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Analysis: Mumbai attack differs from past terror strikes (http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/11/analysis_mumbai_atta.php)
The Mumbai attack is unique from past terror strikes carried out by Islamic terrorists. Instead of one or more bombings at distinct sites, the Mumbai attackers struck throughout the city using military tactics. Instead of one or more bombings carried out over a short period of time, Mumbai I entering its third day of crisis.
An attack of this nature cannot be thrown together overnight. It requires planned, scouting, financing, training, and a support network to aid the fighters. Initial reports indicate the attacks originated from Pakistan, the hub of jihadi activity in South Asia. Few local terror groups have the capacity to pull of an attack such as this.
As usual, this is first rate analysis by Bill Roggio. Read the whole thing.
Vancouver
11-29-2008, 12:48 AM
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/We-trained-in-Lashkar-camps-Arrested-terrorist/392088/
Indian press story, says a terrorist captured alive has sung a story, saying he and the other perps belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba of Pakistan. Says that they used a hijacked vessel to get close to shore.
Heroes in Cummerbunds (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022184.php)
Among the workers there were some whose bravery and sense of duty led them to sacrifice their own lives, witnesses said.
Prashant Mangeshikar, a guest, said that a hotel worker, identified only as Mr Rajan, had put himself between one of the gunmen and Mr Mangeshikar, his wife and two daughters. ...
The Taj Mahal had been renowned for its sublime service for decades. Few of the hotel's wealthy patrons would have predicted, however, that the men and women who delivered their meals and carried their bags - people earning a fraction of the sums of those they served - would display such courage and composure as the death toll quickly rose around them.
As the terrible events of Wednesday night unfolded, the staff of what had been Bombay's finest hotel leapt into action. Scores of tales later emerged of unnamed workers hiding guests, barricading doors, tending the vulnerable and issuing orders.
Vancouver
12-01-2008, 12:53 AM
The Café Leopold has reopened.
US warned India in October. (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6368013&page=1)
Since Friday, U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking the phones and SIM cards recovered by Indian authorities from the Mumbai terrorists leading to a "treasure trove" of leads in Pakistan and several possible connections to the United States, officials say.
Officials say one of the cell phone SIM cards may have been purchased in the United States but would not provide any more details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.
The phones also include the same Thuraya satellite phone intercepted in November by the Indian spy agency RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing, which runs an extensive electronic intercept operation.
NSA, the National Security Agency, has the technical means to retrieve all calls made from satellite and cell phones in the south Asia region.
Officials say one of the phones recovered was a Thuraya satellite phone.
"Once we have the number we will be able to know everyone who was called and where the calls were made from," one former intelligence office says.
A US counter-terrorism official says all leads continue to point Lashkar e Taiba, a Kashmir separatist group with strong ties to al Qaeda.
The Thot Plickens ...
nancydrew
12-01-2008, 08:18 PM
If, as reported on ABC World News Tonight this evening, it's true that India received a specific warning from the U.S. in October (in addition to other intel) that Mumbai and the Taj hotel would be targeted, then victim's families have extra reason be outraged and then some. I'm curious, does anyone know if our State Department put out a warning, prior to the attack, concerning travel to India/or Mumbai.
US warned India in October. (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6368013&page=1)
Since Friday, U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking the phones and SIM cards recovered by Indian authorities from the Mumbai terrorists leading to a "treasure trove" of leads in Pakistan and several possible connections to the United States, officials say.
Officials say one of the cell phone SIM cards may have been purchased in the United States but would not provide any more details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.
The phones also include the same Thuraya satellite phone intercepted in November by the Indian spy agency RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing, which runs an extensive electronic intercept operation.
NSA, the National Security Agency, has the technical means to retrieve all calls made from satellite and cell phones in the south Asia region.
Officials say one of the phones recovered was a Thuraya satellite phone.
"Once we have the number we will be able to know everyone who was called and where the calls were made from," one former intelligence office says.
A US counter-terrorism official says all leads continue to point Lashkar e Taiba, a Kashmir separatist group with strong ties to al Qaeda.
The Thot Plickens ...
nancydrew
12-01-2008, 08:57 PM
I'm going to answer my own question. At the State Department Web site, I see no record of travel advisories/or alerts per India in the time period leading up to the attacks of Nov. 26. Attention Hillary! Change is needed! In the future, inaction of this nature needs to be addressed whenever there is strong evidence of an impending attack anywhere on the globe where Americans may be traveling.
Atlas
12-01-2008, 09:41 PM
The Café Leopold has reopened.
Good on them!
In The Wake of Mumbai (http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/11/30/in-the-wake-of-mumbai-an-agnostic-jew-considers-chabad/2/): An Agnostic Jew Considers Chabad
UPDATE: The Times of India and other sources are reporting the terrorists did thorough reconnaissance of the Mumbai Chabad Center in advance of their action, apparently staying there disguised as Malaysian students, no doubt under the good offices of the Holzbergs. Somebody should tell the New York Times who, as of this writing, is still reporting the Jewish center as an “unlikely target.” In fact, at first the Times seemed to disbelieve the center could have been a target at all. But that’s no surprise. They have missed Jewish target stories, even the most important ones, in the past:
The reason is that the American media in general and the New York Times in particular never treated the Holocaust as an important news story. From the start of the war in Europe to its end nearly six years later, the story of the Holocaust made the Times front page only 26 times out of 24,000 front-page stories, and most of those stories referred to the victims as “refugees” or “persecuted minorities.” In only six of those stories were Jews identified on page one as the primary victims.
Nor did the story lead the paper, appearing in the right-hand column reserved for the day’s most important news – not even when the concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war. In addition, the Times intermittently and timidly editorialized about the extermination of the Jews, and the paper rarely highlighted it in either the Week in Review or the magazine section. [bold mine]
As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
And so it goes ...
Why the Chabad House? (http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/12/02/the_rabbi_and_the_terrorists) HT: Powerline
Dennis Prager: Why would a terrorist group of Islamists from Pakistan whose primary goal is to have Pakistan gain control of the third of Kashmir that belongs to India and therefore aimed to destabilize India's major city devote so much of its efforts -- 20 percent of its force of 10 gunmen whose stated goal was to kill 5,000 -- to killing a rabbi and any Jews with him?
The question echoes one from World War II: Why did Hitler devote so much time, money, and manpower in order to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child in every country the Nazis occupied? ...
For the Islamists, as for the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews -- and since 1948, the Jewish state -- is central to their worldview.
If anyone has a better explanation for why Pakistani terrorists, preoccupied with destabilizing India, would expend so much effort at finding the one Jewish center in a country that is essentially devoid of Jews, I would like to hear it.
I would as well ...
Atlas
12-02-2008, 07:00 PM
Mumbai attacks: Jews tortured before being executed during hostage crisis
Israeli hostages killed by Islamic terrorists during the attacks on Mumbai (formerly Bombay) were tortured by their captors before they were bound together and killed, according to officials in both countries.
By Damien McElroy in Bombay
Last Updated: 7:52AM GMT 02 Dec 2008
Jewish victims made up a disproportionate number of the foreigners killed after 10 Muslim fanatics stormed a series of sites in the Indian financial capital.
Members of the beleaguered Jewish community in Mumbai gathered at a crumbling synagogue for a memorial for Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who ran the cultural centre targeted by the Deccan Mujahideen.
The couple's son, Moshe survived after his nanny, Sandra Samuel escaped with him in her arms 10 hours after the hostage incident started. The child cried "Ima" and "Dada," or mummy and daddy, as the service began.
Moshe's grandparents have arrived from Israel to take the orphaned boy home and there is intense pressure to grant Miss Samuel a visa by declaring her righteous among the gentiles.
Two countries have posted officials at the JJ Hospital morgue but there are at least twice as many Israeli disaster specialists as British consuls representing the former colonial power.
Israeli officials confirmed six Jews were dead but the figure is likely to rise to eight. The total number of foreigners killed in the attacks stands at 22.
A forensic team arrived on a specially chartered flight on Sunday night.
"There are still a few yet to be identified – not a lot, under five – and this is why we need the forensic team," an Israeli diplomat said. "And there are two or three Israelis unaccounted for and we have a couple of bodies that could be them."
Doctors expressed horror at the condition of the bodies recovered from the Nariman Building, which housed the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch retreat.
"I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatised," a mortician said. "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood."
The group that stormed Bombay's most famous institutions displayed unrestrained brutality throughout the mission. The captain of a fishing trawler hijacked by the group in Arabian Sea was found with his throat cut.
Police said 17 victims were pushed against a wall in the corridor of the Oberoi hotel and executed in a line.
One man who served a glass of water to a terrorist at Bombay's main railway station was shot in the forehead
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3539171/Mumbai-attacks-Jews-tortured-before-executed-during-hostage-crisis.html
Finally, the Real Culprits (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195250.php) behind the Mumbai attacks are identified.
Oy veh...
Proof? (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195279.php)
Mumbai attacks have a New Jersey connection. (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195301.php)
Very interesting little tidbit wedged in this article about Azam Amir Kasab, the sole surviving Mumbai attacker, which says that one of the cell phones used by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists had a SIM card in it from New Jersey.
Catwoman
12-05-2008, 09:06 PM
Proof? (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195279.php)
Perhaps there is something in this:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/us_moves_to_declare.php
It takes official paki government responsibility off the hook.
It allows breating time between India and Pakistan.
They, the accused are former ISI and military.
Bill Roggio and Thomas Jocelyn: Pakistan's Jihad. (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/888cnuxk.asp?pg=1)
Just two days after the gunmen's siege in Mumbai ended, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari went on CNN's Larry King Live to plead his case. Even before the Indian authorities had brought the rampage to an end, they were laying blame on their neighbor to the north. And Zardari wanted the world to know they were wrong. "This is not the time to point fingers," Zardari protested. "The state of Pakistan is in no way responsible."
Instead, Zardari said, "I think these are stateless actors who have been operating all throughout the region. . . . The gunmen plus the planners, whoever they are, [are] stateless actors who have been holding hostage the whole world."
Zardari was partly right. In all likelihood, neither he nor his supporters had anything to do with the attacks. So, if you define the "state of Pakistan" as the president and his immediate cohorts, his words ring true. Of course, there is more to Pakistan's government, including its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful military intelligence organization over which Zardari exerts little control. And there are good reasons to suspect that the ISI had a hand in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 180 people and wounded nearly 300.
The ISI has become a law unto itself. Nothing like a failed state with Nukes ...
Surviving Mumbai gunman is indeed from Pakistan. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/07/mumbai-terrorism-india-pakistan) HT - Jawa Report
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm186/Rising_Shadow/FRs/Image_Macros/master_obvious.jpg
America, Wake Up! (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGQ1YjM0MmRjYTdkOTc5NjA5N2NjMDA3NDA0YzQ4ZjQ=)
Thomas Sowell:
There are no concessions we can make that will buy off hate-filled terrorists. What they want — what they must have for their own self-respect, in a world where they suffer the humiliation of being visibly centuries behind the West in so many ways — is our being brought down in humiliation, including self-humiliation.
Even killing us will not be enough, just as killing Jews was not enough for the Nazis, who first had to subject them to soul-scarring humiliations and dehumanization in their death camps.
This kind of hatred may not be familiar to most Americans but what happened on 9/11 should give us a clue — and a warning.
The people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center buildings could not have been bought off by any concessions, not even the hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending in bailout money today.
They want our soul — and if they are willing to die and we are not, they will get it.
Vancouver
12-10-2008, 03:55 AM
Two "prime suspects" have been arrested in Pakistan (03:45 EST). No details yet.
Proof of LT Involvement (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008/12/23/story_23-12-2008_pg7_32) given to Pakistan. HT: Rantburg
Atlas
01-07-2009, 04:18 PM
Pakistan Fires Security Advisor After Mumbai Attacker's Nationality Disclosed By VOA News
07 January 2009
The Pakistani prime minister's office says National Security Advisor Mahmood Durrani has been fired.
http://voanews.com/english/images/AP-Ajmal-Amir-Kasab-26nov08-eng-190-in-Mumbai.jpgA gunman identified by police as Ajmal Amir Kasab walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India (File photo - 26 Nov 2008)
Wednesday's announcement comes hours after private Pakistani television channels quoted Durrani as saying the lone surviving gunman from the attacks on Mumbai, India, is indeed a Pakistani national.
It was the government's first confirmation that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who is in Indian custody, is Pakistani, as New Delhi has repeatedly alleged.
A statement released by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's office says Durrani was fired because he issued "irresponsible statements" on national security issues without consulting with the prime minister and others.
In another development, an Indian newspaper published the transcript of a phone call made by gunmen during the Mumbai attacks that left more than 170 people dead in November.
According to the transcript obtained and published by The Hindu newspaper Wednesday, a gunman in one of the besieged luxury hotels said, "We have three foreigners, including women." The response from an unidentified voice was, "Kill them."
The transcript says the exchange was followed by the sounds of gunshots and cheers.
Indian authorities say they intercepted the militants' communication. The Hindu newspaper says the text was part of the evidence India turned over to Pakistan this week.
New Delhi says evidence proves the attacks were carried out by Pakistani nationals armed and trained by the Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In related news, Pakistan's intelligence chief says there will not be a war with India over the Mumbai attacks.
In an interview with a German magazine Der Spiegel, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha said that terrorism, not India, is the greatest threat to Pakistan.
Pasha also said that Pakistan's intelligence agency is distancing itself from the escalating back-and-forth with India.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
http://voanews.com/english/2009-01-07-voa38.cfm
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