Benazir Bhutto’s presumed assassination was a disaster waiting to happen: She had predicted it herself. After years of exile, she was welcomed home on Oct. 18 with a suicide bomb attempt, and there was no reason to suppose that her many enemies would be content with that failure. The likely prospect of her winning the now-postponed Jan. 8 parliamentary elections and becoming the prime minister of a non-religious government threatened, in different ways, the current leadership, Islamic fundamentalists, the Taliban and al-Qaida, and her old nemesis, the army. Her assassins, therefore, tried to make sure of a kill by first [...]
The death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto Thursday from wounds suffered in an attack on her party’s political rally has sent shock waves through Pakistan and the world, plunging the country into chaos and raising serious questions about the stability and future of the nuclear-armed state on the front line of the war on terror. Bhutto’s life was characterized by tragic deaths in her family, a historic rise to the pinnacle of Pakistani politics and corruption scandals that drove her into repeated exile as Pakistan’s well-oiled rumor mills ran wild. Bhutto was loved and reviled in almost equal [...]
Round two of the trial of Salim Hamdan is now underway in earnest. Most will recall that round one ended when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the military commission established by an order issued by President Bush violated constitutional separation of powers limitations (with a plurality of the court also concluding the commission violated the humane treatment mandate of the law of war). Congress responded rapidly to that ruling by passing the Military Commission Act of 2006, providing the president with a statutory basis for resurrecting the commissions. Pursuant to that statute, Salim Hamdan was recharged [...]
