WEIRD

"Our foreign policy had relied on her presence as a stabilizing force," Specter said, emotionally describing her death as "a real, real, real shock."
... And now, without her, we have to regroup."

After learning she was dead, Specter, Kennedy, and Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, laid flowers under Bhutto's photograph at her campaign headquarters in what they described as an unsettling atmosphere.

"Our concerns are about what is happening here, the stability; what's happening with the supreme court; what's happening with our fight against terrorism, our efforts to capture Osama bin Laden; and what is happening to the very substantial funding the United States has put in here; what the prospects were for the election," Specter told MSNBC.

"And we were looking forward to talking to her to get to her evaluation on whether the elections would be honest and open, and to get her sense of the situation."


Representative Patrick Kennedy and Senator Arlen Specter (flanking poster) paid their respects yesterday in Islamabad. (Chris Bradish/Senator Arlen Specter's office via Associated Press)


She had met with Karzai that morning of the assassination and was on her way to meet with these two.