendments that added to the president's powers. The opposition (and U.S. commentators) started beating the drums about Musharraf's "broken promise" weeks ago. The main Islamist party, the United Action Assembly (MMA), has staged a number of demonstrations.... Musharraf has also come under pressure...