THINGS WHICH MUST BE DISSEMINATED

Pulse Media

27.12.07

You want some breaking news?!


DemocracyNow!



But an old friend of Ms Bhutto, Salman Tassir, told the BBC World Service he did not think criticism should be directed at the government.
"There have been suicide attacks on Gen Musharraf also," he told Newshour.
"I mean it is extremism and the fanatics who are to blame."

What makes the security failure all the more startling is the fact that it comes just weeks after the first assassination attempt following Bhutto's return to Pakistan from a lengthy political exile.
This being 'breaking news', this is just my on-the-spot knee-jerk reaction. I have to wonder, if the extremists opposed to democracy are to blame, and, that their enemies are just as much Musharraf as Bhutto or Sharif, why is the ex-General, or 'our man in Islamabad', still among us?


On a sadder note, I wonder aloud : will this be a moment of history as was the Kennedy brothers' assasinations, or just a footnote? Sure, she was but another 'democratic leader', whom the West would no doubt have found a creative way to cuddle up to. However, like my ten-year-old future mother in 1963, today I feel like crying. Not only for Benazir but for the scores of 'innocents' who died along with her.