Pro-Taliban commander is blamed for Bhutto's killing

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her ancestral village today, the government of President Pervez Musharraf laid blame for her murder on a pro-Taliban commander but provided no evidence of to back up its claim.

Violence flared in several Pakistani cities on the first full day after Bhutto's assassination. At least two dozen people were killed in riots during the first 24 hours after the former prime minister's death. The government deployed thousands of police, paramilitary troops and regular army soldiers across the country, giving those in the most volatile areas shoot-to-kill orders against looters.

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(commentary) http://galleyslaves.blogspot.com/2005/03/kos-watch.html

Once upon a time, it was easy for the American Right to smear its opponents on the left--they could simply equate them with the nation's communist enemies. It didn't matter that the American "left" (Democrats) had more in common with the Right than international communism, the smear was useful.

Now, however, our international enemy--Islamic radicalism--is actually the polar opposite of what liberals stand for--their actions on women rights are deplorable, they insist on theocracy, they loooveee torture and the death penalty, they demand to control the culture (TV, movies, music), they rail against rampant sexuality, they seek to spread their ideology via force, and they have a well-defined black-and-white sense of truth.

Remind you of a certain American party?

That's why hysterical assertions by the wingers that liberals hate America and want the terrorists to win are so absurd. As absurd as it would've been to claim that Reagan wanted the Communists to win the Cold War. The Taliban/Al Qaida/Hezbollah/Jihadists of the world are the exact embodiment of evil in the liberal mind. They are everything we are against, and against everything we are for.

In fact, they are exactly what we see in the Republican Party as the GOP continues to consolidate power--creeping theocracy, moralizing, us versus them, embrace of torture, the need to constantly declare jihad on someone, hysterics over football-game nipples, control over "decency" on the airwaves, lyrics censorship, hostility to women freedoms, curtaling of civil liberties, and so on.

So it's pretty obvious--we don't love terrorists. We don't want them to win. For them to win would be to realize our greatest fears. The muslim terrorist is truly the anti-liberal. Like matter and anti-matter.

Republicans, on the other hand, hate the terrorists because they're Muslim. But aside from that, they've got far more in common than they'll ever admit to themselves.

And it's high time we started to make that connection more forcefully.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Probably because he doesn't want to move against Hamid Gul (erstwhile ISI head, from 1988 to at least 2000; born in Sargodha, he can call on Punjabi loyalty against mohajir Musharraf) who is the most likely one to have ordered the murder.

Gul took over ISI after Aslam Beg had Zia and his ISI head Akhtar Rahman bumped-off--and was still around when Musharraf siezed power.