Yeah, that's the ticket

Could things get any more FUBAR'd in Pakistan? On the same day the government did their best Emily Latella impression and said "never mind" about their previous "bumped head" explanation of Bhutto's death--then almost immediately changed their minds--CNN is now reporting that Bhutto's party had evidence of a massive voter fraud plan for the upcoming parliamentary elections and were prepared to pass along their report to a visiting Congressional delegation before she mysteriously died of a bumped head. Or was it strong windshear from passing bullets?

Anyway, not surprisingly the government, trying hard to respect the memory of deceased former leaders, immediately suggested that Bhutto's people were a pack of lying liars:

The Pakistani government denied the allegations, with two Pakistani diplomatic sources calling the report "baseless." Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Musharraf, called the accusations "ridiculous" and said the election will be "free, fair and transparent."

"I think they are just a pack of lies," he said.

Wow, wonder if Hillary or Edwards saw that one coming?! Maybe the Pakistani hospitals will be instructed to check those PPP spokespeople for small head bumps. By the way, does anyone know if the sunglasses shooter guy got away or got blown to Allah? Perhaps he can solve the mystery.

As to the fraud allegations, one troubling aspect is the notion the Paki government was using surveillance equipment provided to them by the USA for terrorism interdiction to spy on their political rivals. That fits kinda snugly with the allegations made by American liberals about the potential misuse of Bush's TSP program here in America. Good. Grief. Charlie. Brown.

As if that's not enough, we're still no closer to exiting the catch-22 between Musharraf, the nukes and the terror-tories as the one-eyed Talibani continues to weild as much power as communist China. In all likelihood we're now further away from breaking that grip, since we needed the population to get behind Musharraf and allow him to go after the terrorists in the territories but instead it looks pretty much like the terrorists are in the government.

Hmm, maybe it's time to call Richard Armitage back into service as a special envoy...

WELL... 1/1/08

If what AJ Strata says is true we can throw all the conventional or unconventional wisdom about Bhutto, her party, and her murder out the nearest window. I'm very close to giving up in trying to figure this out.

MORE 1/1/08

Well, the liberals might surely have some fun with this report.
The question, should they make the obvious allegation, is why Bush would have bothered to push Bhutto back to Pakistan (too early, said some) if Darth and the gang were all the time paying the ISI to fix the elections? It certainly brings to mind AJ's contention that the PPP was a little more friendly with the Taliban/AQ thugs than Benazir led us to believe. Or that Bush is really Hitler, whichever you prefer.