Anglo-American
Ambitions Behind
The Assassination Of Benazir Bhutto
By
Larry Chin
30 December,
2007
Global
Research
It has been known for months
that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been manuevering
to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for
the expansion and deepening of the "war on terrorism" across
the region. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto does not change this
agenda. In fact, it simplifies Bush-Cheney's options.
Seeding
chaos with a pretext
"Delivering
democracy to the Muslim world" has been the Orwellian rhetoric
used to mask Bush-Cheney's application of pressure and force, its dramatic
attempt at reshaping of the Pakistani government (into a joint Bhutto/Sharif-Musharraf)
coalition, and backdoor plans for a military intervention. Various American
destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed
the toppling of Pakistan's military.
The assassination
of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports
of "chatter" among US officials about the possible assassinations
of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual
attempts took place.
As succinctly summarized in Jeremy Page's article, "Who
Killed Benazir Bhutto? The Main Suspects" , the main
suspects are 1) "Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw
her as a heretic and an American stooge", and 2) the Inter-Services
Intelligence, or ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. Bhutto's husband
Asif Ali Zardari directly accused the ISI of being involved in the October
attack.
The assassination
of Bhutto has predictably been blamed on "Al-Qaeda", without
mention of fact that Al-Qaeda itself is an Anglo-American military-intelligence
operation.
Page's piece
was one of the first to name the man who has now been tagged as the
main suspect: Baitullah Mehsud , a purported Taliban militant fighting
the Pakistani army out of Waziristan. Conflicting reports link Mehsud
to "Al-Qaeda", the Afghan Taliban, and Mullah Omar (also see
here). Other analysis links him to the terrorist A.Q. Khan.
Mehsud's
profile, and the reporting of it, echoes the propaganda treatment of
all post-9/11 "terrorists". This in turn raises familiar questions
about Anglo-American intelligence agency propaganda involvement. Is
Mehsud connected to the ISI or the CIA? What did the ISI and the CIA
know about Mehsud? More importantly, does Mehsud, or the manipulation
of the propaganda surrounding him provide Bush-Cheney with a pretext
for future aggression in the region?
Classic
"war on terrorism" propaganda
While details
on the Bhutto assassination continue to unfold, what is clear is that
it was a political hit, along the lines of US agent Rafik Harriri in
Lebanon. Like the highly suspicious Harriri hit, the Bhutto assassination
has been depicted by corporate media as the martyring of a great messenger
of western-style "democracy". Meanwhile, the US government's
ruthless actions behind the scenes have received scant attention.
The December
28, 2007 New York Times coverage of the Bhutto assassination offers
the perfect example of mainstream Orwellian media distortion that hides
the truth about Bush/Cheney agenda behind blatant propaganda smoke.
This piece echoes White House rhetoric proclaiming that Bush's main
objectives are to "bring democracy to the Muslim world" and
"force out Islamist militants".
In fact,
the openly criminal Bush-Cheney administration has only supported and
promoted the antithesis of democracy: chaos, fascism, and the installation
of Anglo-American-friendly puppet regimes.
In fact,
the central and consistent geostrategy of Bush-Cheney, and their elite
counterparts around the world, is the continued imposition and expansion
of the manufactured "war on terrorism"; the continuation of
war across the Eurasian subcontinent, with events triggered by false
flag operations and manufactured pretexts.
In fact,
the main tools used in the "war on terrorism" remain Islamist
militants, working on behalf of Anglo-American military intelligence
agencies---among them, "Al-Qaeda", and Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence, the ISI. Mehsud fits this the same profile.
Saving
Bush-Cheney's Pakistan
In an amusing
quote from the same New York Times piece, Wendy Chamberlain, former
US ambassador to Pakistan (and a central figure behind multinational
efforts to build a trans-Afghan pipeline, connected to 9/11), proudly
states: "We are a player in the Pakistani political system".
Not only
has the US continued to be a "player", but one of its top
managers for decades.
Each successive
Pakistani leader since the early 1990s---Bhutto, Sharif and Musharraf---have
bowed to Western interests. The ISI is a virtual branch of the CIA.
While Musharraf
has been, and remains, a strongman for Bush-Cheney, questions about
his "reliability", and control---both his regime's control
over the populace and growing popular unrest, and elite control over
his regime---have driven Bush-Cheney attempts to force a clumsy (pro-US,
Iraq-style) power-sharing government. As noted by Robert Scheer, Bush-Cheney
has been playing "Russian roulette" with Musharraf, Bhutto
and Nawaz Sharif---each of whom have been deeply corrupt, willing fronts
for the US.
The return
of both Bhutto and the other former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has
merely been an attempt by the US to hedge its regional power bets.
What exactly
were John Negroponte and Condoleeza Rice really setting up the past
few months?
Who
benefits from Bhutto's murder?
The "war
on terrorism" geostrategy and propaganda milieu, the blueprint
that has been used by elite interests since 9/11 to impose a continuing
world war, is the clear beneficiary of the Bhutto assassination. Bush/Cheney
and their equally complicit pro-war/pro-occupation counterparts in the
Democratic Party enthusiastically support the routine use of "terror"
pretexts to impose continued war policies.
True to form,
fear, "terrorism", "security" and military force,
are once again, the focuses of Washington political rhetoric, and the
around-the-clock media barrage.
The 2008
US presidential candidates and their elite campaign advisers, all but
a few of whom enthusiastically support the "war on terrorism",
have taken turns pushing their respective versions of "we must
stop the terrorists" rhetoric for brain-addled supporters. The
candidates whose polls have slipped, led by 9/11 participant and opportunist
Rudy Guiliani, and hawkish neoliberal Hillary Clinton, have already
benefited from a new round of mass fear.
Musharraf
benefits from the removal of a bitter rival, but now must find a way
to re-establish order. Musharraf now has an ideal justification to crack
down on "terrorists" and impose full martial law, with Bush-Cheney
working from the shadows behind Musharraf---and continuing to manipulate
or remove his apparatus, if Musharraf proves too unreliable or broken
to suit Anglo-American plans.
The likely
involvement of the ISI behind the Bhutto hit cannot be overstated. ISI's
role behind every major act of "terrorism" since 9/11 remains
the central unspoken truth behind current geopolitical realities. Bhutto,
but not Sharif or Musharraf would have threatened the ISI's agendas.
Bhutto,
militant Islam, and the pipelines
Now that
she has been martyred, many unflattering historical facts about Benazir
Bhutto will be hidden or forgotten.
Bhutto herself
was intimately involved in the creation of the very "terror"
milieu purportedly responsible for her assassination. Across her political
career, she supported militant Islamists, the Taliban, the ISI, and
the ambitions of Western governments.
As noted
by Michel Chossudovsky in America's "War on Terrorism", it
was during Bhutto's second term that Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and
the Taliban rose to prominence, welcomed into Bhutto's coalition government.
It was at that point that ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI
were established.
While Bhutto's
relationship with both the ISI and the Taliban were marked by turmoil,
it is clear that Bhutto, when in power, supported both---and enthusiastically
supported Anglo-American interventions.
In his two
landmark books, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central
Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid
richly details the Bhutto regime's connections to the ISI, the Taliban,
"militant Islam", multinational oil interests, and Anglo-American
officials and intelligence proxies.
In Jihad,
Rashid wrote:
"Ironically
it was not the ISI but Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the most liberal,
secular leader in Pakistan's recent history, who delivered the coup
de grace to a new relationship with Central Asia. Rather than support
a wider peace process in Afghanistan that would have opened up a wider
peace process in Afghanistan, Bhutto backed the Taliban, in a rash and
presumptuous policy to create a new western-oriented trade and pipeline
route from Turkmenistan through southern Afghanistan to Pakistan, from
which the Taliban would provide security. The ISI soon supported this
policy because its Afghan protégé Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
had made no headway in capturing Kabul, and the Taliban appeared to
be strong enough to do so."
In Taliban,
Rashid provided even more historical detail:
"When
Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister in 1993, she was keen to open a
route to Central Asia. A new proposal emerged backed strongly by the
frustrated Pakistani transport and smuggling mafia, the JUI and Pashtun
military and political officials."
"The
Bhutto government fully backed the Taliban, but the ISI remained skeptical
of their abilities, convinced that they would remain a useful but peripheral
force in the south."
"The
US congress had authorized a covert $20 million budget for the CIA to
destabilize Iran, and Tehran accused Washington of funneling some of
these funds to the Taliban---a charge that was always denied by Washington
. Bhutto sent several emissaries to Washington to urge the US to intervene
more publicly on the side of Pakistan and the Taliban."
Bhutto's
one mistake: she vehemently supported the pipeline proposed by Argentinian
oil company Bridas, and opposed the pipeline by Unocal (favored by the
US). This contributed to her ouster in 1996, and the return of Nawaz
Sharif to power. As noted by Rashid:
"After
the dismissal of the Bhutto government in 1996, the newly elected Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, his oil minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, the
army and the ISI fully backed Unocal. Pakistan wanted more direct US
support for the Taliban and urged Unocal to start construction quickly
in order to legitimize the Taliban. Basically the USA and Unocal accepted
the ISI's analysis and aims---that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan
would make Unocal's job much easier and quicken US recognition."
Her appealing
and glamorous pro-Western image notwithstanding, Bhutto's true record
is one of corruption and accommodation.
The
"war on terrorism" resparked
Every major
Anglo-American geostrategic crime has been preceded by a convenient
pretext, orchestrated and carried out by "terror" proxies
directly or indirectly connected to US military-intelligence, or manipulated
into performing as intelligence assets. The assassination of Benazir
Bhutto is simply one more brutal example.
This was
Pakistan's 9/11; Pakistan's JFK assassination, and its impact will resonate
for years.
Contrary
to mainstream corporate news reporting, chaos benefits Bush-Cheney's
"war on terrorism". Calls for "increased worldwide security"
will pave the way for a muscular US reaction, US-led force and other
forms of "crack down" from Bush-Cheney across the region.
In other words, the assassination helps ensure that the US will not
only never leave, but also increase its presence.
The Pakistani election, if it takes place at all, is a simpler two-way
choice: pro-US Musharraf or pro-US Sharif.
While the success of Bush-Cheney's 9/11 agenda has met with mixed results,
and it has met with a wide array of resistance ("terroristic"
as well as political), there is no doubt that the propaganda foundation
of the "war on terrorism" has remained firm, unshaken and
routinely reinforced.
As for Nawaz
Sharif, who now emerges as the sole competitor for Musharraf, he, like
Musharraf and Bhutto, is legendary for his accommodation to Anglo-American
interests---pipelines, trade, and the continued US military presence.
As Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie noted in the book Forbidden
Truth, the October 1999 military coup led by Musharraf that originally
toppled Sharif's regime was sparked by animosity between the two camps,
as well as "Sharif's personal corruption and political megalomania",
and "concerns that Sharif was dancing too eagerly to Washington's
tune on Kashmir and Afghanistan".
In other
words, Bush-Cheney wins, no matter which asset winds up on the throne.
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