See here for the footage and watch how the security detail merely ducks out of the way.

As I have said now for several days, a terrorist group of Jihadists is not behind this assassination.  Because a terrorist group does not a). operate via close range sniper hits, b). because terrorists would not have had the ability for the police stand-down, c). because terrorists would not have access to claim via official government report that Bhutto died as a result of bumping her head AFTER the blast, when in reality, she was shot at BEFORE the blast, and d). terrorists could not have so quickly organized an official "end of story" closure of any attempts to investigate Bhuttos murder on the part of the Musharraf regime.

We now have enough to say without almost near certainty:

1. Bhutto was shot at close range, which either struck her non-fatally or killed her.

2. The bomb blast was either/and a total distraction away from the shooting or a safety-net second hit if the shooting did not work or it may have been a way to erase evidence of the shooting as well. The bombing could have served all of these purposes in one act.

With some well informed speculation:

But there is another purpose the bombing could have and likely did serve and that is to frame another group or party for the assassination.  If this last motive is true, then this type of operation is generally called a false-flag operation. Under whose real "flag" was this operation really carried out? I think what I have thought from the beginning: the ISI and their stooge Musharraf. And whose "flag" was to be framed for the operation? Initial reports would suggest that the intended target of the frame was al Qaeda. After all, a group claiming to be al Qaeda took responsibility and initially news accounts assigned the blame to al Qaeda as well. When this initial target failed, thanks largely to US intelligence discrediting it, the next framed target was pro-Taliban commander by the name of Baitullah Mehsud:

"Pakistani officials said last night they already had evidence from "intelligence intercepts" linking a pro-Taliban militant commander to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and several other suicide bombings.

On the intercept the commander, named as Baitullah Mehsud, was recorded congratulating his men for the attack on Bhutto, said Javed Iqbal Cheema, Pakistan's interior ministry spokesman.

He described Mehsud as an "al-Qaida leader". Mehsud, who is one of Pakistan's most wanted militants, is known to be a pro-Taliban commander based in the violent tribal region of South Waziristan. Before Bhutto flew back to Pakistan in October he was reported as threatening a wave of suicide attacks against her, but he later denied making the threat."

There is a small problem with this account, if indeed the finding by Pakistani officials is to be believed. Mehsud has close ties to the ISI and if he indeed was behind the attack, then he carried it out under their orders and in their country, where they could control the cover-story after.

On a side note, for those of you believing this to be a CIA hit (and emailing me non-stop with this bit of theory), please remove your tin-foil hats, there is plenty of intrigue without this nonsense.

Finally, I think it about time we cut the billions of dollars in US aid to Pakistan. If we are going to be blackmailed by a nuclear military dictatorship harboring the very terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, then let us at least not pay for our own abuse. Pakistan does have nukes and Musharraf might be the only one keeping those nukes from disappearing (which I don't believe, but others with more knowledge on the topic appear to support), but this extortion must stop. We could far better use that money to remove those capabilities ourselves than to pay off a junta of terrorists to babysit them instead.