This close to a Pakistani power vacuum

Pervez Musharraf, the current President of Pakistan, barely escaped an assasination attempt
yesterday. A very advanced assasination attempt, by all accounts. The
people who almost pulled this off are not amateurs. They know that
without Musharraf Pakistan would most likely fall into the hands of
religious extremists in the same manner as Iran and Afghanistan. Try to
imagine what would happen if the nuclear state of Pakistan was taken
over by an Osama bin Laden. We're talking real weapons of mass destruction here, not those imaginary fake ones:

"The 'very expert men' who tried to assassinate Pakistan's
president used a sophisticated bomb with an estimated 550 pounds of
explosives planted in five places under a bridge - but it blew up
seconds too late, officials said Tuesday.
Investigators have yet to identify any suspects in Sunday evening's
attack, which caused no injuries but cast an ominous shadow over
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the future of a country divided
over the war on terrorism.
It also focused attention on the fact that there is no clear successor
to Musharraf, a key U.S. ally who has angered hard-liners by reversing
Pakistan's support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the
Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Musharraf says homegrown religious extremists were the most likely
perpetrators, but preliminary reports of the sophistication and scale
of the bomb have raised the possibility that outside terrorist groups
such as al-Qaida may have been involved."

Posted by flow Frazao on December 16, 2003 at 10:10 PM | Permalink