Soob

For the yet to be initiated the term LIHOP refers to "Let It Happen On Purpose" as brought to the subject of Benazir Bhutto's assassination by tdaxp in this commentary. The ringer for this latest development is less about my wishes to continue to belabor the Bhutto subject any more than it already has been (and yes this is the second instance in which I've presented such a disclaimer) than it is about a very local connection to the assassination. That of Vermont resident, author and former US ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith and his correspondence with Bhutto earlier this month in which Bhutto presented a somewhat desperate plea for additional measures of security by way of... Kurdish President Jalal Talabani. The email, as presented by the Rutland Herald, follows:

Peter,

Delighted to hear that you will be contacting Talabani. I hope he does have the best jammers available which we desperately need with a technician only for duration of the campaign. The gop gives us jammers that don't work and they keep giving warnings of more attacks. They say another is due on Dec. 21. So we really need the help.

Benazir

And was apparently preceded by another in which Bhutto lamented the security detail that was(n't) provided by Musharraff's regime:

"I hate the way "people in the know" casually talk about how there is going to be another terrorist attack on me and lots of people will die. Most of these are improvised electronic devices and not suicide bombers. The regime doesn't give me jammers that work. Your friend President Talabani was very kind to me when we met at a conference in Geneva. Would it be possible for you to request him to send me four teams of technicians and four sets of jammers that can be placed in four cities and accompany me to provide security as I leave from those areas."

Dan's observation becomes that much more prescient while my own observation that Mush serves to gain little (nothing really, quite the opposite) from Bhutto's demise seems increasingly lost in a haze of too much logic and Machiavellian reasoning. My ignorance here being that Mush could have, despite his proclivity for feeding the crocs in hopes they'll dine on him last as far as the fundies in the NWF is concerned, could have entailed an Islamic visage of Lee Kuan Yew and
brought Pakistan to some semblance of stability. Wrong. In this respect Mush is no Putin.
And I'm inclined to concede to the more reasonable theory that Mush, while not directly involved, was quite willing to allow the events of Bhutto's assassination to evolve for his own, apparent (and I can't get my head around what it could be) benefit. Not Lee Kuan Yew but Robert Mugabe, perhaps as power hunger eclipses reason.