More on Mumbai

BTW, you did know that Mumbai is the city formerly known as Bombay, right? Good.

In The Breda Fallacy: aim & shoot, Breda sums up this chilling article about/interview with a professional photo-journalist at the site, who's account of apparently armed police officers cowering under cover an refusing to come out and engage the terrorists, us summed up in the final sentence:

I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera.

Breda's Observation:

Carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret.

Powerline links to this article which reveals that

In the first wave of the attacks, two young gunmen armed with assault rifles blithely ignored more than 60 police officers patrolling the city's main train station and sprayed bullets into the crowd.

Bapu Thombre, assistant commissioner with the Mumbai railway police, said the police were armed mainly with batons or World War I-era rifles and spread out across the station.

"They are not trained to respond to major attacks," he said.

The gunmen continued their rampage outside the station. They eventually ambushed a police van, killed five officers inside - including the city's counterterrorism chief - and hijacked the vehicle as two wounded officers lay bleeding in the back seat.

"The way Mumbai police handled the situation, they were not combat ready," said Jimmy Katrak, a security consultant. "You don't need the Indian army to neutralize eight to nine people."

Constable Arun Jadhav, one of the wounded policemen, said the men laughed when they noticed the dead officers wore bulletproof vests.

With no SWAT team in this city of 18 million, authorities called in the only unit in the country trained to deal with such crises. But the National Security Guards, which largely devotes its resources to protecting top officials, is based outside of New Delhi and it took the commandos nearly 10 hours to reach the scene.

That gave the gunmen time to consolidate control over two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, said Sahni.

As the siege at dragged on, local police improperly strapped on ill-fitting bulletproof vests. Few had two-way radios to communicate.

Meanwhile, Powerlines quotes Andrew Breitbart as noting that while that was all going on, Bollywood's best and brightest gathered...

On the evening of Nov. 26, the biggest names in Bollywood walked the red carpet at the Bombay premiere of "The President Is Coming," a comedy about six 20-somethings vying to win the right to shake hands with President Bush.

Among those in attendance at the star-studded premiere Wednesday evening was Bollywood's "new heartthrob" Imran Khan, who proudly posed for paparazzi donning a T-shirt with Mr. Bush's face sandwiched between the words "International Terrorist."

Mr. Khan - a member of India's Muslim minority - chose not to mock international terrorists who kill in the name of Allah. He and his co-religionists know the deadly results for those who do.

At the precise moment Mr. Khan and hundreds of others making their fortunes in the multibillion-dollar Indian movie business were watching "The President Is Coming," only a few blocks away, 10 20-something Muslim extremists began a horrific three-day terror spree.

"The real question," Breitbart writes, "is when the people who make the world's most popular form of entertainment finally accept the truth: that the Islamist threat is real, growing and won't go away when George W. Bush leaves the White House in January." It's a question that extends well beyond Bollywood and Hollylwood.

From Powerline again: According to Rediff (India Abroad)

Doctors shocked at hostages's torture

Krishnakumar P and Vicky Nanjappa in Mumbai
November 30, 2008 19:53 IST

They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he 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," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.

It is also said that the Israeli hostages were killed on the first day as keeping them hostage for too long would have focused too much international attention. "They also might have feared the chances of Israeli security agencies taking over the operations at the Nariman House," he reasoned.

On the other hand, there is enough to suggest that the terrorists also did not meet a clean, death.

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

{Emphasis added. DWD}

Finally, Mr. Free Market makes it clear that not all furriners Fail To Get It: (Warning: Language and imagery may not be suitable for the politically correct, as if any PC People read my blog...)

...governments are ever quick to protest that there is no defence against such an attack such as Bombay has just endured – they have already branded it a so-called “nightmare scenario” because if it occurred in say London, the already cowed population would be slaughtered in a similar fashion to the victims in Bombay. In terms of body count, our Government & police spokesmen are probably being honest for once because since the mid 1960’s, certainly in Britain, successive administrations have spared no effort in both disarming & emasculating us plebs. It’s fine for ministers to have Special Branch bodyguards & for our perfidious MPs to be ringed with armed guards – but as for the wider population? Phuque you Jack, we’re alright. The day the Martyrdom Express turns up we are on our own, believe you me. The immediate response of the police & the security services won’t be to protect us untermensche .

Contrast that with what might have occurred if say the camel jockeys had tried the same stunt in North Dallas where I have been residing for few days … two Allah Akbars & when the gun smoke finally cleared, Buddy would be comparing the size of the exit wounds made in the true believers by his 230 grain jacketed hollowpoints to those made by his wife’s 165 grain Hydra-Shoks. Problem over. Period. & still enough time to urinate on the bullet riddled corpses having taken ears as souvenirs before the cops show up.

All eyewitness accounts have the terrorists shooting from the hip--exclusively. Now, there's an old Corollary to Murphy's Laws of Combat that says that "Professionals are predictable, but amateurs are everywhere." If I must go up against terrorists of any stripe, I pray that they are such nitwits that they assault a shopping mall in a part of America where the residents are likely to include a significant percentage of armed citizens, and compound their foolishness by adopting TTPs* that were passe in South Central ten years ago. See Mr. Free Market's long-running--and hilarious--series of posts on African Infantryman Of The Year.

*TTP: Army-ese for "Tips, Tactics, and Practices. "