Saturday, December 29, 2007

Benazir Bhutto 1953 – December 27, 2007

It appears from what I have pieced together that Benazir Bhutto, groomed by her father from a young age to lead, was a failed and somewhat disgraced Prime Minister who was trying to resurrect herself and had convinced enough powerful Westerners that she could again regain power in Pakistan either in some kind of coalition with the current Prime Minister Mussharaf or to gain rule by herself again knowing Mussharaf was probably on his way out of power. Groomed by her father, Bhutto's strength was as a campaigner using her great charisma to charm her followers mostly from the middle and professional classes in Pakistan. She knew she could be martyred and was almost killed in October, 2007. 133 died in that bomb blast. Dec. 27th, 2007 Bhutto died as a result of injuries suffered in a suicide bombing in Karachi Pakistan. The exact cause of death is a matter of contention with the authorities saying she died because of the blast from the bombs caused her to fracture her skull as she fell back into the vehicle in which she was riding; another version given is that she was shot in the head and died of a wound to the neck.

Fingers point in many directions as to which group or which person wanted her dead and did the deed. Mussharaf, of course, points to a Taliban leader and to El Quaeda as the main culprits. Whatever the truth, Benazir believed in her own mission which was to help her country move away from extreme radical and violent religious elements in her own country, stood up against the terrorist factions that have succeeded in destabilizing that region of the world*, and was the first Muslim woman to lead a country. Whether her motives were pure or not, it seems she has achieved the same martyrdom her father achieved, also a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and next to whom she is now buried.

*There are those who would say the influence of the West and the interests of Bush and the NeoCons is another destabilizing influence in the Middle East and Pakistan.

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