Benazir Bhutto’s Detention Drama: All Stage-Managed?

Is opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a self-declared champion of democracy, in cahoots with General Musharraf, a military dictator who came to power by deposing an elected government? Some believe this. More here…

Time Magazine notes: “Musharraf’s closest foreign allies have long feared that those same military and intelligence bodies still include officials sympathetic to the militants Islamabad is supposed to be fighting. In the meantime, as Musharraf and Bhutto maneuver for advantage, the extremists in the mountains continue to expand their influence, day by day becoming a more realistic, if fearsome, option to ineffective Pakistani politics-as-usual.”

Meanwhile former premier Nawaz Sharif, now in exile in Saudi Arabia, has again begun to woo Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto. Sharif asked Bhutto to sever all contacts with President Pervez Musharraf to strengthen their (opposition parties) movement against imposition of emergency (in Pakistan). More here…

While this theatre of the absurd goes on in Pakistan, Bush continues to support the military dictator unmindful of what the opinion polls have to say about Bush’s actions. “Last weekend a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush are both roundly despised throughout the land, and that only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track. That’s almost as low as the United States’ rock-bottom approval ratings in the latest Pew surveys of Pakistan (15 percent) and Turkey (9 percent).

“Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon,” writes Frank Rich in The New York Times.