The image that springs to mind, reading the McClatchy report, is of Dick Cheney spending the past 24 hours working the phone.
The first story out of the bloody murder scene yesterday in Rawalpindi was that there had been shots, Benazir Bhutto slumped in her car, a suicide bomber detonated himself within feet of the car causing mayhem. The next story came from the Musharraf government: the official story was that shrapnel from the detonation killed her. Today the story is that the detonation caused her to be thrown against the car's roof, causing a skull fracture.
Then we hear that, in a place where autopsies are mandatory in such killings.
Then we hear that Al Qaeda did it.
Put all these together and one can't help but notice that the explanations -- and absence of autopsy -- are enormously convenient for the Musharraf regime and for a regime in Washington which uses Al Qaeda as justification for every bad judgment call and which may well have decided Bhutto was looking a little too independent and popular when what was wanted was an aide de camp for Musharraff. Perhaps it would be better if she, well, disappeared.
"We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al Qaida leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said.
Mehsud, who's based in the lawless Waziristan region on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, has been behind a series of suicide attacks in the region, according to U.S. officials.
Pakistani authorities released a transcript of what they said was a conversation in which Mehsud exults after being told by an unidentified religious cleric that Bhutto is dead.
"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript.
In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity, said Mehsud was on "anyone's very short list" of suspects behind the killing. But the U.S. government had no separate confirmation of his role, he said.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile in October partly at the urging of the Bush administration, which saw a renewed role for her as the best hope for returning the country to democracy and stability.
There were fears for her safety even before she arrived, which were heightened after twin suicide bombings upon her return that narrowly missed her and killed more than 130 others.
Bhutto could have opted for body armor.
Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani political analyst and former journalist who was close to Bhutto, said he'd spoken to her before she returned, asking, "Have you done any thinking about your personal safety?"
Bhutto said it was "all in the hands of Allah," Nawaz said in an interview, but he looked into procuring the high-tech body armor known as Dragonskin.
It turned out the armor couldn't be exported without a license, which Pakistan's defense attache in Washington would have to request. Nawaz said Bhutto told him: "It's too complicated, and I don't want to ask the government for any favors."
Officially she was said to have been well protected, though all along the way there were complaints that the government wasn't helping much with security.
Washington lawyer Mark A. Siegel, Bhutto's U.S. spokesman, released an e-mail that he said Bhutto had written Oct. 26, eight days after the earlier attempt on her life, complaining that Musharraf had denied her needed security measures.
"I have been made to feel insecure by his minions," read the e-mail, which Siegel sent to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer for release in event of her death. "There is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides could happen without him."
The "jammers" appear to refer to devices that can interfere with the detonation of bombs, which — like the body armor — wouldn't have saved Bhutto's life Thursday. The "four police mobiles" refers to a screen of vehicles to the left, right, back and front of her own.
But others said that Bhutto, who loved political rallies, at times seemed heedless of her own security, or fatalistic.
"In her enthusiasm, she got carried away, and exposed herself in ways" she shouldn't have, said former State Department official Marvin Weinbaum of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
Then there's the matter of the autopsy. The government insists that it was Bhutto's family that had decided no autopsy should be done. But in Pakistan it's obligatory. Unless.
According to a leading lawyer, Athar Minallah, an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan's criminal law in a case of this nature.
"It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate. Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?" Minallah said.
Cover-up? How about this?
The scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence.
Like carting off World Trade Center rubble so far, so fast. We'd be stupid not to ask questions -- at the very least.
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