Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says the assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto underscores the need to secure the America’s borders to prevent potential terror attacks here.
“We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusal activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time,” Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines.
Huckabee called Bhutto’s death is a tragedy, but he suggested she had been a threat to Islamic fundamentalists. “An educated, sophisticated, strong, capable woman leader — that does pose a threat to those who don’t believe that women should be given that platform and that level of equality,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee brushed aside the idea — posed by rival John McCain — that the incident highlights Huckabee’s lack of foreign policy credentials compared to McCain’s. “This is not a time for us to play political games with (Bhutto’s death). It’s a time to express our outrage as well as our sadness and sympathy for the people of Pakistan and for the rest of the world,” Huckabee told reporters.
Huckabee also said it was time to put more pressure on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s goernment. According to Huckabee, a “full accounting” of the $10 billion in U.S. aid sent to Pakistan since 9/11 is “more needful” now than ever.