“Benazir Bhutto, The Corruption Diva…” And The Link To Hillary

This morning, Benazir Bhutto wrote a New York Times editorial, Musharraff’s Martial Plan, in which she excoriates Pervez Musharraff:

NOV. 3, 2007, will be remembered as the blackest day in the history of Pakistan. Let us be perfectly clear: Pakistan is a military dictatorship. Last Saturday, Gen. Pervez Musharraf removed all pretense of a transition to democracy by conducting what was in effect yet another extraconstitutional coup.

In doing so he endangered the viability of Pakistan as an independent state. He presented the country’s democratic forces with a tough decision — acquiesce to the brutality of the dictatorship or take over the streets and show the world where the people of Pakistan really stand.

Bhutto also implies that Pervez Musharraff might have had something to do with the most recent attempt on her life. In fact, Musharraff has proved himself to be more than capable. If he really wanted Bhutto dead, she never would have penned the drivel that adorns today’s NYT editorial page.

The rest of the screed is just as absurd and laughable. Given Bhutto’s past corruption, deceit and heavy handedness, is it any wonder she is embraced by the idiot brigade of the left?

Ms Bhutto is hardly one to speak of the high ideals of democracy, constitutions and legality. Her antipathy directed at Pervez Musharraff is understandable. He oversaw an amendment to Pakistan’s constitution that ban prime ministers from serving more than two terms, an action that would disqualify Bhutto from holding that office again. It is in her best interest to call for mass demonstrations and to vilify Musharraff and thus seek to amend the Pakistani Constitution to serve her own best interests. Consider the following:

Arthur Herman, a U.S. historian, in a controversial letter published in The Wall Street Journal on 14 June 2007, in response to an article by Bhutto highly critical of the president and his policies, has described her as “One of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia”, and asserted that she and other elites in Pakistan hate Musharraf because he is a muhajir, the son of one of millions of Indian Muslims who fled to Pakistan during partition in 1947. Herman has claimed, “Although it was muhajirs who agitated for the creation of Pakistan in the first place, many native Pakistanis view them with contempt and treat them as third-class citizens.”

Prior to being run out of Pakistan, Ms Bhutto oversaw one of the most corrupt regimes in that nation’s history- and that is quite an achievement in a nation where corruption is business as usual.

The French, Polish, Spanish and Swiss governments have provided documentary evidence to the Pakistan government of alleged corruption by Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.

A 1998 report indicates that Pakistani investigators have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family’s lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zadari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force’s fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari… The paper also said that Zardari’s parents, who had modest assets at the time of Bhutto’s marriage, now own a 355-acre estate south of London. The estate has been auctioned through a court order.

Bhutto maintains that the charges leveled against her and her husband are purely political. “Most of those documents are fabricated,” she said, “and the stories that have been spun around them are absolutely wrong…” [Of course. The Swiss, Poles, Spanish and French all ganged up on Hillary, er, Benazir- SC&A]

However, Bhutto and her husband still face wide-ranging allegations of theft concerning hundreds of millions of dollars of “commissions” on government contracts and tenders. Despite this, a power-sharing deal recently brokered between Bhutto and Musharraf will allow Bhutto access to her Swiss bank accounts containing £740 million ($1.5 Billion). Another one of her prime assets include her 10 bedroom mock Tudor Surrey mansion.

The New York Times has a series of articles, gathered on one web page. Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail Of Corruption is a must read.

In what has to be a historical first, a Muslim news agency actually understates Bhutto’s link to corruption. The article is cogent and concise:

According to investigation reports available with Pakistani authorities, Benazir, a student at Harvard and Oxford for six years in the 1970s, has been a vocal critic of “avaricious politicians.” In a Harvard commencement speech in 1989, she said that such people had looted developing countries and left them without the means to tackle their social problems. Since she was ousted as prime minister during her second term, on Nov. 5, 1996, on charges that included gross corruption, she has been the leader of Pakistan’s main opposition group, the Pakistan People’s Party…

The Bhuttos are among a few hundred so-called feudal families, mostly large landowners, that have dominated politics and business in Pakistan since its creation in 1947…

…They maintained an imperial lifestyle in the new prime minister’s residence in Islamabad, a $50 million mansion set on 110 acres on an Islamabad hilltop. Among the transactions Zardari exploited, according to these officials: defense contracts; power plant projects; the privatization of state-owned industries; the awarding of broadcast licenses; the granting of an export monopoly for the country’s huge rice harvest; the purchase of planes for Pakistan International Airlines; the assignment of textile export quotas; the granting of oil and gas permits; authorizations to build sugar mills, and the sale of government lands. Benazir Bhutto and Zardari took pains to avoid creating a documentary record of their role in hundreds of deals. The couple adopted a system under which they assigned favors by writing orders on yellow Post-It notes and attaching them to official files. After the deals were completed, the notes were removed, destroying all trace of involvement.

We do recommend you read the article, Benazir Bhutto, The Corruption Diva…

There are some lonely voices from the left who recognize reality when it comes to Benazir Bhutto. One Kos blogger notes Bhutto’s record and the connection that Mark Penn, Hillary’s chief strategist and pollster has forged with the front running Democrat candidate:

As we all have read, Pervez Musharraf as imposed martial law in Pakistan. Pakistan is a country of the utmost strategic importance, and the right balance of cooperation and pressure must be used to ensure that it grows into a stable democracy. And, whoever is President will have to exercise clear-headed, sound judgment for the sake literally of the entire planet.

Therefore, it is deeply disturbing that Mark Penn’s lobbying and polling firms are taking fat monthly checks from Benazir Bhutto, a main rival of Musharraf.

…Let us be clear what is going on hear. The chief strategist for Hillary Clinton is also involved with efforts by a foreign political party to gain influence in Washington D.C. [emp- SC&A]

…Aside from the International Culture of Corruption this points to, this is disturbing in other ways:

1. How can Hillary Clinton claim to have clear, unbiased judgment on Pakistan when her chief strategist has a vested interest in seeing one party return to power there? Is she issuing statements because that is what she believes, or because her chief strategist is biased in that regard?

1. If Bhutto does return to power, will she not be seen as a puppet of Hillary Clinton in Pakistan and elsewhere?

1. US lobbying firms working on behalf of foreign governments trying to influence US policy is bad enough. But, this unseemly fusion between lobbyist/PR and political figure is incredibly damning. Is Benazir Bhutto effectively getting a 2-1 deal on her money? Mark Penn is available to the highest bidder–do we really want someone whose business it is to shill on behalf of loathsome figures and who is a conflict of interest with feet shaping the policy of our next nominee?

Next to Bhutto, Musharraff is saint. He has done more for Pakistan than Benazir Bhutto would ever dream of doing Democracies are not built overnight. Tyrannies are.