Today’s Must Read

It turns out the Pakistani government is as good at public relations as they are at detective work.

After absurdly insisting for days that Benazir Bhutto had died from the blow of her head against the sun roof of her vehicle (when she ducked down due to the close range gun fire), the government seemed to finally come clean.

It was all the fault of the Interior Ministry’s hasty spokesman, who’d floated the sun roof theory, it turned out. During a meeting with Pakistani newspaper journalists, the Interior Minister, Hamid Nawaz, asked them to “please forgive us and ignore the comment.” Because, well, “we are not so articulate to present our views as you journalists can.”

But it was only a couple of hours, apparently, before the government took back the take-back — in the form of a “clarification.” As Pakistan’s News summarizes a government press release, “As a matter of fact [Nawaz] had merely appealed to the editors to overlook the tone and style of the spokesman which may not have been received well.”

So it’s back to the sun roof.

Meanwhile, The Chicago Tribune had a good rundown yesterday on the government’s “bizarre” inquiry into Bhutto’s assassination. Beyond the now-infamous decision not to perform an autopsy, there was the decision to cordon off the crime scene and wash it down with fire hoses afterward.

I’m worried that CSI:Islamabad just won’t make it off the ground.