This is a New Year

New Years Headlines: An Odd Couple With Big Influence: It’s Huckabee on offense, or not: After Ruling, Groups Spend Heavily to Sway Races: Race to save moulding Lascaux cave paintings: 2008: The year a new superpower is born

Doctors Cite Pressure to Keep Silent On Bhutto

By Emily Wax and Griff Witte

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, January 1, 2008; Page A01

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 31 — Pakistani authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried to save Benazir Bhutto’s life to remain silent about what happened in her final hour and have removed records of her treatment from the facility, according to doctors.

In interviews, doctors who were at Bhutto’s side at Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme pressure not to share details about the nature of the injuries that the opposition leader suffered in an attack here Dec. 27.

This is an Open Thread: Cheese Burgers

Headlines For Sunday December 30: Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image: Sorting Truth From Campaign Fiction: Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West: Far from case closed in Pakistan

Teenage son to take on Benazir Bhutto’s legacy

BENAZIR BHUTTO’S 19-year-old son Bilawal will be thrust into a dangerous spotlight today as Pakistan’s most powerful political dynasty prepares to pass the baton to the next generation.

Bilawal, a first-year undergraduate at Oxford University, is the heir to a blood-soaked legacy. He lost his mother to an assassin on Thursday; his uncles both died in suspicious circumstances; and his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 after being deposed from power.

Last night Britain’s foreign office confirmed that Benazir Bhutto met David Miliband, the foreign secretary, shortly before she returned to Pakistan from exile in October and warned him of a plot against her life. Bhutto and Miliband had spoken regularly on the telephone since that meeting and her concerns about her safety were passed on to the Pakistani authorities.

USA

Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image

WASHINGTON – If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him.

So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency’s every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived – by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.

This an Open Thread: Where the Truth Does Not Hide

Headlines For Saturday December 29: In Bush’s Final Year, The Agenda Gets Greener : Crisis Overseas Is Sudden Test for Candidates: Defense bill stalls at president’s desk: Bhutto aide says bathed body, saw bullet wound: Australian Guantanamo man freed: Shame of Imported Labor in Kurdish North of Iraq

Robert Fisk: They don’t blame al-Qa’ida. They blame Musharraf

Published: 29 December 2007

Weird, isn’t it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were “extremists” and “terrorists”. Well, you can’t dispute that.

But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa’ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.

Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it’s not surprising that the “good-versus-evil” donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.

USA

In Bush’s Final Year, The Agenda Gets Greener

People find all sorts of ways to lobby President Bush. Sometimes it comes in the form of a handwritten note slipped into his palm during a bill-signing ceremony.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) tried that last week when Bush signed energy legislation that will curb greenhouse gases. “Congratulations and good work,” Carper recalled writing. “By the way, Joe Lieberman and John Warner have a very good global warming bill that needs your support and you ought to support it.”

Bush tucked the note into his pocket and promised to read it later. Carper hoped he would find it at the end of the day when he slipped his suit off. No one knows what effect such a note might have, but it was just one more small foray in a battle for Bush’s attention that has been raging for years, one in which European leaders, American governors, corporate executives, evangelical preachers and key lawmakers have pressed him to lead what they see as a bid to save the planet.

George Bush’s concern for the environment extends as far as corporate greed.

Crisis Overseas Is Sudden Test for Candidates

WEBSTER CITY, Iowa – For the presidential candidates, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has emerged as a ghoulish sort of test: a chance to project leadership and competence – or not – on a fast-moving and nuanced foreign policy issue.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Democrats who have struggled to attract voters’ attention, edged into the spotlight on Friday after talking about Pakistan for weeks.

Mr. Biden tried to sound presidential as he expressed concern about loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and he also emphasized his foresight by noting that he had long called Pakistan “the most dangerous nation on the planet.”

Mr. Richardson, a former diplomat, made an effort to cast himself as a man of action, meanwhile, calling for President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to step down.

This is an Open Thread: Get It On (Bang a Gong)

Headlines For Friday December 28: Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned Giuliani for Help: Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing: Bhutto Assassination Ignites Disarray: AL-QAIDA CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

USA

Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help

In western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse.

Mr. Giuliani, celebrated for his stewardship of New York City after 9/11, soon told the prosecutors they were wrong.

In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him.

Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing

Reactions Illustrate Their Key Differences

DES MOINES, Dec. 27 — News of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination came just hours before Sen. Barack Obama delivered what his campaign had billed as the “closing argument” in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, forcing his campaign to scramble to incorporate the Pakistani opposition leader into his message of change.

For his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto’s death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months — about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man’s footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.

This is an Open Thread: Everything Is On Sale

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was targeted in a deadly suicide bombing Thursday. Media reports quote her husband saying she suffered a bullet wound to the neck in the attack.

The attack has left at least 14 dead and 40 injured, Tariq Azim Khan, the country’s former information minister, told CNN in a telephone interview.

Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari told CNN affiliate Geo TV that his wife was shot in the neck in the attack.

The attacker is said to have detonated a bomb as he tried to enter the rally where thousands of people gathered to hear Bhutto speak, police said.

Headlines For Thursday December 27:U.S. Ruling Backs Benefit Cut at 65 in Retiree Plans: Democrats Enter Stretch in Iowa: Kenyans vote in tight race

USA

U.S. Ruling Backs Benefit Cut at 65 in Retiree Plans

WASHINGTON – The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

The policy, set forth in a new regulation, allows employers to establish two classes of retirees, with more comprehensive benefits for those under 65 and more limited benefits – or none at all – for those older.

More than 10 million retirees rely on employer-sponsored health plans as a primary source of coverage or as a supplement to Medicare, and Naomi C. Earp, the commission’s chairwoman, said, “This rule will help employers continue to voluntarily provide and maintain these critically important health benefits.”

Democrats Enter Stretch in Iowa

As Clinton Emphasizes Experience, Obama and Edwards Call for Change

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa, Dec. 26 — With just eight days left to break a three-way deadlock in the Democratic contest here, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton began delivering a closing argument Wednesday that centered on the experience she and her husband gained in the Oval Office during his administration, while her two chief rivals both argued that they could best succeed in bringing change to Washington.

The issues of experience and change have defined the Democratic race for nearly a year, and the dichotomy continued to dominate as the three Democratic front-runners hit the campaign trail running after a Christmas break. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who plans to make his endgame pitch in a speech on Thursday, urged voters to ask themselves, “Do you believe in change?” Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) detoured through New Hampshire before a planned return to Iowa, arguing that his is a more radical call for change than Obama’s. Clinton and Obama are launching television ads in the state to bolster their arguments as the three remain tightly bunched in surveys.