RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — 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.
Bhutto's supporters erupted in anger and grief after her death, attacking police and burning tires and election campaign posters in several cities. At the hospital where she died, some smashed glass and wailed, chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf.
The death of the 54-year-old charismatic former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections into chaos and created fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.
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Related Article: US urges democracy in volatile Pakistan
CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) — The United States appealed for calm and urged its "war on terror" ally Pakistan to press on with its elections after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.
Condemning the "cowardly" suicide attack that killed her, US President George W. Bush urged Pakistanis "to honor Benazir Bhutto's memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life."
Of course The Bush administration has her blood all over their hands for having joined with Musharaff as a key regional ally, and for pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan which is a safe haven for the very terrorists that we are supposedly at war to get rid of.
Makes you want to puke doesn't it?
Dec 27, 2007
Pakistan's Bhutto Killed in Attack
Sep 5, 2007
Interesting....
By David Swanson
The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is set on a course that leads directly to a third world war. And a third world war leads almost inevitably to most of us dying horrible deaths. And we're not talking about it.
Read More...World War III
Jul 20, 2007
My small attempt to understand
the islamic fundamentalist view of life as a perennial battle
By David Zeidan
This article analyzes how radical Islamist movements have altered traditional Islamic concepts to justify their worldview. Based on the writings of prominent radical Islamist leaders across a wide spectrum, it analyzes the ideas of a cosmic struggle between good and evil as reflected in the individual and in society. It traces the reinterpretation of traditional Islamic concepts such as jahiliyya, takfir, hijra, mufassala, jihad and istishad to justify indiscriminate violence.
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I am putting this out there as part of my own small attempt at understanding what is happening in the Middle East - without all Bush's rhetoric. As near as I can figure (this is very much simplified) the primary aim of jihad is not the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam by force, but rather the expansion and defense of the Islamic state .
Apparently, the greatest outrage of all is the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia, which is an outright infidel occupation of the "land of the two Holy Places the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka’ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims." Some regimes in Muslim states, including the Saudi government, have joined this evil alliance, becoming mere puppets of the Americans and suppressing faithful ulama who would reveal the truth to their people. Westerners living in the Arabian Peninsula are not people of the book, but infidels occupying Muslim Holy Land and must be expelled by violent jihad., a call upon all Muslims - Iraqis and non-Iraqis alike - to support Jihad on U.S. forces in Iraq.
The purpose of jihad, in other words, is not directly to spread the Islamic faith but to extend sovereign Muslim power (faith, of course, often follows the flag). Jihad is thus unabashedly offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim dominion over the entire globe.
Jihad did have two variant meanings through the centuries, one more radical, one less so. The first holds that Muslims who interpret their faith differently are infidels and therefore legitimate targets of jihad. (This is why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans have found themselves, like Americans and Israelis, so often the victims of jihadist aggression.) The second meaning, associated with mystics, rejects the legal definition of jihad as armed conflict and tells Muslims to withdraw from the worldly concerns to achieve spiritual depth.
For 14 centuries this has been the way of life in the Middle East. While their Customs and their Culture may be different from ours, it is still theirs. People don't like being bossed around and most especially not by the United States.
Democracy in the Middle East? Not going to happen. It just doesn't fit in with their cultural beliefs. They may make a show of it because of political necessities, meaning that they are either to impress the West, or to balance and maintain the current status. There is not a real, genuine move to democracy in any Arab country at the moment, except maybe Iraq now for the moment.
Bin-Laden also accuses the Western powers of plotting to divide Iraq into three mini-states (the north for the Kurds, the middle for the Sunni, and the south for the Shia), and that they plot a similar partition in Saudi-Arabia: one mini-state around the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina, one in the middle, and one in the oil-rich Eastern region.
While it is certainly laudable that the United States would like to see Democracy in the Middle East I think it is fair to say that the real agenda is access to oil, cooperation and assistance on counterterrorism, fostering peace between Israel and its neighbors, stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and preventing Islamist radicals from seizing power.
That's My View of "It"
