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... In assigning responsibility for the Mumbai horror, we enter a world of murky ambivalence. Lashkar-e-Taiba is said to be affiliated, in some vague way, with "rogue" elements of Pakistani intelligence, which is, in turn, connected to the Taliban, the protector and ally of al-Qaeda. The War Party has its terrorist genealogy down to an exact science, but its precision comes into serious doubt when we look a little closer at this alleged "parent organization" of Lashkar-e-Taiba – which apparently wasn't a terrorist organization when they were working alongside American soldiers and relief workers in aiding victims of the devastating 2005 Pakistan-India earthquake.
The neat little narratives pumped out by war propagandists to rationalize acts of mass murder are an important part of any campaign to spark a conflict, so they have to be minimally convincing, or at least credible. Yet the story coming out of the Indian government is frankly incredible. The terrorists left a satellite phone conveniently placed next to the body of their ship's captain, whose throat they had slit, with the numbers of their handlers stored in memory. Very convenient. Even less convincing, however, is the assertion that even after Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the terror squad, had been captured, he continued to get messages from his handlers. That little embellishment, I believe, gives the show away. Add to this the oddly unprepared – indeed, criminally negligent – role of the Indian security apparatus, and the whole thing reeks to high heaven. "Fishy" is putting it mildly.
The effect of the Mumbai massacre on Indian politics is another likely analogy to 9/11, which gave the neocons power and catapulted the worst warmongers to the very top of the national security bureaucracy. In the case of India, where voters will soon go to the polls, we are apt to see an electoral victory for the most militantly nationalistic and chauvinistic political movement in the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). ... (Justin Raimondo)
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The entire piece lays out the fact that we may be in for one hell of a mess in south Asia. Can the USA stay out of it?
