“I am what the terrorists most fear.”

Those words grace the cover of this Sunday's Parade Magazine cover. But the story that goes with that headline became outdated in an instant on Dec 27. That's when the woman who made the statement was killed by a suicide bomber in Pakistan.

By now you might have heard about the Parade magazine story on Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistan prime minister who had returned to her homeland to run again for that office, despite the great security risk such a campaign created.

Parade, which you can find every Sunday in this and hundreds of other newspapers around the country, is printed a few weeks ahead of its actual delivery date. It's Jan. 6 issue, featuring a cover story on Bhutto, was completed prior to the assassination.

As a result, the story has plenty of facts that are no longer true. There are references to Bhutto getting ready for an election that was supposed to happen next week. There are references to her being possibly the greatest hope for the United States in its war with al-Qaeda.

The story has created a dilemma for newspapers. Should they distribute an article that is now, in many ways, grossly out of touch with the reality of the situation in Pakistan?

For us, and for most other papers, the answer is yes. And to be honest, it wasn't a difficult decision.

That's because despite its shortcomings in the timeliness department, the story now provides a revealing look at this important person's state of mind weeks before her murder. This was perhaps the final in-depth interview she did with a member of the American media.

Some of the passages and quotes are now chilling to read. “Now they're trying to kill me,” she says at one point in the story.

The piece is also valuable because it offers a more complete picture of Bhutto than the one that emerged in the days after her assassination. Understandably, those first few stories had little, if any, focus on some of the controversy surrounding Bhutto through the years. Her ties to corruption. Her strained family relationships. Even her decision to return to Pakistan.

It's now probably a good point in time - more than a week since the world learned of the horrible news of her death - to start looking at her complete legacy as a world figure.

This paper has always been glad to bring Parade to its readers because of the variety of content it offers.

Sunday's issue, however, is one that I believe more people than normal will want to read - and hold on to for a while.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net