It is not going to go smoothly, I fear.
Quote:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/062175.php
Getting Weirder
12.28.07 -- 11:34AM
By Josh Marshall
Initial reports from Pakistani government officials ascribed the death of Benazir Bhutto to a gunshot wound fired by the assailant before he detonated his suicide bomb. Subsequent reports today say that it was not a bullet wound but rather shrapnel from the bomb.
A fired bullet can be badly disfigured. So probably only an expert can reliably distinguish one from the other. And thus that confusion is not surprising.
Yet now the Pakistani Interior Ministry is reporting that Bhutto died neither from a gunshot wound or shrapnel but rather from a blow to the head (causing a fractured skull) she suffered while ducking down into the car she was riding in to escape the gunfire.
Early reports of chaotic events are often garbled and inaccurate. But my strong impression is that to a competently trained physician a skull fracture looks very different than bullet wound to the neck. And the credibility or at least reliability of this latest explanation is undermined by the fact that there was apparently no post-mortem conducted on the body.
I don't know what it means or what purpose the shifting explanations might serve. Perhaps, as I said, they are simply progressively more accurate accounts provided as the chaos of the initial moments fades and more details can be ascertained. But I think at this point it's worth making a public note that this is starting to sound fishy and probably deserves more scrutiny.
(ed.note: I would be interested to hear from any doctors, EMTs or forensic examiners who might be able to shed more light on this. What the government accounts seem to discount is what I would imagine would be a more plausible explanation, that the force of the explosion led to a fatal head injury.)
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