No, silly. Not the United States. Pakistan! McClatchy:
The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.
C'mon. Intelligence agencies involved in vote-rigging? Tinfoil hat time!
According to Lashari, the document includes information on a "safe house" allegedly being run by the ISI in a central neighborhood of Islamabad, the alleged headquarters of the rigging operation.
It names as the head of the unit a brigadier general recently retired from the ISI, who was secretly assigned to run the rigging operation, Lashari said. It charges that he was working in tandem with the head of a civilian intelligence agency. Before her return to Pakistan, Bhutto, in a letter to Musharraf, had named the intelligence official as one of the men she accused of plotting to kill her.
Lashari said the report claimed that U.S. aid money was being used to fix the elections. Ballots stamped in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, which supports Musharraf, were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in about 100 parliamentary constituencies.
"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money," Lashari said.
Interesting that this year's big Times pre-Christmas story didn't mention this, isn't it? Even though it was all about aid to Pakistan. There was this one sentence:
Civilian opponents of President Pervez Musharraf say he used the reimbursements to prop up his government.
"Prop up," eh? I wonder what that meant in operational terms. Perhaps McClatchy has revealed what Bill Keller carefully airbrushed....
NOTE Via the excellent Tristero at Digby's place.
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- 1+[CSE]+#b94+
Front page
Comments
i knew i had no worries
about this being put up. thanks lb.
sigh. it's very bad that i'm not surprised at all by this information. nor do i believe i can be cynical enough; if we ever get the full details of what happened here i'm sure they'll be worse that decent people can imagine.
the bottom line, i said at another thread, is the money. pakistan is a mess, completely out of control from a "can we count on them" standpoint. they are also a huge threat to us, our actual 'national security.' and we spend billions to...basically sustain that.
where is the candidate who can say so? who has a real world plan to fix this? anyone? bueller? who has the stones to stand up and say, "there is no democracy in pakistan, and it's primarily our fault that they are a risk to our own security?" i suppose it's just silly of me to expect any of them to speak plainly about the "terrorists" who are also our official government "allies," depending on the time of day and what city they happen to be in. feh, heroin.
"U.S. aid money was being used to fix the elections"
Thank god it could never happen here.
Oh, and for the nostalgically inclined:
"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead