Benazir Bhutto assasinated.

['97ventureowner]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7161590.stm

[Shpyder]

I do not wish death upon anyone in the manner to which she succumbed, but she and her husband ransacked and pludered the country to no end. I still remember when I was living in Pakistan...they used to call husband "Mr.10%", because he would get 10% of every large-scale business deal made in the country, complete extortion and racketeering.

Here is an well-thought out and interesting article relating to her death and to her portrayal in the West:


FOR the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal
of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's
former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better
after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists
behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest
and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western
politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave
woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred
democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak
poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always
more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average
Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not
increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan's feeble
education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their
religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not
forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the
country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat - which she
artfully played both ways - spread like cancer.

But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but
never knew how to package himself.

Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet,
there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a
country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but,
unfortunately, it's not always immediately possible. Like spoiled
children, we have to have it now - and damn the consequences.

In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it
remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only
force holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the
'90s, the only people I met who cared a whit about the common man were
military officers.

Americans don't like to hear that. But it's the truth.

Bhutto embodied the flaws in Pakistan's political system, not its
potential salvation. Both she and her principal rival, former Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, failed to offer a practical vision for the
future - their political feuds were simply about who would divvy up
the spoils.

From its founding, Pakistan has been plagued by cults of personality,
by personal, feudal loyalties that stymied the development of healthy
government institutions (provoking coups by a disgusted military).
When she held the reins of government, Bhutto did nothing to steer in
a new direction - she merely sought to enhance her personal power.

Now she's dead. And she may finally render her country a genuine
service (if cynical party hacks don't try to blame Musharraf for their
own benefit). After the inevitable rioting subsides and the
spectacular conspiracy theories cool a bit, her murder may galvanize
Pakistanis against the Islamist extremists who've never gained great
support among voters, but who nonetheless threaten the state's ability
to govern.

As a victim of fanaticism, Bhutto may shine as a rallying symbol with
a far purer light than she cast while alive. The bitter joke is that,
while she was never serious about freedom, women's rights and fighting
terrorism, the terrorists took her rhetoric seriously - and killed her
for her words, not her actions.

Nothing's going to make Pakistan's political crisis disappear - this
crisis may be permanent, subject only to intermittent amelioration.
(Our State Department's policy toward Islamabad amounts to a pocket
full of platitudes, nostalgia for the 20th century and a liberal
version of the white man's burden mindset.)

The one slim hope is that this savage murder will - in the long term -
clarify their lot for Pakistan's citizens. The old ways, the old
personalities and old parties have failed them catastrophically. The
country needs new leaders - who don't think an election victory
entitles them to grab what little remains of the national patrimony.

In killing Bhutto, the Islamists over-reached (possibly aided by rogue
elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, one of the
murkiest outfits on this earth). Just as al Qaeda in Iraq overplayed
its hand and alienated that country's Sunni Arabs, this assassination
may disillusion Pakistanis who lent half an ear to Islamist rhetoric.

A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will now become a martyr. In
death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her
country.


Source:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/12282007...265.htm?page=1