Bhutto, Pakistan, Lockheed-Martin and Cheney

As you no doubt know by now, Pakistan's government has retracted the declaration that Benazir Bhutto died when her head banged the SUV roof. Of course, lying about such a matter indicates complicity. Musharraf's government refuses to allow a foreign probe of the event, although a team from Scotland Yard will assist the government's probe.

We know that Benazir Bhutto was about to reveal that she had proof of an ISI plot to rig the upcoming elections in Pakistan. We don't know what the nature of this proof might be.

Senator Latif Khosa, who authored a 160-page dossier with Ms Bhutto documenting rigging tactics, said they ranged from intimidation to fake ballots, and were in some cases unwittingly funded by US aid.

Ms Bhutto had been due to give the report to two visiting US lawmakers over a dinner on Dec 27, the day she was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack.

Larisa Alexandrovna has some passionate but well-chosen words to say on the assassination and on the Musharraf-Lockheed-Martin connection:

Let's run down some of the facts about Pakistan for a moment:

* An ISI agent murdered an American journalist.
* An ISI chief financed the 9/11 hijackers, who murdered over three thousand Americans.
* Musharraf and his regime have created a haven for al Qaeda, who continue to murder American soldiers.
* The pro-Democracy candidate running against Musharraf was just assassinated

And yet nearly half a billion dollars of OUR money is going toward paying Lockheed Martin to deliver yet more weapons to the ISI-Musharraf regime. It is bad enough that Lockheed is selling weapons to a regime that has such close ties to terrorism, but that we have to pay for this purchase is absolutely astonishing.

It is even more shocking considering that just 10 days ago, Congress put restrictions on military sales to Pakistan. Someone clearly put some pressure to get this deal passed despite growing concern of Musharraf's violent actions and Congressional restrictions to aid. Who brokered this deal?

Was it Jack Abramoff from behind his prison cell who was a paid lobbyist (with our money) to Pakistan? After all, he was helping out with the F16 issue before 9/11. Somehow, maybe the prison element, rules Abramoff out.

Was it Lynn Cheney, the Vice President's strange other half, who helped push this deal through? After all, she was on the Board of Directors for Lockheed Martin right up to 9/11. But she has moved on to penning lesbian soft porn, which likely keeps her rather busy.

Could it be Dick Cheney's son-in-law, Phillip J. Perry, "who had, while working for a law firm, represented Lockheed with the Department of Homeland Security, had been nominated by Bush to serve as general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security." That all depends on what his current lobbying slate looks like. Is he still a registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin? I don't know. Do you? With so much secrecy, is it possible to know anything about this all Un-American family?

My apologies to Larisa for quoting her so extensively, but she raises points that nobody else wants to touch right now. She links to this important story by Christopher Brauchli. Here are the key paragraphs:

In a report released March 27, 2007, it was disclosed that Pakistan has been rewarded for its warm friendship with Mr. Bush by being made the most favored beneficiary of a new post-9/11 program that the Defense Department informally refers to as the Coalition Support Funds (CSF). CSF sends money to those countries that have helped in the fight against terrorism. According to the report, in the three years that preceded 9/11, Pakistan received $9.1 million in military aid. In the three years after 9/11 it received $4.2 billion in military aid. Only Israel and Egypt received more aid. Before 9/11 Pakistan received less military aid than Estonia or Panama. Since 9/11 Pakistan has received more than $10 billion in overall aid including military aid.

Much of the aid to Pakistan has been disbursed without any controls or demands for accountability. As explained by Tim Rieser, the majority clerk on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on State, Foreign Operation, and Related Programs, ¨With the possible exception of Iraq reconstruction funds, I’ve never seen a larger blank check for any country than for the Pakistan CSF program¨. He went on to tell the Center that the Republican congress ¨did next to nothing to track what was done with the money. He called CSF “a backwater of lax oversight and poor accountability. ¨ That is great for the Pakistanis. It is not so great for the Congress that from time to time likes to know where money it has appropriated is spent.

Consider the implications. With that kind of money rolling in from America, would Musharraf or the ISI pull off an assassination (presuming they did it) against the wishes of Bush and Cheney?

Why is that kind of dough being paid out to a nation whose intelligence head paid off Mohammed Atta?

Why were Osama Bin Laden and many of his Al Qaeda comrades allowed to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan?