The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is horrifying in terms of its violence against the people of Pakistan - and terrifying in terms of the possibility of Pakistan spinning into chaos with loose nukes and murderous fundamentalists.

Of course I can't add any insights into the who and why and the consequences for Pakistan and the world - nor can many Americans.

But let me add my $.02 on one topic in the news - which U.S. Presidential candidates will benefit the most.

Without a doubt, those candidates are Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Ron Paul.

Why? Because they are the three candidates who want to get out of Iraq quickly and completely, and let the Iraqis solve their own problems, rather than continue the bloody, expensive, and self-defeating U.S. occupation.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune that he has a "gut feeling" that the US has entered into a new period of increased risk of terrorism.

Let me get this straight - Chertoff has a "gut feeling" that the US is on the verge of another terrorism attack.

I'm getting a gut feeling that this is a impending Wag the Dog operation as Bush continues to feel the increasing public scorn for his commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence, the mounting public opinion against the war, the plummeting Bush-Cheney public approval ratings, the defection of Republican senators from the "all war, all the time" Bush war agenda, the backlash from claiming executive privilege for the RNC emails originating in the White House, the White House refusal to allow aides to testify before congress, the burgeoning congressional investigations...those are just a few of the high points from which it's important to distract the public's attention.

But there's more, and even more reason to be concerned about the Bush administration's handling of national security. ABCNews is reporting that an alQaeda cell is either in or en route to the US.

A War On Terrorism or a War Of Terrorism?

Reports as usual vary wildly and small wonder that some news sources are trying to pin this on yet another subsidiary of "Al Qaeda". But this wasn't a suicide attack.

The terrorists drove a car, packed with explosives, up to a bus carrying soldiers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Some reports say that they forced the bus to stop by firing on it with automatic weapons, others that they blocked the road with the car while pretending to have broken down. Either way, they quickly escaped on motorbikes before detonating the car bomb by remote control.

Bush Greeted in Pakistan by Demonstrations, Nation-wide Strike

Juan Cole writes:

Bush arrived in Islamabad to find it eerily quiet. The Islamic Action Council, which includes a group that helped train the Taliban, had called for a nation-wide strike to protest the visit. Streets of many cities were said to be strangely quiet, while in the northern Pushtun city of Peshawar, thousands marched in protest.

Senior Pakistani officials told the U.S. on Saturday that the air strike on a Pakistani village last week cannot be repeated and that the two countries must find a way to work in a more bilateral way to avoid loss of civilian life.

The strike last week on the tiny Pakistani village of Damadola, in the tribal territory of Bajur, is believed to have assassinated some key al Qaeda operatives while also killing many civilians, including five young children.

"What happened in Bajur must not be repeated," Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri told U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns on Saturday.

Pakistan's ruling party got together yesterday and demanded an apology for a CIA airstrike that was designed to get Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, but instead killed at least 17 Pakistani civilians, including five children.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q condemned the U.S. airstrike on the tiny village of Damadola, near the Afghan border. America was apparently targeting al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahri and talk of the bad guy's death was the focal point of national news going into the weekend.

It now looks like al-Zawahri wasn't even in the neighborhood.

Another scandal that I keep an eye on -- the nuclear blackmarket operation run by Pakistan scientist A.Q. Khan. I wrote earlier that Khan's network received funding from Middle Eastern banks (was BCCI one of them?). Greg Palast reported that the Bush administration spiked the probe of the Khan network, because "funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia." It turns out that this follows a long pattern of "blind eye" complicity by the US government.

Leonard Weiss writes for Arms Control Today:

A little more than one year ago, the world learned that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had provided nuclear-weapons-related technology to a number of countries, including North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Yet, the revelations could hardly have come as a surprise: the supply network was used by Pakistan over the past 25 years to obtain technology, components, and materials for its own nuclear weapons.

Ever since the Khan Nuke scandal broke in Pakistan, I have suspected there may be a LOT more to it (see below).

But first...Seymour Hersh has exposed the latest twist in this festering scandal.

The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices - known as sniffers - capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me, "They don't want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can't have two of those. There's no education in the second kick of a mule." The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its cooperation-American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, "confessed" to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. "It's a deal-a trade-off," the former high-level intelligence official explained. "'Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.' It's the neoconservatives' version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation."