Saturday, December 26, 2009

HBO's Terror in Mumbai: 'This is a Struggle Between Islam and the Unbelievers' ...

Live blogging: I'm watching HBO's documentary, 'Terror in Mumbai'. This is a gripping production. Some of the witnesses are showing their injuries. The Mumbai killers walked slowly through the train station, killing indiscriminately. Blood is everywhere at the station. Mothers tried to protect babies. Some were shot dead.

10:16am: The video of the killing is so real. Unbelievable amounts of blood at the train station. The police had no training or preparation for such an attack ... The terrorists left the train station (Chhatrapati Shivaji), heading to the hotels ...

10:21am: Police intercept communications between the terrorists and the handlers in Pakistan. Attackers hit the Tiffin restaurant at the first hotel. Now the clips are from the Leopold Cafe. Fareed Zakaria, of CNN, is the narrator. He notes that the terrorists, poor villagers, are mezmerized by the opulence at the hotels. The videos are from hotel cameras mounted high on the walls. It's like the cameras are silent witnesses to evil ...

10:30am: The Taj hotel is set on fire. More communications between the terrorists and their controllers in Pakistan. Smoky inside the hotel. Fire blazing outside. Mumbai police gathering in the streets (afraid to storm the hotel...).

10:38: Mumbai's top three police commanders were killed. The city's security forces are in complete meltdown mode. There's an interview here with one of the surviving terrorists, Kasab. He describes his training in a terrorist indoctrination camp. It sounds like something from Pol Pot's Cambodia ... trained to kill, without remorse ...

10:42: Watching this, I get the feeling of how it all went down in real time. The controllers were ecstatic with the success of the operation ... they were thrilled that the entire world's media was watching the horror in Mumbai ...

10:44: Now, a pair of the killers are headed to Nariman House, the location of the Jewish hostel ... hostages are taken. More communications between the handlers in Pakistan and the terrorists ... victim's families are interviewed here. Mothers in tears at what happened ..

10:48: They program documents the capture of "Kasab," the terrorist who is interviewed. He says "we were all supposed to die ..." That is, the assault was a total suicide operation. Handlers have no respect for human life, not even those of their killers ... "For your mission to end successfully you must be killed ... God is waiting for you in heaven," the controller tells Fadahlallah, one of the gunmen ... "God willing, God willing" is the response from the killer in Mumbai ...

10:56: Now, videos of the commando raid at the Jewish house ...

11:05: It's over now.The film doesn't dwell on the killings of Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah. Reports earlier indicated that they were targets all along. The film concludes with audio tapes of the Lashkar-e-Taiba plotters in Pakistan. The voice says, "you're just watching the trailer. The full movie is yet to come.

Then, Fareed Zakaria gives his final analysis: Pakistan security services are implicated, since Lashkar was established to fight in Kashmir. There's no disentangling state sponsorship here, which is a failure of American foreign policy, since Pakistan is our key "ally" in South Central Asia.

I'll have more analysis in a later post today. I'll be writing about the attempted airline plot in Detroit, and the left's reaction to it. Meanwhile, I found this report on Mumbai, "Sixty Hours of Terror: Ten Gunmen, Ten Minutes." I can't vouch for it's credibility, but it's worth a look for some of the information in any case ...

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