The news of the successful attack against Benazir Bhutoo has been all over the news and everyone is wondering two things: Who did it and what will happen now?

The general suspicion is that ex-General and now-only President Musharref ordered the killing or at the least had knowledge that it would happen. This is probably wrong for several reasons. Bhutto was a political opponent of Musharraf, as was seen by the mass demonstrations of joy at her return. The USG put tremendous pressure on Musharraf to take off his uniform and theoretically divest himself of his Army connections. General Musharraf appointed his Best Uniformed Friend as his successor as head of the Army, and obviously that doesn’t pass the smell test, but if you look at it logically, is he required to appoint his worst enemy? If you take a look at Mr Bu$h, you never saw him appointing generals who didn’t toady up to him and say exactly what he wanted them to say.

(One shouldn’t take away from that last paragraph that I’m necessarily comparing the US with Pakistan, a country ruled by a madman who is despised and hated by the citizenry, beset by internal religious and political strife, housing religious fanatics, with a shaky hand at the button controlling nuclear weapons.)

However President Musharraf and Ms Bhutto had at least publicly committed themselves to some sort of power-sharing in order to quiet internal unrest, and her death will undoubtedly cause more domestic dissent.

The next most logical actor would be a takfiri jihadist. One reason for this would be the fact that a bomb was used. It was a pretty impressive bomb, since apparently about 25 other people were killed by the bomb. There has been a wave of bomb attacks recently in Pakistan, causing a number of deaths and somehow it seems eerily similar to what happened in Iraq.

The BBC is reporting that Ms Bhutto had just left a rally and was standing up in her car, waving through the sunroof of her car when the assassin stepped forward, and shot her in the neck and chest and then triggered his bomb. Chalk that up to a failure of the security services in failing to examine the cheering throngs for weapons.

I suppose.

The BBC is reporting a large number of spontaneous demonstrations in the region around Karachi, which is the home area of her greatest political support. There have been several reports of cars and buses set afire, and at least four people have been killed. There are also reports of unrest in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Islamabad.

Now we can start worrying about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and what will happen to it if there is a major upheaval in the country.

On another negative note, this certainly puts paid to the Bu$h malAdministration’s attempt to rein in President Musharraf and get him to loosen up his internal harsh grip. The narrative has been that Washington has wanted to loosen up President Musharraf’s rule, provide a greater degree of democracy, and refocus his military attention from India towards what the US considers the real threat, the al Qaeda and Taliban supporters in Waziristan. The US has been pouring millions of dollars into Pakistan recently, with the money dedicated specifically to supporting the PK military forces engaged in controlling the wild tribes in the North West, and Waziristan in particular.

The US learned earlier this week that, disappointingly, these funds have not reached the military forces in the North West provinces. As Bernhard points out,

Short of an unlikely military coup against Musharraf, I currently see no way how the U.S. can again get the upper hand over him. The bribing of the tribes and planed [sic] operation of U.S. special forces in North Western Frontier may have ended before they really started.

Which means, I suppose, that the Eternal War Against Terror will continue, unendingly, right through the administration of whatever Democrat wins in November 2008, until the Twelfth of Never. Regrettably, it looks as if Mr Bu$h’s promise to get Osama bin-Forgotten has once again been foiled. The US military will require ever-larger sums of money to fund their growth, which will inevitably lead to a diminution of funding for programs that support the elderly, children and other helpless and unfortunate Americans.

A truly cynical man would understand that it is time to buy more Defense Industry stocks.

UPDATE: Juan Cole is associated with a second blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs and it has linked to a series of Getty Images photos taken during the rally before her death in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.