Massive Blackouts Throw Half of India Into Darkness

Yesterday, a massive blackout sent more than 300 million people into darkness as portions of the Indian power grid collapsed under the strain of trying to keep up with demand. Power was restored, but only briefly as a second much larger blackout has now put more than half the country into darkness.

The same power lines are involved:



600 million are without power in the world's largest blackout.

Half of India's 1.2 billion people were without power Tuesday as the grids covering 19 states broke down, the second major blackout in as many days.

Stretching from Assam, near China, to the Himalayas and the deserts of Rajasthan, the power cut was the worst to hit India in more than a decade. The power loss includes grid failures in northern, eastern and northeastern India.

Trains were stranded in Kolkata and New Delhi and thousands of people poured out of the sweltering capital's modern metro system when it ground to a halt at lunchtime. Office buildings switched to diesel generators and traffic jammed the roads.

The blackout also shut down nuclear power plants because safety systems require power to operate, further reducing available power.

To put this in perspective, about 10 million customers were without power in the major Northeast Blackout of 2005. India's blackout affects nearly twice the population of the entire United States.

How did India arrive at this point? It starts with a massive growth spurt putting more demands on the existing power grid and an infrastructure that can't keep up with that growth. Making matters worse is a monsoon season that has been unseasonably dry and warm, putting even more strain on demand.

This may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg as India struggles to grow its economy but is hobbled by an infrastructure that is ill equipped to deal with surging demand.

It also raises questions on how the Indian power grid is set up so that so much of the country could be plunged into darkness. It would appear that failsafes and/or utility procedures didn't work as they should have.

It was a failure of various interconnects that led to a cascade failure that brought down the power grid in the Northeast in 2005 following several transmission power lines being disrupted by fallen trees. Procedures were modified to reduce the chances of a future failure of that type.

Terrorists Target Israeli Diplomats In India and Georgia; Israel Blames Iran For Attacks

Two Israelis were injured when a bomb went off in their diplomatic vehicle in New Delhi. A diplomat's wife and their driver were injured when the bomb ripped through their vehicle.



A grenade was discovered by Israeli security underneath a diplomatic vehicle in Tblisi, Georgia and was safely defused before it could cause injury. It comes as Israel issued warnings to its diplomatic corps ahead of the anniversary of the death of Hizbullah leader Imad Mughniyeh that has long been attributed to Israel.

The Israeli government is holding Iran responsible, which shouldn't be all that surprising given that Iran blames Israel for being behind the current spate of attacks that have killed several Iranian nuclear scientists and conventional wisdom also suggests that Israel was behind the Stuxnet virus that crippled the Iranian nuclear centrifuge computer systems.

Israeli officials earlier told The Associated Press that an explosion tore through an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi. The driver and a diplomat's wife were injured, according to Indian officials.

Television footage showed a charred minivan with blue diplomatic plates, its rear door apparently blown out.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor would not discuss who was injured nor the extent of the injuries because it was a security matter.

"There was one attempted attack, and one successful, as it were," said Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry. "In both cases, the people concerned worked with the Israeli embassies."

Hirschson said the Israeli ambassador to India was not hurt in the New Delhi attack.
Israel had put its foreign missions on especially high alert ahead of the February 12 anniversary of the assassination, in 2008, of the military mastermind of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, linked to the Shiite Islamist group Hezbollah, Imad Moughniyeh.

That the attacks come four years to the day since Mughniyeh was killed suggests that Hizbullah may have been involved, or Iranian intel services, or a combination of groups. The New Delhi attack appears to have been carried out by an unknown assailant attacking the bomb to the car by motorbike.

Pakistan Still Cultivating Terrorists

Despite their claims that they aren't supporting militant groups and terrorists, the fact remains that the Pakistani military and security services are constantly in contact with a wide array of groups, including those that operate in the frontier provinces with Afghanistan and in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Pakistanis are double dealing when it comes to the US, NATO, and claims that they're doing all they can to stop terrorists from operating within their territory.

The former commander said that he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago. Well known in militant circles but accustomed to a covert existence, he gave an interview to The New York Times on the condition that his name, location and other personal details not be revealed.

Militant groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen, are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection. That system was still functioning, he said.

The former commander’s account belies years of assurances by Pakistan to American officials since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups in its territory. The United States has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid over the past decade for its help with counterterrorism operations. Still, the former commander said, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has not abandoned its policy of supporting the militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the border territory of Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.

“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said. He named a number of former military officials involved in the program, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals. “These people have a very big role still,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept. 11, the former commander said.

He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the center for foreign militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.

There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said. Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.

Several retired officials of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig. Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi. The militant groups divided Afghanistan into separate areas of operations and discussed how to “trip up America,” he said.

The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.

Some Pakistanis will say that these kinds of linkages were severed and these groups are no longer operating with the sanction of the government, but that's highly suspect.

President Obama Supports Permanent Security Council Seat For India

This is potentially huge news for the United Nations and US relations with South Asia and beyond. India is the world's largest democracy, and it has long been a leading member of the non-aligned nations although it has frequently aligned itself with the then Soviet Union in disputes because of US relations with Pakistan.

That's all water under the bridge as the US forges continuing closer ties with India. President Obama has now publicly stated that the United States would support adjusting the United Nations Security Council to include a permanent seat for India.

“The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate,” the president said. “That is why I can say today — in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.”

Members of Parliament reacted with sustained applause. But neither the president nor his top advisers offered a timetable for how long it would take to reform the council, or specifics about what steps the United States would take to do so. Last month, India won a two-year nonpermanent seat on the council, which has five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

But expanding the body will be a complicated endeavor that will require the cooperation of other countries and could easily take years. “This is bound to be a very difficult process and it’s bound to take a significant amount of time,” William J. Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said here.

Mr. Obama is on a 10-day trip to Asia that will take him to four countries, all democracies; it is no accident that China is not on the list. The president’s announcement on Monday underscored how the United States is trying to promote India as a global power at a moment when both countries are concerned about the increasing influence and assertiveness of China.

“In Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging,” Mr. Obama said in his speech, echoing a line he used earlier in the day at a joint news conference with Mr. Singh. “India has emerged.”

Third world nations have long chafed under the Security Council's rules that provide the permanent five members with the veto power to trump anything done in the General Assembly or thwart action within the Security Council itself.

Much of that legacy is borne from the post-World War II period when the United Nations was in its formative stages and the Cold War brought its own paradigm shift.

President Obama's move would definitely realign the Security Council's dynamics and would undercut some of the criticisms over how the Security Council operates. Of course, it also opens matters up for more criticism - particularly from China, who sees India as a longstanding threat and rival. It could also bring criticism from countries like Japan.

Bringing India into the permanent membership aboard the Security Council wont come quickly, but it could be part of a larger move to revamp the Council's operations - perhaps with additional countries being made permanent members such as Japan or Germany or even Brazil or Egypt to increase the geographical distribution of permanent members.

Mumbai Terrorist Convicted On Terror Charges In Deadly Attacks

One of the Mumbai terrorists was convicted today in the deadly attacks at various Mumbai hotels and locations, including a Chabad house. However, two co-conspirators were found not guilty of assisting the terrorists in their plot:

Pakistani terrorist, Ajmal Amir Kasab, charged with the deaths of 166 Indians and foreigners, has been pronounced guilty of all charges by a special court in Mumbai. The two Indians, who were named as co-accused in the case-- Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Shaikh, have been acquitted.

The argument on quantum of sentence to Kasab will be held tomorrow.

Kasab has been convicted on all 86 charges against him. He was found guilty or murder and waging war against the nation, the court said while delivering the judgment.

"You have been found guilty of waging war against India, and killing people at CST (train station), killing government officials and abetting the other nine terrorists," Judge M.L. Tahaliyani said as he announced his verdict. They were the most serious charges laid against Kasab, a 22-year-old Pakistani who was arrested after the Mumbai siege.

The conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan, the judge said.

The two Indian co-accused were set free because the evidence against them was weak, the court ruled. Kasab had said that the duo supplied maps of Mumbai to LeT bosses. Thus, they gave logistical support to carry out the attack. But the judge, punching a hole in the prosecution’s argument, said better maps were available on Google than the crude drawings Kasab claimed had been supplied by Ansari and Sabauddin.

The terror attacks, which included attacking several swanky hotels, a Chabad House, and other locations around the city killed 173 people and wounded another 300 and did significant damage to two hotels. The Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was behind the attacks.

Terror Strikes Major Kashmir City Business District; 1 Policeman Killed, Multiple Injuries Reported

At least two terrorists apparently affiliated with Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen lobbed grenades along a main shopping thoroughfare in Sringagar, India today, killing a policeman and wounding three others as they commandeered the hotel. Sringagar is located in the disputed Kashmir region that borders Pakistan. More than 100 people were safely evacuated.

Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, one of the rebel groups active in the area claimed responsibility for the attack by faxing a statement to the local offices of a news agency. ``The attack is in response to India's propaganda that the armed struggle has weakened in Kashmir,'' the statement said.

As it grew dark, the security forces put up floodlights around the Punjab Hotel building where the militants are holed up. The area has been marked off with concertina wires to ensure the guerrillas do not escape under the cover of darkness.

"We are cautious that no collateral damage takes place," a police officer said.

Police were not sure of any civilian trapped in the hotel building which hindered the prospect of launching the final assault. The militants were using the building as a fortified bunker and firing intermittently at the surrounding security forces.

"The hotel building will have to be stormed by commandoes if the militants refuse to surrender," said a paramilitary officer.

[video removed because it goes into autoplay feature; it can be found here]

The terrorist group claims three of its minions were involved in the attacks.

Security appeared to be somewhat better than the devastating Mumbai attacks, but this incident isn't over yet as the terrorists remain holed up in what has been reported to be a hotel. The terrorists have fired on security forces and lobbed grenades from their position.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint for conflict between India and Pakistan across the Line of Control, and 47,000 have died in the insurgency since 1989. The attack in Sringagar occurred just days after Pakistani President Zardari visited the Pakistani side of the border and a suicide bombing that killed three Pakistani soldiers near the Line of Control.

Somali Pirates Capture Indian Ship With 26 On Board

The Somali pirates remain a threat to shipping off the East Coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean despite an ongoing mission by various navies to interdict the pirates and to protect the vital shipping lanes:

At least 24 Indian sailors were taken hostage by Somali pirates who hijacked a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier near
Seychelles on Thursday, just a week after a vessel with two Indians among the crew was seized by the sea brigands.

The MV Al Khaliq was Indian-managed and had a sizeable number of Indian crew aboard, Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre, told PTI in Kuala Lumpur.

A NATO spokesman in London said, "There were 26 crew on board -- 24 Indians and two Burmese. The 33,000 DWT bulk carrier was hijacked this morning in the Somali Basin.

UPDATE:
Meanwhile, Islamic terrorists fired on the Mogadishu airport at a time when the Somali President was preparing to board his aircraft, killing at least 20 people.

Somalia's capital sees near-daily bloodshed as a powerful insurgent group with links to al-Qaida tries to overthrow the fragile U.N.-backed government and push out some 5,000 African Union peacekeepers. Both sides of the conflict have been accused of indiscriminate shelling.

"We have seen at least 20 dead bodies lying in the streets, most of them civilians," said Ali Muse, the head of Mogadishu's ambulance service. He said about 60 people were wounded as mortars slammed into residential areas.

Thursday's shelling started soon after insurgents fired toward President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed's plane, said police spokesman Abdullahi Hassan Barise.

"The mortars hit the perimeter of the airport," he said. "The plane carrying the president took off safely."

Suicide Bomber Strikes Indian Embassy In Kabul

Look for India to blame the ISI and the Taliban for this.

A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy in the busy center of Afghanistan's capital on Thursday, killing 17 people and wounding nearly 80 in the second major attack in the city in less than a month.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the 8:30 a.m. assault and said the embassy was the target.

The blast occurred a day after the Afghanistan war reached its eighth anniversary and as President Barack Obama considered a request for between 10,000 and 40,000 additional troops prepared by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

A suicide bomber targeted the Indian embassy in Kabul. The Taliban took responsibility for the blast. This isn't the first time either, and this latest bombing comes on the heels of a report in an Indian newspaper that the ISI was trying to convince the Taliban to go after India in Jammu and Kashmir across the Line of Control instead of going after Pakistanis.

The "jail or jihad" option offered to the Taliban seems a useful diversion for ISI. The Pakistan military establishment has had to fight the Taliban, once its close allies in Afghanistan, but is looking to turn the situation to its advantage.

Apprehensions in Indian security circles that the crackdown by the Pakistan army on Taliban — seen as a last resort after the jihadis turned their guns on the Pakistani state — could mean trouble in Kashmir are being proved correct. Not only have infiltration attempts by regular jihadi outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba gone up, the presence of Taliban poses a new threat.

Highly placed sources said BSF and the Army had been alerted about the developments after intelligence intercepted talk about infiltration bids in the next 15 to 20 days.

"Although the Taliban is yet to successfully infiltrate into India, the coming days will pose a challenge as their attempts to sneak in are expected before the onset of winter," said a senior official. The infiltration is closely controlled and monitored by the ISI and Pakistan army which is often involved in the crossings.

The tension between India and Pakistan just got ratcheted up another notch.

Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Arsenal

I'm sure this will not make me sleep better at night. Pakistan is busy expanding and enhancing its nuclear arsenal, much of which is directed at neighboring India.

[video removed because it automatically played - still available at link above]

The report states that Pakistan is readying a new nuclear capable ballistic missile for deployment and two nuclear capable cruise missiles.

It also says that Pakistan is building two new plutonium production reactors and a second chemical separation facility.

The nuclear weapon facilities that are being expanded are located in Chasma, Khushab and Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab.

Pakistan, according to the report by top strategic experts, is renewing work on a partially built separation plant at Chasma, and is also planning to build three more nuclear reactors at Chasma.

The details of three separate nuclear facilities at Khushab, Chasma and Dera Ghazi Khan have not been available in the public domain till now, and expose Pakistan’s secretive attempts to build up a substantial arsenal, likely to target India.

With regard to Khushab – the report says the country is building two heavy water reactors at the site which will more than triple the nation’s plutonium production and processing capability. Plutonium is one of the main fuels for nuclear weapons. The nuclear reactor will thus become a source while the under construction separation facility nearby, a means to purify the plutonium.

Keep in mind that Pakistan has a major problem with terrorists, particularly the Taliban and al Qaeda, both of which were involved in multiple attacks against Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure over the past two years. Estimates of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal have been all over the map though all fall short of 100 weapons, although the newest estimates now suggest that Pakistan has 70 to 90 weapons and has the capability to bring that firepower to bear with a new class of missiles, including cruise missiles and intermediate range ballistic missiles.

Pakistan is clearly pursuing a strategy that has the effect of further destabilizing South Asia and promoting an arms race between rival India and Pakistan.

Carbon Apologies?

President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to India, where she promptly apologized for the US emitting carbon.

"We acknowledge now with President Obama that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change," she said. "We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes."

She was referring to Obama's statement in Italy earlier this month that the U.S. had "sometimes fallen short" of its responsibilities in controlling its carbon emissions.

Speaking at a news conference on the pool side patio of the Taj Mahal Palace & Hotel, which was strewn with bodies after terrorists attacked this coastal city last November, she cast India and the United States as allies in the fight against terrorism.

Never mind that it was carbon emissions that turned the United States into an economic powerhouse and established the arsenal of democracy standing up to the Nazis and then the Communists of the Soviet Union all while creating a high standard for Americans, which many now take for granted. Apparently, all that requires an apology.

India was having none of this though. They know that their future relies on building up a manufacturing and technological base that requires carbon emissions and they're not going to sacrifice their chance to improve the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Indians to placate a bunch of eco-leftists who think that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and must be controlled.

That India is building more energy efficient buildings is besides the point - the sheer number of people and the desire to improve their quality of life means that more carbon will be emitted. Saving money is the name of the game and in a recessionary economic environment, that trumps some claim that the environment must be saved by reducing emissions.

The thing of it is that most people want to live like Americans do. They want a high standard of living and want the creature comforts that we take for granted. That comes at a cost - and the ecoleftists don't want that dream to be for everyone, not even all Americans. They want to restrict energy development, which drives up the costs, requiring people to make choices that they wouldn't otherwise have to make. Energy alternatives that provide zero emissions are available, but are passed over because the eco-left and NIMBY has thwarted new development in the US (see, power, nuclear), which would have a smaller footprint kilowatt v. kilowatt for wind or solar power, which aren't always consistent in their output.

Curiously, the New York Times, the so called paper of record, ignored the Clinton apology, while delving into the fact that both China and India oppose carbon caps because their per capita emissions is far lower than that of the United States. Neither is going to sacrifice their economic development to fulfill this carbon scheme.

UPDATE:
Don Surber links. Thanks!

Taliban Consolidating Grip On NW Pakistan

I think it's fair to say that Pakistan is now two countries. There's the portion held by the government in Islamabad, and then there's the rest of the country, which includes the frontier provinces and a shifting border that is creeping ever closer to Islamabad. That portion is controlled by the Taliban, and they're tightening their grip on the region.

Taliban control has serious consequences, not only to Pakistan, but the entire region.

The Taliban are once again overtly seeking to support and shelter Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Islamabad has been incapable of controlling the frontier provinces and has all but given up on the idea, allowing the Taliban to impose sharia on the region. Most dangerous among the Taliban are the Mehsud clan, led by the capable Baitullah Mehsud, and whose relatives include those who are notorious for training child suicide bombers and whose thugs are regularly harassing NATO/US supply lines between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It's becoming all too apparent that the Zardari government in Islamabad is losing control of Pakistan to the Taliban, and there's little anyone can do about it. The US Secretary of State has basically said that the Zardari government has abdicated its responsibilities.



I don't think that's entirely fair to the Zardari regime, which has basically cut deals with the Taliban on repeated occasions in a fashion little different than the prior Musharraf regime. The Pakistani leaders try to stick around long enough, and they repeatedly cut deals until they are threatened personally with terror attacks, in which case they engage in crackdowns. It's a cycle of violence that does not end because the appeasement repeatedly shows weakness to the Taliban, who exploit it.

The Pakistani military, which continues sending troops into the frontier provinces has been ineffective, which makes the situation all the more desperate.

Pakistan on Thursday sent paramilitary troops to a district virtually taken over by the Taliban, a day after Washington said Islamabad had abdicated to the militants by agreeing to impose Islamic law in the region.

Around 100 paramilitary troops had been deployed in Buner district, not far from Islamabad, police said. Soon after they arrived, militants attacked their convoy, killing a policeman escorting them, said Arsala Khan, a deputy police superintendent.

"A platoon of the Frontier Corps has arrived in Buner to help police maintain security in the district," Khan told Reuters.

Surging violence across Pakistan and the spread of Taliban influence in the country's northwest has revived concerns about the stability of the nuclear-armed state, which is crucial to U.S. efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan.

After failing to quell the Taliban through force, President Asif Ali Zardari last week approved enforcement of Islamic sharia law in the Swat valley and adjoining areas despite criticism from Western countries and Pakistani liberal and rights groups.

Despite spending billions on their military, they're unable to control the situation. US airstrikes are regularly denounced, despite the fact that they have been quite successful in taking out mid- and high-level terrorists.

It comes as no surprise that Gen. David Petraeus stated that Pakistan's greater threat isn't the traditional rival India, but the Taliban. For a nation steeped in nationalism and longstanding hatred of India (as seen by multiple wars and regular skirmishes across the Line of Control), recognizing that the Taliban are the true threat is a difficult thing for the government in Islamabad to do, let alone convince a polarized and Islamist-sympathizing population that they are threatened by the Taliban.

Medical Tourism Is No Panacea

CNN posts an article today about how people are taking advantage of health care overseas due to the high costs of health care options in the United States. What is apparently lost on CNN, and many of those who are pushing for government health care is that the people who can afford to go overseas for their health care aren't going to stand and wait in line for health care under a government imposed health care delivery system either. They're going to go elsewhere, looking for the best and most affordable care they can find.

Sandra Giustina is a 61-year-old uninsured American. For three years she saved her money in hopes of affording heart surgery to correct her atrial fibrillation. "They [U.S. hospitals] told me it would be about $175,000, and there was just no way could I come up with that," Giustina said.

So, with a little digging online, she found several high quality hospitals vying for her business, at a fraction of the U.S. cost. Within a month, she was on a plane from her home in Las Vegas, Nevada, to New Delhi, India. Surgeons at Max Hospital fixed her heart for "under $10,000 total, including travel."

Giustina is just one of millions around the world journeying outside their native land for medical treatment, a phenomenon known as "medical tourism." Experts say the trend in global health care has just begun. Next year alone, an estimated 6 million Americans will travel abroad for surgery, according to a 2008 Deloitte study. "Medical care in countries such as India, Thailand and Singapore can cost as little as 10 percent of the cost of comparable care in the United States," the report found.

Companies such as Los Angeles-based Planet Hospital are creating a niche in the service industry as medical travel planners. One guidebook says that more than 200 have sprung up in the last few years. "We find the best possible surgeons and deliver their service to patients safely, affordably and immediately," said Rudy Rupak, president of Planet Hospital. "No one should have to choose between an operation to save their life or going bankrupt."

In particular, they single out an individual who has gone to India to receive treatment, which could cost $175,000 in the US. It cost this woman $10,000 to have the procedure done in India, including airfare. More power to her that she was able to find an alternative, but I wonder whether the hundreds of millions of desperately poor Indians living in India would be able to access and receive the same care that this medical tourist received?

I'm not so sure.

It's a story worth repeating; Cuba has a thriving medical tourist industry and it is a major funding source for the Castro regime. Yet, the average Cuban doesn't get nearly the level of care that the medical tourists do. It's a distortion of the facts and health care standards.

The left continually attempts to conflate health care costs with access to health care. You might not like the cost of the health care, but it is available to anyone who needs it here in the US - and it's provided in a timely fashion. That is unlike the health care in places like the UK, where you're going to wait for weeks or months to get dental care because of shortages of dentists or the rationing of certain medications or procedures because of the costs to the government health care fund.

CNN also notes in passing a big reason why medical tourism is big business: the countries that provide nationalized health care have long waiting lists for procedures and people have decided to go outside the system to get the treatment they want:

Many South Asians and Africans said they travel abroad because they do not have access to care in their homeland.

Some Canadians and Europeans said they chose to travel aboard, despite having national health plans, because they are tired of waiting -- sometimes years -- for treatment.

Proponents of a nationalized health care system routinely ignore the salient fact. What is also ignored is that all too often, those Europeans and Canadians choose to come to the US to receive their health care services for a fee rather than wait on the lists provided by their government-issued health care system.

You can go into any of the major New York City hospitals, whether it is Memorial Sloan Kettering or Columbia Presbyterian or NYU Cornell Medical Center, and find people seeking care from all over the world because this is where the best and brightest train and provide care to their patients.

Yet, there is one unintended consequence of reporting on these medical tourism stories - the power of the marketplace to deliver business to those who can provide affordable care. If that can work on an international market level, why not at the local level?

Forgotten Conflicts?

MSNBC has an interesting report on 10 forgotten conflicts that the media has missed reporting on for years. While MSNBC and its fellow media outlets are busy misreporting on Israel's war to defend itself against Hamas, or were busy commiting media malpractice in the course of reporting the war and following insurgency in Iraq, there are numerous other conflicts that got short shrift around the world.

The highlighted conflicts: Colombia, Sri Lanka, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Sudan (Darfur), Somalia, East Timor, and Chechnya.

MSNBC has actually done a better job reporting on the situation in Zimbabwe than other American news outlets, but sadly their coverage of most other conflicts is lacking. At the same time, there are three other hotspots that MSNBC ignored entirely:

The Thai insurgency. Islamic terrorists are busy trying to establish an Islamic state in Southern Thailand; more than 3,000 Thais have been killed and the fighting has gone on for years.

The India/Pakistan border. The Line of Control separates these two nuclear powers and the recent mass murder of Indians in Mumbai once again highlights the tenuous relations between India and Pakistan. There have been numerous skirmishes across the Line of Control which marks the border region between the two countries. Pakistan has sent troops previously meant to fight against the Taliban to the Line of Control in response to India's military moves following the Mumbai attacks, which were traced back to Pakistan' Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group, which has repeatedly received assistance from Pakistan's intel services, the ISI.

Philippines. The Moro Island Liberation Front (MILF) has been waging an insurgency against the Manila government for years, and it's sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from their war. The terrorist group operates in conjunction with Abu Sayaaf, which itself is affiliated with al Qaeda.

Why were those three regions and conflicts omitted from the list? Could it have anything to do with the fact that all three are fueled by Islamists seeking jihad and the expansion of Islamic rule?

Pakistanis Move Troops From Anti-Terror Operations Towards India

The terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks can only smile at the good fortune of their deadly work. The Pakistani government is considering the Indian government a bigger threat than the very Islamists who operate inside the country and who carried out the deadly Mumbai attacks and who support and carry out terrorist attacks not only inside Pakistan, but against Afghanistan as well. For more than a month, the Pakistanis have threatened to take troops off the line in the frontier provinces and send them towards the Indian border. Today, we get some word that they're actually carrying through on that threat.

The Pakistani government is busy directing one of its armies to redeploy away from the Afghan border where it was being used in counterterrorism operations, towards the Indian border, which is a serious misallocation of resources in the war on the terrorists.

Two intelligence officials said the army's 14th Division was being redeployed to Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border. They said some 20,000 troops were on the move. Earlier Friday, a security official said that all troop leave had been canceled.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Indian officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

An Associated Press reporter in Dera Ismail Khan, a district that borders the Afghan-frontier province of South Waziristan, said he saw around 40 trucks loaded with soldiers heading away from the Afghan border.

India is blaming Pakistan-based militants for last month's attacks on Mumbai. Islamabad has said it will cooperate in any probe, but says it has seen no evidence backing up India's claims.

Both countries have said they hope to avoid military conflict, but Pakistan has promised to respond aggressively if India uses force, an option the Indian government has not ruled out.

Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in Waziristan and other northwestern regions to fight Islamic militants blamed for surging violence against Western troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is sending the troops towards the Line of Control, which has been site of multiple skirmishes and three wars. India has every right to demand that the Pakistanis hand over the terrorists and all those responsible for the attacks, which were plotted and carried out from Pakistani territory.

Pakistan is playing a real dangerous game with India, figuring that it can appease the Islamists and nationalists all while trying to maintain a veneer that they're operating counterterrorism operations against the same Islamists. Complicating matters is the fact that the Pakistani intel services, the ISI, is thoroughly penetrated by the Islamists and it is all too likely that the ISI assisted the terrorists in their deadly attacks.

At the same time, the Pakistani government can't maintain security for the NATO supply lines that run from Pakistan into Afghanistan, and that threatens the ongoing NATO and US military operations there. It's a situation that cannot persist without seriously compromising the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which is yet another reason why the terrorists must be smiling. They're attacking the US war effort's soft underbelly - reliance on the Pakistani government to transit materials into Afghanistan. Cut the supply lines, and the war effort in Afghanistan grows immeasurably more difficult as air resupply is far more expensive and time consuming.

For their part, the Pakistanis claim that it was a homegrown Indian terrorist group responsible for the Mumbai attacks. Indian authorities have given Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations proof that the Pakistanis were involved in the attacks. That's at the same time that Indian authorities claimed to have disrupted another terror plot involving Pakistani ISI against India.

The Pakistani Two Step

Pakistan has announced that it has carried out raids against Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in the country.

Pakistani security forces on Sunday raided a camp used by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), two sources said, in a strike against the militant group blamed by India for last month's deadly attacks on Mumbai.

Local man Nisar Ali told Reuters the operation began in the afternoon in Shawai on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani side of disputed Kashmir region.

"I don't know details as the entire area was sealed off, but I heard two loud blasts in the evening after a military helicopter landed there," Ali said.

An official with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, which is linked to LeT, said security forces had taken over the camp.

India has demanded Pakistan take swift action over what it says is the latest anti-India militant attack emanating from Pakistani soil. No comment on the raid was immediately available from Indian officials.

It's the Pakistani two-step. The Pakistanis have been doing this for years, and it follows a trend in other places like Saudi Arabia following terror attacks.

You make a few arrests.

You kill a few terrorists and say that you're cracking down. You do just enough to stay in power (in the case of Pervez Musharraf and now Asif Ali Zardari), and little more. You cycle between appeasement and crackdown, and the Islamists know this is coming just as surely as anyone who has been watching this for years.

The only way to break out of this mess is to take on the Islamists and destroy the Islamist terror infrastructure, but no one in Pakistan is willing to take it on; they've penetrated the ISI and the government can barely control the frontier provinces, let alone deal with the immediate threat of India's wrath following the terror attacks.

The US has been largely operating with tacit approval of the Pakistani government in taking out targets inside Waziristan and the NWFP. A major problem is that the terrorists aren't simply confined there - there are rat lines all through Pakistan, and going after them is tougher, although the US did take out an al Qaeda bigwig a few weeks back outside the frontier provinces. That's a much more delicate situation and one that threatens the overall US policy on airstrikes inside Pakistan.

The Pakistanis have chosen for far too long to enable and condone the Islamists and the jihad. They can't simply turn and burn them now without payback, and the Pakistani government is going to walk the tightrope, just as Musharraf did. They'll do only so much to reduce the pressure from the West and India, but no further because that would risk the Islamists rising up against the government.

In fact, Pakistan's ISI appears to have aided and abetted the terrorists in attacking Mumbai. This isn't the first time the ISI has been implicated in terrorism either.

More ominously, the former ISI chief is linked to al Qaeda's WMD advisory group.

Lieutenant General (Retired) Hamid Gul served on the board of the Umma Tameer-E-Nau, an organization founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists and industrialists, according to a secret dossier that the United States has put together to present to the United Nations Security Council, The News reported. Gul has also been implicated in supporting the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and other extremist groups.

Gul served as the chief of the ISI from 1987 to 1989. Gul is known as the Godfather of the Taliban for his efforts to organize the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the helping to facilitate the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. Gul supports the terrorist insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir and opposes the US-led effort to defeat Islamic extremism.

The Umma Tameer-E-Nau "was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban," the US government stated in December 2001 after blocking the group's finances under Executive Order 13224. Three of the group's directors - two Pakistani nuclear scientists and an industrialist - were also proscribed under the executive order.

Note too that the NATO operations in Afghanistan are at tremendous risk because Pakistan simply cannot maintain operational security for the transportation terminals and convoys carrying the weapons and equipment into Afghanistan, and that threatens the IFOR. A major Taliban attack against one such terminal in Peshawar resulted in 160 vehicles destroyed, including dozens of humvees destined for Afghanistan. 70% of the equipment and vehicles destined for Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.

That's not a good situation to be in at all.

Cracking down against LeT and the Taliban in general is the absolute least the Pakistanis can do at this point. Appearing to crack down on LeT and the Taliban is the most they can do, precisely because of the risk of looking like the government is operating at the behest of the West or India.

UPDATE:
This certainly isn't good news. Pakistan has suspended the NATO supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

The decision came just hours after a logistics terminal in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, where dozens of trucks carrying Humvees and other military vehicles were parked, was attacked by insurgents on Sunday.

More than 300 Taliban militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles burned down the logistics [had to fix a typo in the original report] terminal.

That comes on the heels of still more attacks on NATO supply lines today, with 90 containers destroyed in an attack today. Pakistan claims that the terrorists involved are getting international assistance and that they can't handle the security of the NATO supply lines.

I guess the ISI now counts as international assistance?

High Alert In India: UPDATE: Gunfight At New Delhi Airport?

India has issued warnings alerting people to the possibility of terrorists attempting to hijack aircraft in the country. That follows revelations that the Indian government failed to heed warnings about the Pakistani ISI training Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists to infiltrate by sea.

Three airports in particular are on high alert.

Indian authorities have put on high alert airports in the capital, New Delhi, the southeastern coastal city of Chennai and the southern city of Bangalore. The move followed a threat of possible attacks by militants who claimed last week's deadly assault on the Indian financial capital, Mumbai.

The previously unknown Deccan Mujahadeen group which claimed responsibility for last week's terrorist attacks on Mumbai reportedly threatened to attack the three airports this week between Wednesday and Sunday.

The threat was made in an e-mail sent form Saudi Arabia and received by Indira Gandhi Airport officials in New Delhi, news reports said.

"We are now on a high state of alert," airport spokesman Arun Arora, was quoted as saying by the media.

Indian officials were cited as saying there had been warnings of possible attacks using hijacked airlines, and Indian Air Force sources said fighter jets had also been put on stand-by.

Of course, LeT claims that they weren't behind the attacks and that they couldn't possibly be involved because they don't target civilians.

"We didn't do it. Lashkar doesn't believe in targeting civilians. It is not the first time India has blamed Pakistan. It was the intelligence failure that led to Mumbai attacks," LeT founder said in the interview.

Hafiz further added that India is using Pakistan as a punching bag to cover up its own failures and is not interested in a proper probe into the attacks.

It was the terrorists that led to the Mumbai attacks, and the intel failures only prevented the capture of those responsible for plotting mass carnage.

Pakistan continues to struggle against the Islamists in the frontier provinces, which see near daily attacks and civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists. Curiously, among those injured in the latest violence was a deputy of Baitullah Mehsud in an IED incident. The ongoing violence threatens NATO's supply lines in to Afghanistan, which is why Pakistan's handling of the Islamist threat is crucial.

UPDATE:
It's laughable that LeT's leader can claim that they don't target civilians, when it's part and parcel of their modus operandi to murder civilians in suicide bombing attacks. Sure, they attack military and security forces with alarming regularity, but another one of their tactics involves rounding up civilians and massacring them.

Also important to keep in mind is LeT's ties to al Qaeda; Abu Zubaydah was captured in a LeT safe house in Pakistan, and there are repeated reports suggesting operational assistance and ties between the two terror groups.

UPDATE:
There was good reason for those emergency alerts to be issued. Terrorists apparently opened fire at the international terminal at the New Delhi airport and security has killed six terrorists.

The British Broadcasting Corp. is reporting that six gunmen have been shot and killed by Indian security forces at New Delhi's main international airport.

The report on the BBC Web site Thursday was attributed to airport officials.

Airports in India went on high alert Thursday following fresh warnings of attacks as officials said India suspects two senior leaders of a banned Pakistani militant group orchestrated last week's deadly siege in Mumbai.

UPDATE:
Now, there's further concern that not all the explosives used by the terrorists in the weekend attacks have been accounted for.

UPDATE:
The BBC is now reporting that there were sharp sounds reported, but no gunfire. Everyone is clearly on edge, but how noises were reported to six people shot remains a mystery.

Defusing the Mumbai Situation

The security situation in Mumbai remains tenuous at best as a bomb was discovered and defused at a Mumbai rail station today among the baggage left following the terror attacks last week. That can't be good news for Mumbai law enforcement, which is already reeling from their inability to contain the massive terror attacks over the weekend that exposed serious flaws in the emergency response.

Thankfully, they managed to discover and defuse the bombs today.

Police in Mumbai found explosives Wednesday hidden in a bag left behind last week at the city's train station at the start of a three-day rampage by Islamist militants.

While searching 150 bags at the station, police found one that looked suspicious and called the bomb squad. They found two bombs of 8.8 pounds each inside and defused them, said Assistant Commissioner of Police Bapu Domre.

The report came after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in India as part of an effort to defuse escalating regional tensions in the wake of last week's three-day terrorist attack that killed 171 people in India's financial capital.

Why did it take so long for emergency crews to check through all those bags left behind? You would think that the first thing that law enforcement should have done is sweep the entire area for additional bombs and weapons to prevent them from potentially going off while the investigation proceeded.

Sec. State Rice is trying to walk a delicate line between India and Pakistan, cajoling and pushing Pakistan to release more information on the attackers and to keep the situation under control. India wants Pakistan to hand over 20 terrorists and persons of interest, but Pakistan is saying that they want to prosecute these people if they're involved:

The Indian government, already facing accusations of security and intelligence failures, has demanded that Pakistan take action against those responsible and asked that 20 suspected terrorists believed living in the country be handed over.

However, Pakistani President Asif Zardari said any of the 20 suspects wanted by India would be tried in Pakistan if there is evidence of wrongdoing.

Zardari said he would "look into all the possibility of any proof" about the suspects sought by India and insisted they would be dealt with under Pakistani law.

"At the moment, these are just names of individuals — no proof and no investigation," he said Tuesday in an interview with CNN's Larry King. "If we had the proof, we would try them in our courts and we would try them in our land and we would sentence them."

That's even as Pakistan and NATO face an ongoing threat from the Islamists and Taliban that continue harassing NATO convoys to Afghanistan. Pakistan is between a rock and a hard place as they've spend years placating and playing to the Islamists and the Islamists have had free reign in the frontier provinces and have set up a parallel existence whereby they openly train young men to be jihadis at madrassas throughout the country. Any attempt to crack down on the Islamists and the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks will necessarily affect the ability of the government to govern, and Zardari will fall into the same trap that Pervez Musharraf did before him - alternating between appeasement and crackdown to remain in power. Zardari will do just enough to muddle along, but it means that the terrorists will continue to find Pakistan an inviting safe haven to train and plot future attacks.

UPDATE:
The Indian government has also announced who they believe was behind the attacks.

A terrorist chieftain in Pakistan masterminded the Mumbai massacre and kept in touch with the 10 attackers by satellite phone, Indian police believe.

They said Yusuf Muzammil, head of anti-Indian terror operations for the notorious Lashkar-e-Taibe, or LeT group, was identified by the only one of the 10 Mumbai attackers to survive, The Wall Street Journal reported.

His claim was backed up by a satellite phone left behind by the attackers in the fishing trawler they hijacked to reach Mumbai.

The phone's records showed calls were made to Muzammil and four other LeT henchmen in the two days before the slaughter.

India is demanding that Pakistan hand over Muzammil and 19 others suspected of plotting the slaughter that killed 171 people in India's financial capital last week.

But Pakistan has not responded to the demand, which threatens to escalate the powderkeg standoff.

UPDATE:
The Times of India notes that the US warns that if Pakistan doesn't go after terrorists and their training camps, not only will the US continue its practice of carrying out airstrikes against terrorists, but that it would back India should it contemplate actions of its own:

The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai.

The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ''stateless actors'' are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for terrorist acts that originate from its territory,“ Rice said.

Although US officials have not outright approved immediate punitive Indian strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, it is clear Rice has bought time for Islamabad to prove its bonafides. Pakistan has a ''special responsibility'' and needs to act ''urgently'' she said, even as India has indicated it will wait for a Pakistani response to its demands before any punitive action.

In Washington, experts pressed the administration to expand the scope of punitive strikes to an international level to avoid making it an India-Pakistan issue, particularly since the death toll included citizens of ten countries.

The Mumbai Terror Blame Game

The media is busy casting about for someone to blame in the deadly Mumbai terror attacks. They'll focus on the failings of law enforcement, the Indian government, and everyone but those on which responsibility for the attacks rests - the terrorists themselves (that is if they bother to call them terrorists at all; often they will refer to them as gunmen or militants).

That always seems to get lost in the blame game.

Law enforcement shouldn't get blamed for the attacks, but rather castigated for being unprepared to handle such an emergency situation and that a city of 13 million people didn't have a special weapons and tactics police group to handle such incidents is unforgivable.

That's a situation that can be corrected with due diligence and can help prevent future attacks as well as respond to future attacks in a far more decisive and swift manner that will reduce the chances of a mass casualty incident.

India also apparently didn't heed two US warnings over a possible attack according to CNN:

U.S. intelligence indicated that a group might enter the country by water and launch an attack on Mumbai, said the source, who refused to be identified due to the ongoing investigation into the attacks and the sensitivity of the information.

Indian security forces have confirmed to CNN that not only did U.S. officials warn them of a water-borne attack in Mumbai -- they were told twice. The area entered a higher state of alert for a week, including tightened security measures at hotels, but those efforts were eventually reduced, Indian officials said.

Local fisherman in Mumbai said they witnessed a group of gunmen dock their boat Wednesday night, before heading toward the busy causeway.

Again, intel failures and the inability to deal with intel in a time sensitive manner are issues that can be addressed and corrected, but that is a response to those who carry out the terrorism, not on whom blame can be assigned for the attacks.

India is demanding that Pakistan hand over 20 terrorists, including members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

At the top the list are Laskhar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Maulana Masood Azhar, and mafia and terror kingpin Dawood Ibrahim. The Long War Journal has obtained the names of several other senior terrorist leaders wanted by the Indian Government.

The demands were made during a meeting between Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik yesterday. The Indian foreign minister summoned Malik to the ministry and registered an official diplomatic protest with Pakistan.

"We have in our demarche asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law," Mukherjee told The Times of India, noting India "will await" a response from Pakistan.

LeT is closely aligned with al Qaeda, and the Pakistani ISI has been known to support the terrorist group as well.

The terrorists received training and tactics courtesy of their stay in terror camps operating in Pakistan. That's simply intolerable and must be addressed by the Pakistani government. Their ongoing failure to stop the indoctrination of thousands into Islamist madrassas that call for jihad is tantamount to condoning such activities and the ISI helps facilitate those activities.

Pakistan knows what's at stake should the trail lead back to Pakistan's official door - either through inaction or assistance by the ISI (rogue or otherwise), and are hoping to defuse the situation with a joint investigation. That's probably in the best interests of both India and Pakistan, but both countries have to be willing to let the investigation go where it needs to - and if the outcome shows Pakistani complicity, Pakistan must be willing to accept responsibility. Likewise, if the attacks show no complicity, the Indian government must respect that as well.

At this point, the Indian investigation suggests that the terrorists had ex-military training although the nationality of the training isn't being released:

All the 10 terrorists, suspected to have been involved in the Mumbai attacks, were trained by ex-army personnel even as the lone arrested
terrorist has admitted to being a Pakistani, the police on Tuesday said.

Ajmal Amin Kamal, the only terrorist of the group of ten caught alive, has admitted he is a Pakistani and hailed from the Punjab province of Pakistan, Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor said.

"The group of ten had come from Karachi by ship, flew an SOS flag in international waters and then hijacked a trawler which they used to come near Mumbai's shores," Gafoor said.

The group of ten had been trained by former army personnel, some for over a year, Gafoor said, refusing to comment on the nationality of the army personnel.

When asked if there was any evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the attacks, Gafoor said, "At the moment investigations are on and if we have proof we shall present it."

He said there was no evidence of local persons involved in the attacks.

Meanwhile, the sole surviving terrorist captured following the attacks claims that his father sold him into LeT. I guess free will doesn't even enter his consciousness and that he had no problem going out and murdering hundreds of people - with the intention of killing thousands in the name of jihad. He's looking for a reason to excuse his heinous actions, but there are none. He's a stone cold murderous bastard.

Several terrorists are still believed to be at large.

Mumbai Mourns and World Wonders What Is Next

Indian authorities are still trying to determine just how many were murdered in the heinous terrorist attacks that spanned over four days of bombings, shootings, and hostage incidents spread across the city at 10 different locations and involving what appears to be 20-40 terrorists. While the official death toll is 195 and 26 foreigners were among that tally, the death toll is expected to rise significantly as those murdered in the hotels have yet to be included in the counts. Nine terrorists and 20 police and soldiers were also killed. A tenth terrorist was caught alive.

Bill Roggio notes the tactical picture and how the terrorists swept into Mumbai to carry out their deadly attacks. Of particular interest is that it's believed that there were perhaps two to three teams of 8-10 men involved, including a team of eight men who entered the city via boat, including the one terrorist, a purported Lashkar-e-Taiba operative named Ajmal Amir Kasab, who was captured after being injured in gun battles with police.

According to Kasab, his group departed the Pakistani port city of Karachi unarmed and linked up with the freighter MV Alpha. The assault team picked up their weapons and explosives on the freighter.

The group then ran across the Indian Fishing boat Kuber and hijacked it. The terrorists killed four crew members and kept the captain alive. He piloted the ship for one day, and then was killed. A trained seaman in Kasab's group guided the Kubar to a point off of Mumbai. From there, the assault teams boarded two inflatable rafts and landed in southern Mumbai and began their attack.

Kasab's team may not have acted alone, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. "Kasab only knew about his portion of the operation, what his team did" the official said. "There appears to have been one or two eight-man teams operating on the ground."

India's top security official has offered up his resignation. It's a situation that has been brewing for some time as a series of terror attacks has undermined faith in his abilities:

India's top security official offered his resignation Sunday, a senior aide said, as the government struggled under growing accusations of security failures following the Mumbai attacks that left at least 174 people dead.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil submitted his resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but has not received a response, aide R.K. Kumar said.

Patil has become highly unpopular during a long series of terror attacks and his ouster has long been predicted in political circles.

Foreign SIM and fake ID cards from Bangladesh were found on some of the terrorists.

Apparently, the Taj Hotel received some kind of terror warning before the attacks and had briefly stepped up security protocols, but they had been relaxed by the time that the terrorists stormed the building complex. I have to believe that the hospitality industry will learn from that mistake and expand their security protocols in light of the devastating attacks in Mumbai.

Far more important, Pakistan is threatening to send 100,000 troops to the India-Pakistan border if India continues to intimate that Pakistan was behind the terror attacks. Those troops would be coming from the frontier provinces where they've been dealing with the Taliban/Al Qaeda threat. As I have been noting since the outset of this crisis, the terrorists may have sought to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan and relieve pressure on the Islamists in Pakistan by creating a conflict between India and Pakistan at a time when both countries were actually moving towards rapprochement.

The terrorist attacks not only threaten to create a conflict between India and Pakistan, but it threatens to derail Pakistan's efforts against the terrorists inside the frontier provinces (NWFP and Waziristan).

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is seen as one of the leading candidates for being behind the attacks, and that has many Indians up in arms about Pakistan's role, since LeT is seen as little more than a creation of the Pakistani ISI - Pakistan's intel services. LeT is also known to have ties to al Qaeda.

Both the US and Israel are sending teams to India to help investigate the attacks. President Bush has offered whatever assistance is deemed necessary and the FBI was en route. Israel was sending forensic and defense teams to assist.

At the same time, life is starting to return to normal in some parts of Mumbai, as Leopold Cafe reopened, although it was shut down a short time later because of security concerns. It was the target of one of the terror attacks.

UPDATE:
Neo-neocon writes about the reluctance of the Mumbai police to engage the terrorists in gun fights, even when they had the ability to do so. An incident a month ago suggests that the police were hesitant to act because of condemnation over how they killed a deranged man who was firing indiscriminately in the air after taking over a bus.

UPDATE:
Here's a timeline of the Indian response as they appear to have played out. Among the problems is that an aircraft needed to transport the NSG wasn't in the right place and ready to go. That delay, coupled with a delay recognizing the scope and severity of the attacks, gave the terrorists additional time to consolidate their positions and kill many more people.

UPDATE:
It's also reported that the terrorists were meticulously trained and prepared for the attacks, and one of the NSG interviewed claimed that the terrorists were the best prepared they had ever encountered.

Major General RK Hooda, the senior Indian commander, acknowledged the group, the Deccan Mujadeen, were better equipped and had a better knowledge of the battleground than India's soldiers.

After the battle, one member of India's National Security Guard, who led one of the assault groups against the terrorists occupying the Taj Mahal hotel, said they were the "best fighters" he had ever encountered.

He said: "They were obviously trained by professionals in urban guerrilla fighting. They used their environment and situation brilliantly, leading us (the NSG) on a dangerous chase through various tiers of the hotel which they obviously knew well. Their fire discipline too was excellent and they used their ammunition judiciously, mostly to draw us out.

"It was amply clear they came to kill a large number of people and to eventually perish in their horrific endeavour," he said. "Negotiating with the Indian authorities or escaping was not an option for them."

At this point, it's still not clear that the Deccan Mujahadin were even behind the attack or whether it was simply a throwaway name for one of the more well known groups like LeT or HuJI or even al Qaeda. Whatever the case, the terrorists were clearly preparing for the attacks and caught the Indian government and Mumbai law enforcement ill prepared to handle the attacks of this scope.

UPDATE:
Even though there are concerns that some Indian police were reluctant to open fire on the terrorists, at least one police commander on the scene took the initiative and sought to pin down the terrorists in the old wing of the Taj Hotel, making it appear that there were larger numbers of police present than there were at that time.

The Indian government is moving with surprising speed to address shortcomings with the response. They are calling for the creation of a new security agency, and to set up four regional hubs for an expanded NSG counter-terror strike force. The NSG (Black Cats) went into the Taj Hotel blind to the layout and that slowed down their response. That too is a situation that must be resolved - better intel and operational details that improve the ability of the security forces to respond and deal with developing situations; floor plans are critical to improving the chances of any rescue operation.

Meanwhile, a Russian military expert is trying to suggest that the training and tactics may have been the result of training obtained from US intel operations in Pakistan prior to the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"The handwriting and character of the Mumbai events demonstrates that they were not ordinary terrorists," said Vladimir Klyukin, an Afghan war veteran.

"Behind this terrorist attack there are 'Green Flag' special operations forces, which were created by the Americans in Pakistan, just an year before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the initial period were under full US control," stressed Klyukin, a veteran of the special "Vympel" commando group of the former Soviet KGB.

He said for such guerrilla operations at least two-three years of preparatory work with the involvement of experienced instructors is required.

Klyukin did not rule out that the Mumbai attackers could have taken part in similar attacks in other regions.

"People from the streets, without any planning and training are simply not able to hold four big complexes in a city so long," Soviet special services veteran was quoted as saying by largest Russian Interfax news agency.

It's in Russia's interest to try and somehow pin the blame on the US, which is working to engage in closer ties with India. Blaming the US for the origination of the training and tactics could undermine efforts to improve ties between the US and India, all while straining relations between Pakistan and India.

While earlier reports suggested that the taxi bombings were meant for other locations, including the airport, new evidence seems to point to the possibility that the terrorists sought to cover their movements by killing the people who were best able to identify them.

UPDATE:
Law enforcement and rapid reaction to terror attacks in Mumbai were sorely lacking, but the scope of the failure is just astounding. Mumbai doesn't even have a SWAT team of its own, which means that Mumbai law enforcement had to wait on the NSG to arrive, and even then there were multiple delays due to the lack of aircraft prepared to deliver the troops in a timely fashion.

It's simply mind boggling to believe that the city of Mumbai, with a population larger than that of New York City, doesn't have a SWAT/ESU team available at a moment's notice 24/7/365. New York City has multiple units spread out across the city to handle all manner of emergency situation that call upon special tactics or terrorist incidents with the necessary manpower and weapons to handle just about any threat. Each minute of delay can have deadly consequences, and the Indian authorities had a delay of hours. That's simply unacceptable and Mumbai residents must demand better.

After Four Days, Mumbai Terrorist Siege Ends

The city of Mumbai can finally breathe a sigh of relief as Indian authorities say that they've finally ended the terrorist siege inside the city.

Government officials said Saturday afternoon that the death toll had risen to 162 and was likely to rise again. They also said 283 people had been wounded.

Most of the dead were apparently Indian citizens, but at least 18 foreigners were killed and 22 had been injured, said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Maharashtra State. At least five Americans were believed to have died in the attacks.

Just 10 militants, the city’s police commissioner suggested Saturday, had caused all the mayhem.

“With confidence I can say that 10 terrorists came in,” said the commissioner, Hasan Gafoor. “We killed nine of them and one was captured alive.”

His comments were confirmed by Mr. Deshmukh, although it remained unclear whether they might have been referring to 10 attackers coming in by sea to join accomplices who, according to unconfirmed local news reports, might have embedded themselves in Mumbai days before the attacks. Investigations were ongoing Saturday night.

A senior Mumbai police inspector, Nagappa R. Mali, identified the captured suspect as a 21-year-old Pakistani man, Ajmal Amir Kasab. Mr. Mali said the man had a fourth-grade education and worked as a laborer.

Four other suspected terrorists were at the morgue at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai. Officials there put their ages between 20 and 25. All four were males.

According to the Times of India, the death toll has risen to 195, and it's expect to rise further still. Now that the fighting has ended, the grieving can begin for those affected by the attacks, including the members of India's law enforcement and security forces that died in the line of duty attempting to stop the terrorist attacks.

The terrorists acted with great precision and there are more details about the group of ten terrorists that entered the city from the sea.

Ten men, all apparently in their early 20s, jumped out. They stripped off orange windbreakers to reveal T-shirts and blue jeans. Then they began hoisting large, heavy backpacks out of the boat and onto their shoulders, each taking care to claim the pack assigned to him.

Mr. Dhanur flipped his boat light toward the men, and Kashinath Patil, a 72-year-old harbor official on duty nearby, asked the men what they were doing.

“I said: ‘Where are you going? What’s in your bags?’ “ Mr. Patil recalled. “They said: ‘We don’t want any attention. Don’t bother us.’ “

Thus began a crucial phase of one of the deadliest terrorist assaults in Indian history, one that seemed from the start to be coordinated meticulously to cause maximum fear and chaos.

Indian officials had said little publicly about the attackers until Saturday, when the Mumbai police commissioner, Hasan Gafoor, said a total of 10 militants had been responsible for the mayhem. But it remained unclear whether he was referring to 10 attackers arriving by sea to join other accomplices. Unconfirmed local news reports suggested some militants had embedded themselves in Mumbai days before the attacks. Investigations were ongoing Saturday night. In any event, the synchronized assaults suggested a high level of training and preparation.

There are also reports that the terrorists hoped to blow up the Taj hotel.

The terrorists had enough explosives to blow up the Taj hotel.

Sources have told the TV channel that they wanted to reduce the life-size building of Taj hotel to rubble. They also believed to have told about their plan to replicate a ‘JW Marriot’, happened at Islamabad, to the Mumbai hotel.

In a sense to destroy the symbol of financial strength of the country and send shock-waves all across the globe, the terrorists wanted to do a 9/11 in India.

The above revelation came from the 21 year old Azam Amir Kasav, who hails from tehsil Gipalpura in Pakistan's Faridkot.

On Wednesday-Thursday night Azam and his colleague opened fire at CST before creating havoc at Metro and then moving on to Girgaum Chowpatty in a stolen Skoda, and where they were intercepted by a team from the Gamdevi police station. Azam shot dead assistant police inspector Tukaram Umbale.

But in that encounter Azam's colleague was killed and he himself was injured in the hand. He pretended to be dead giving rise to the news that two terrorists had been killed. However as the 'bodies' were being taken to Nair Hospital, the accompanying cops figured that one of the men was breathing.

It may take more than a year to repair the damage to the Taj hotel, and the cost will be considerable.

Meanwhile, India is going to have to undergo serious review of its security plans in light of the fact that so many terrorists infiltrated from the sea; it's a gaping hole in India's security that had not been addressed previously.

Many of the questions that dogged investigators from the outset remain, including who was behind the attacks, and what role if any was played by Pakistan. The latter question is one that is seriously concerning US officials, and it should worry everyone considering that India and Pakistan have fought three vicious wars and both now have nuclear arsenals, to say nothing of the fact that both India and Pakistan have regularly engaged in gun battles across the Line of Control for much less.

Mickey Kaus wonders whether the attacks were meant to be a Madrid-bombing styled attack designed to affect the outcome of India's elections. However, increased security in November may have delayed or thwarted the attack from happening at that time.

Terrorist groups with links to Pakistan are at the focus of who carried out the attacks, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Pakistan was behind them. Still, one has to wonder whether rogue agents within the Pakistani ISI could have been involved, and Pakistan has previously been implicated in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

UPDATE:
Why the attacks occurred is actually a more pressing question than who carried them out since the political ramifications will differ greatly as should the response by India.

It's clear that an Islamist terrorist group was behind the attacks, and the question remains which one. The attacks weren't simply meant to be a random act of violence, but one that shocks and threatens all of India. I think that the attacks were meant to threaten the growing peace overtures between India and Pakistan. The jihadi groups want to prevent India and Pakistan from engaging in rapprochement and closer ties. That would seriously harm the ability of the jihad to move forward if the Pakistanis become friends with the nation that they've fought multiple wars and skirmishes with over the past 50+ years.

When you look at the attacks from that angle, it makes perfect sense. Give the impression that Pakistan was behind the attacks, and India has to make the determination that it was an act of war that must require a response - out of domestic pressure to respond and seek justice for those killed, and to prevent future attacks. Get India to strike at Pakistan, and the jihadis get to spread via the violence and discord sown in their wake.

Mickey Kaus alternatively suggests the possibility that the attacks may have been meant to affect the outcome of India's November elections but were delayed as a result of tighter security. In other words, they were hoping for a Madrid bombing outcome - get the current government thrown out in favor of one that is more likely to appease in the face of increasing terrorism.

Throw in the specter that the ISI could have played a role (thus far only speculation), and you can see just how dangerous this situation is for all of South Asia.

Meanwhile, MSNBC reports that one of the captured terrorists allegedly said that his fellow terrorists intended to blow up the Taj Hotel, killing thousands of people, but that his fellow terrorists underestimated the strength of the stone walls. The report also indicates that the terrorists continue to plumb the depths of depravity by boobytrapping bodies with grenades while the Black Cats - India's elite military group had to go room to room to clear them of terrorists.

Pressure is already mounting on the Indian government to take action against Pakistan, which as I've already noted will lead to dire consequences for all of South Asia and the world beyond.

UPDATE:
Jammie notes that Bollywood's reaction to the terrorist attack in Mumbai is far different than the reaction of the Hollywood types here in the US, although we'll see how long that lasts.

UPDATE:
Here's still more eyewitness accounts of the siege at the Taj hotel. The Black Cats, the nickname of India's counter-terrorist strike force NSG, was instrumental in ending the siege. Here's a brief background on the group. Residents of Mumbai were busy issuing their thanks to the NSG members who helped bring the siege to an end.

UPDATE:
Barcepundit has a great roundup, and notes that there was apparently a failed attack against the Mumbai airport. Indeed, the attack failed when the taxi made a wrong turn and the bomb within detonated short of the airport itself.