Nethoggers’ Cernig has picked up on Larissa Alexandrovna’s echoing of my commentary 10 days ago regarding the post-shooting bomb blast at the assassination of the Bu$h malAdministration’s beard, Benazir Bhutto. (I’m not being harsh about Ms Bhutto. Her death was a tragedy for Pakistan, despite her family’s rather spotted record of corruption and alleged skimming of that country’s national treasury.)

Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.

"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."

Back last year I wrote:

I certainly don’t know anything about political assassinations, because I will deny that’s a skill set the US Army teaches its soldiers. But if I wanted to take a very important political target I wouldn’t use just one hitter. I might have a gunman in close in case the opportunity presented itself, and I might back him up with a dedicated zealot willing to kill himself (and the target) with a bomb. (This would also ensure the gunman couldn’t talk later.)

The fact that Ms Bhutto was in what is reported to have been an armored vehicle might well have mandated the bomb, should the pistol attack have failed. Providentially (or unfortunately) the pistol worked, and the bomb created further death and chaos, as well as silencing the shooter. It’s probably just coincident that the person with the vest bomb just happened to be standing right next to the shooter, eh?

Never one to leave a healing scab on a wound, I speculated further,

In case of failure I’d also have a couple of teams along the route of retreat, possibly with sophisticated anti-vehicle weapons, like RPGs. And I would need a spotter at middle distance to advise the cutoff teams whether the first attack failed, to alert them of the target’s approach.

While the suspicion of the world community has rightly settled on President Musharraf, having an inconvenient competitor eliminated in what can be passed off as a regrettable terrorist incident saves a lot of face for the Pakistani government. Face they promptly lost when they initiated an on-again, off-again series of speculations and laughable explanations about car roof levers and such. Shutting up the doctors after the fact was a nice touch, because it immediately switched the focus of the news cycle buzz from the killing to the cover up.

The danger in all this lies with the possibility that the USG might lose confidence in Musharraf, or at least more confidence than they had lost as evidenced by the insistence of Mr Bu$h and our alleged Russian expert, Ms Rice, that only Benazir Bhutto could save Pakistan from a fate worse than death. Or something.

And the only thing that could have pushed the Bu$h people to change course in Pakistan would have been the commentariat and punditocracy figuring it all out, spurred by a lot of questions from the man in the street inside the US.

Fortunately the only news audience that the Bu$hies ever pay attention to is domestic consumption. Propaganda Public diplomacy at its best, Bu$h-style. And the US corporate media has cooperated magnificently, speculating endlessly about neck wounds and moon roof levers and fortunately ignoring the first rule of political assassination: cui bono? How lucky.

As I said at the time,

I’m not saying anything. I‘m just saying eventually the truth will surface.

It should be obvious to any conscious mind that Ms Bhutto in exile was a minimal threat to President Musharraf. She was out of the country and has been noted in many places she was basically the heart and soul of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. While it is true that any exiled politician with strong domestic support is a danger to incumbents, the simple fact is that she could not have re-entered the country without the state’s permission, and the PPP was sufficiently neutered so that there was no chance of a “students’ rebellion” a la Iran, 1979, which would gave paved the way for her triumphant return to replace the incumbent President.

I still find it hard to believe that the Bu$h malAdministration really believed they were going to get President Musharraf to shuffle off into retirement so easily, so they must have figured that they could prevail on Musharraf to allow Ms Bhutto to be Prime Minister and actually allow US forces to operate in the NWFP and FATA in order to somehow to something to distract the Taliban and al Qaeda from operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have seen before that, they take counsel from their dreams, rather than from their fears.

Cernig ends his piece on a high note.

Can Bush at least stop selling the General-in-plainclothes advanced weaponry (e.g. nuke-capable fighters, anti-tank missiles, airborne early warning platforms) more useful against his neighbours than extremists, even if it does help line US arms manufacturers pockets with US taxpayers' money?

And he answers his own question at the same time!

Cui bono?