Star One Smart Blog's

This news from India...(h/t Karl)

"Islamabad, January 2: The controversy over former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination has taken another turn with a section of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) claiming she was targeted with sophisticated "laser beam technology".

Bhutto's wounds were caused not by bullets but by some sort of laser weapon, The Nation newspaper said quoting sources in the PPP.

When Bhutto was admitted to Rawalpindi General Hospital shortly after the fatal attack on her on December 27, doctor Musaddiq Khan, who treated her, told a PPP leader that he had seen "such a case for the first time in his life", sources said.

Bhutto's wounds were not caused by bullets and she had died before reaching the hospital. A part of her brain and blood had spilled out from her head, they quoted the doctor as saying.

The sources also claimed both the gunshots and the bomb blast in the attack on Bhutto "were a decoy to hide the real shooters".

So much for simple peasants (or the Taliban) if this proves to be true.

Laser weapon technology isn't just science fiction. TRW Systems began manufacturing 747-based Anti-Ballistic Lasers (ABL) in 1997. There's claims that TRW has a laser rifle that can burn targets 5 miles away...but that was written in 1972!

"Movies about the future are slowly becoming a reality one new technology at a time. Take, for example, laser guns. A staple of sci fi movies for years, they’ve never quite come to fruition — until now. A California company called TRW Systems is working on a laser beam rifle that’ll be able to burn things from 5 miles away. Yeah, 5 miles.

And when I say burn things, I’m not talking about pieces of paper. It could burn a fatal, quarter-inch-wide hole in a person’s body without making a sound from 5 miles out."

If it was promised then, and much quiet since, you know that there's a few out there. Of course, we'll be the last to know.

Was Benazir taken out with some cutting-edge technology, or is this just the PPP mindlessly flailing about, much like our own Senate Democrats in a sleepover?

I'll update this later. Gotta get one of these...better, this.

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UPDATE

This LiveScience article from 2006 pretty much extinguishes the battlefield laser...

Then reality set in, and these recent efforts to wield battlefield lasers suddenly began looking as doomed as Star Wars. Generating the megawatts of laser power needed to detonate a missile required hundreds of gallons of toxic chemicals—ethylene, nitrogen trifluoride. The weapons grew bulky. Worse, after a few shots, the lasers would have to be resupplied with a fresh batch of reactants. The logistics of hauling those toxins either through the air or across a battlefield made generals shiver. And questions lingered about how effectively the beams would penetrate dust and rain. Last year, the Army canceled its Tactical High Energy Laser project, and some think the wildly overbudget beam-firing 747 may be next to go.

That's fine...but what about a laser rifle for, say, a sniper? On a bright , sunny day, clear air, open target...it's feasible that a laser weapon could work. Once. Then, the secret would be out, and the weapon less useful. It that's the case, why Bhutto? Well, if you were Musharaff, why not? Pakistan has nuclear weapons. How much simpler is it to get a one-shot 5-mile laser and take out your worst enemy?