Free Republic

U.S. cities are racing to fix security vulnerabilities revealed by the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai, and many hotels remain “sitting ducks,” experts tell Newsmax.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States is entangled in an Islamist web from Afghanistan to India that exposes its reliance on Pakistan as a central but increasingly fragile ally in the war on terror, analysts say. The 60-hour siege last month in Mumbai, even if it is eventually proven to have been masterminded by Kashmiri separatists, advances broader Islamist aims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and beyond, they add. And nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has long backed various Islamist groups, is more than ever central to the growth of the militant problem in all three countries and a key to their solution....

"Belgian police arrest Al Qaeda terror suspects," from Agence France-Presse, December 11 (thanks to Alex): AFP - Belgian police on Thursday arrested 14 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including a man believed to have been planning a suicide attack, officials announced, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. "We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. "It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or

MUMBAI: The state constabulary was grossly unprepared to deal with the worst-ever terror attacks on the metropolis because of an acute shortage of weapons and ammunition. Official records show that for a force of well over 1.8 lakh, the home department procured a meagre 2,221 weapons — 577 for Mumbai, and 1,644 for the rest of Maharashtra. ‘‘Under the centrally sponsored modernisation programme, we purchased almost all types of weapons, but for a state like Maharashtra, the number of weapons was grossly inadequate ,’’ a senior official told TOI on Monday. In the absence of a firing range and of...

Much of the reporting from Mumbai the last few days has been informative, gripping and often moving. Some of the commentary, on the other hand, has been not just uninformative but counterinformative — if that’s a term, and if it’s not, I say it should be. Consider first an op-ed article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times by Martha Nussbaum, a well-known professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. The article was headlined “Terrorism in India has many faces.” But one face that Nussbaum fails to mention specifically is that of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic terror group originating in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP295xpH15A When I keyword-searched news.google.com two days after the Mumbai terror attack, I found ZERO media discussion of India's draconian gun laws. These laws facilitated the November 26 massacre. Since mainstream reporters aren't pointing that out, this video strives to do it for them. Digg it, if you like: http://digg.com/world_news/India_gun_control_enabled_Mumbai_massacre