Free Republic

Soft foreign policy hurts the U.S. By Claudia Rosett The Philadelphia Inquirer January 3, 2008 If American diplomacy were delivering on its promises, we'd be heading into boom times for peace and security. Instead, the new year begins with Washington foreign policy increasingly cocooned in a cloud of "soft power," trying to deflect threats through the wiles of diplomacy, the art of the deal. Welcome to the world of wishful thinking. The irony is that with the gains in Iraq of the 2007 surge, the much-criticized toppling of Saddam Hussein is looking more and more like the signal success of...

Early picture of "Begum" (Pakistani title of respect) Nosrat Bhutto, Benazeer's mother whose Hariri family, came from the city of Isfahan, Iran area.

ISLAMABAD: The controversy over former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination has taken another turn with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated "laser beam technology". Bhutto's wounds were caused not by bullets but by some sort of laser weapon, 'The Nation' newspaper said quoting sources in the PPP. When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said. Bhutto's wounds...

WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally. There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the...

The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is a major policy failure for Condoleezza Rice and the U.S. Department of State, signaling that democracy cannot be easily engineered in a region where radical Islamic terrorists still have free reign, according to an analysis in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. Bhutto returned to Pakistan to run for president because Rice had encouraged her to do so, the premium intelligence service reports. Now the world is in the first stages of considering the possibility the attack on Bhutto could have been covertly authorized by Pakistan's President Pervez Mustarraf as part of...

Democracy has delivered to us Hezbollah as a legitimately elected entity in Lebanon and Hamas as a democratically elected and legitimate force in Gaza. Democracy made it possible for Vladimir Putin to bring a KGB mentality to a newly freed Russian people. Democracy has enabled the quasi-socialism of Hugo Chavez to erupt in South America. Democracy is not the first step toward a free people, it is the last step.

There is a fresh and sordid postscript to Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Tainted by her husband Asif Ali Khan Zardari's penchant for graft and corruption, Mrs. Bhutto was twice fired as prime minister (1990 and 1996). Her closest friends now say she did not appoint Mr. Zardari to succeed her as party leader in case of death. The political testament Mr. Zardari read on television was his recent creation, not hers. These friends of longstanding had never heard of such a document. Mr. Zardari is known as "Mr. 10 Percent" and is widely reviled as one of the most corrupt political...

Bhutto’s Death at the Hands of Islam   By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, January 03, 2008   Frontpage Interview's guest today is Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace?   FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Spencer: Thank you, Jamie. I always appreciate your...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday brushed aside calls for a UN investigation into the slaying of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, saying Britain's Scotland Yard now leads the probe and will get "the answers" Pakistan's people deserve. "Scotland Yard being in the lead of this investigation is appropriate and necessary and we don't see a need for an investigation beyond that at this time," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters. "What's most important is that they proceed quickly and in a transparent and comprehensive way, so that the people of Pakistan can get the answers they...

Benazir shot by three sniper teams Amir Mir Thursday, January 03, 2008 03:32 IST The Special Service Group of the Pakistani Army is the only organisation capable of mounting such an operation in Pakistan LAHORE: Benazir Bhutto, the slain chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, was fired upon by no less than three separate sniper teams of the Special Services Group of the Pakistan Army. They fired more than six times, which was followed by two simultaneous rocket-propelled grenades designed to destroy the scene of the assassination. The central media office of the Pakistan Peoples Party, led by Farhatullah Babar,...

Bhutto’s Murder: Al Qaeda’s Security BlanketWalid Phares Former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto was murdered by the combined forces of Jihadism in Pakistan because of her potential actions in that country. In short, Jihadists executed her to preempt her future war of ideas. This is the bottom line, and here is why. The long-term plan of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s was to eventually spread to Pakistan and seize power and ultimately, after 1999, to seize Pakistan’s nukes, too. Miscalculating on September 11th, Osama bin Laden lost Kabul and the Jihadi war room crossed over to their...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Pervez Musharraf announced Wednesday that Scotland Yard will help investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and authorities pushed back elections until Feb. 18 — a delay prompted by the rioting that followed her death. Opposition parties condemned the six-week postponement but still plan to take part in the parliamentary elections, seen as a key step in bringing democracy to Pakistan after years of military rule. Both developments could ease the turmoil that has gripped Pakistan since Bhutto's slaying in a gun and suicide bomb attack Thursday, which plunged the nation deeper into political crisis as it...

Commenting on Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, I recently commented that there are three groups that oppose democracy in the Muslim world: the secular dictators like Musharaff, the Islamic radicals of the Bin Laden stripe, and the cultural left here in America. In response, several people expressed indignation. One challenged me to provide a single example of a leftist who opposed Muslim democracy. Other liberals noted that they favored the idea of democracy but alas it wasn't succeeding in Iraq. Certainly it does seem odd that a left which is always calling for "more democracy" in America would resist democracy in Muslim...

ISLAMABAD: The controversy over former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination has taken another turn with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated "laser beam technology". Bhutto's wounds were caused not by bullets but by some sort of laser weapon, The Nation newspaper said quoting sources in the PPP. When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said.

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Wolf Blitzer of CNN made much of an e-mail, exclusively provided to him by a close associate of Bhutto and a Hillary Clinton supporter, casting blame on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for her murder. We can now understand why Musharraf’s November 3 state-of-emergency decree took foreign news outlets like CNN off the air. Musharraf, who is one of the main targets of the Al Qaida international terrorist organization, recognizes that the so-called “CNN effect” in global affairs can destabilize foreign governments, including his own. It’s no wonder that he recently complained about being...

ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn't. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery. She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said....

Benazir's Assassination: Q & A - International Terrorism Monitor--Paper No. 343 By B. Raman (I have received a number of questions from the readers of my articles on the assassination of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. I have attempted to answer them in this article) Q. Could President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistan Army have had a hand in the assassination of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto? A. Unlikely. Musharraf and other senior Army officers were unhappy with her confrontational style after the first attack on her at Karachi on October 18, 2007. They were also unhappy about...

BILAWAL Bhutto Zardari will receive 24-hour security at Oxford University from now on, as the institution and British intelligence services grapple with the danger of having one of the world's top assassination targets strolling around the campus. The 19-year-old son of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto wants to spend the next three years studying history at Oxford before taking full-time control of his mother's political party, and continuing Pakistan's most fabled and endangered political dynasty. The question being faced by university officials, local police and British intelligence is whether they can allow such a high-profile target to remain on...

Author's Note: I just saw the movie “National Treasure”, in which one character notes that prior to our Civil War, people said “The United States are…”, whereas afterwards, people said “The United States is…”. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a watershed moment in our history, but what kind of milestone will the assassination of Benazir Bhutto be for Pakistan? One does not coddle a drunken neighbor who’s waving a gun – yet, that’s exactly what the United States has been doing with Pakistan for the last year, and it appears that it has taken an assassination to make the...

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...