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Old 01-03-08, 11:09 AM   #34 (permalink)
donsutherland1
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Thread Starter Re: The Bhutto Assassination: Some Quick Thoughts

For those who are interested, yesterday, George Friedman, President of Strategic Forecasting, Inc., a private geopolitical intelligence organization, wrote the following about who was possibly responsible for the Bhutto assassination:

Our first suspect is al Qaeda sympathizers who would benefit from the confusion spawned by the killing of an important political leader. The more allegations of complicity in the killing are thrown against the regime, the more the military regime is destabilized — thus expanding opportunities for jihadists to sow even more instability. Our second suspects are elements in the army wanting to use the assassination to force Musharraf out, replace him with a new personality and justify a massive crackdown.

Two parties we cannot imagine as suspects in the killing are the United States and Musharraf; neither benefited from the killing. Musharraf now faces the political abyss and the United States faces the destabilization of Pakistan as the Taliban is splintering and various jihadist leaders are fragmenting. This is the last moment the United States would choose to destabilize Pakistan. Our best guess is that the killing was al Qaeda doing what it does best. The theory that it was anti-Musharraf elements in the army comes in at a very distant second.
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