The President is on holiday in Crawford, TX. He condemned Bhutto’s assassination, and vowed that the attackers must “be brought to justice.”

THE PRESIDENT: Laura and I extend our deepest condolences to the family of Benazir Bhutto, to her friends, to her supporters. We send our condolences to the families of the others who were killed in today’s violence. And we send our condolences to all the people of Pakistan on this tragic occasion.

The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy. Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice. Mrs. Bhutto served her nation twice as Prime Minister and she knew that her return to Pakistan earlier this year put her life at risk. Yet she refused to allow assassins to dictate the course of her country.

We stand with the people of Pakistan in their struggle against the forces of terror and extremism. We urge them to honor Benazir Bhutto’s memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.

What does “justice” mean in the context of jihad, if jihadists perpetrated this attack? When they’re caught, tried and imprisoned in some countries, they remain unapologetic enemies of the rest of the world and they tend to get early parole. If they’re not allowed to escape by allies in strategic government positions. When we capture them and hold them at Guantanamo, “human rights” groups agitate for them and the ACLU goes to bat for them while the MSM reports their fabricated accusations against our personnel as truth, all while the political opposition works to grant them full habeas corpus rights. So what does “justice” mean when these assassins, whoever they may turn out to be, could well have touched off a civil war in a nuclear country?

Update: A blast from justice past.

An obscure Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda’s commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen.”

It said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al Zawahri in October. Before joining Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Zawahri was imprisoned in Egypt for his role in the assassination of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Sadat’s assassination, like Bhutto’s today, occurred at a rally and involved both explosives and guns. Most assassinations involve one or the other. This similarity doesn’t prove anything; Egypt was never even able to link Zawahiri directly to the Sadat assassination (he was convicted on weapons charges and rose through the Islamist ranks while in prison). But it’s interesting.