If you think American presidential campaigns are nasty...

In Pakistan, they're downright bloody. From the South Asian news service, the ANI:

The opposition Pakistan Peoples Party has blamed former military ruler General Zia ul Haq's remnants for the Islamist attack that took at least 17 lives in Islamabad on Tuesday.

'The mastermind behind the blasts and suicide attacks wants to create an impression across the world that an Islamist movement runs in Pakistan,' former federal ministers Khursheed Shah, Yousuf Talpur and Professor N D Khan and former Senator Taj Haider said in a joint statement.

Almost three hundred people have been killed in the past several weeks. While Mssrs. Shah, Talpur, and Haider's theory is not the only one out there, the wave of killings does seem to have something to do with stakeholders in the upcoming presidential elections.

The head of the PPP, incidentally, is Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who now lives in exile and is by all accounts keen to return - if she gets to run things.