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The only Republican presidential candidate with true vision on U.S. foreign policy, creation of Islamic terror and how to deal with it, gets less than 10% of the vote! Steven D has been a strong advocate on the focus of the Islamic extremists in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Of course, friends and allies of the Bush cabal in the White House and the bipartisan leaderschip in Congress and its committees on foreign policy and homeland security.
THE NEW GENERATION OF ISLAMIC TERROR AND AL QAEDA
ISLAMABAD: In a posthumous autobiography excerpted published in a UK-based newspaper, Benazir Bhutto has named the 16-year-old son of Osama Bin Laden as the leader of one of four gangs of “designated assassins” sent to kill her. The former prime minister, who was assassinated as she left a rally in Rawalpindi in December, reveals she was warned by both President Pervez Musharraf and a “friendly Muslim government” that Hamza Bin Laden was planning her murder.
The naming of Bin Laden’s teenage son appears to bolster intelligence claims that Hamza is being groomed as a future leader of Al-Qaeda. In her new autobiography, Bhutto writes: “I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me. These included, the reports said, the squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza Bin Laden, a son of Osama Bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group.”
Bhutto’s book also describes how a suicide bomb attack on her motorcade in Karachi when she returned home last October may have been carried out by a would-be assassin who lined the clothes of a toddler with plastic explosive to turn the child into a bomb. She says a man gestured to her to hold the child, before trying to hand it to police in a nearby van, which exploded soon afterwards.
LAHORE: The government has stopped the International Republican Institute (IRI) from performing exit polls at the upcoming parliamentary elections, while refusing to issue new visas for the institute’s top in-country officials. According to a report released on Chicago Tribune website on Saturday, critics said the government was taking the actions because a recent survey by the institute indicated that President Pervez Musharraf’s popularity had fallen sharply.
No visas: The Pakistani government has told the two US citizens responsible for IRI public-opinion polls that they will have to leave the country in three weeks because their visas will not be renewed, said Robert Varsalone, the country director for the IRI. The report said the government had tried to end their visas in January, but extended them a month after coming under diplomatic pressure. “We’ve been told essentially, this is it for you,” said Varsalone, who has been in Pakistan for more than a year. “We always tried to be honest brokers of information.” The other IRI official, Stephen Cima, has been in the country for two-and-a-half years, and the institute has worked in Pakistan for five years.
Quitting: The institute, headed by Senator John McCain, also has reversed a decision to send election observers for the February 18 vote because of fears that the increasingly volatile situation would prevent them from accurately gauging the elections.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
