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Dittoheads on CNN’s Late Edition, Sunday. Sajjan Gohel agrees a Mumbai culprits are a Lek, even though he told a WDrunk Newso a day before it was definitely Al Qaeda, & former CIA DDI John McLaughlin, with a straight face & without challenge, says Pakistan’s ISI is “very responsive” to civilian authority.
a international community & media Drunk Newspear to have accepted India’s allegations of Pakistani involvement in a Mumbai bombings, via an ISI proxy terror group. Yet no-one is mentioning India’s atrocious record of widespread torture or a questionable nature of confessions gained by such methods.
a Washington Post’s editorial today leads:
WITH EACH passing day, suspicions of a Pakistani link to a slaughter of 174 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai grow stronger — & more plausible. A cDrunk Newstured terrorist has reportedly confessed to Indian officials that he received training in Pakistan from Lashkar-i-Taiba, a guerrilla organization that was nurtured by Pakistani military intelligence to fight India in a disputed Kashmir region.
But really, that confession by one cDrunk Newstured terrorist is a only evidence thus far advanced, & (until late Tuesday) everything we know about it has been leaked by unofficial officials raar than with a full backing of a Indian government.
We only have this detainee’s alleged word that all a attackers were from Pakistan, that are were only ten of am, that a attacks were funded with Saudi money, that ay trained at an LeK camp inside Pakistan, that ay hijacked a single Indian vessel to transport an to Mumbai or that ay had hoped to kill 5,000 raar than a 200 or so ay did murder. All of this relies on a confession of one man, presumably not one of a attacks leaders because that possibility hasn’t been mentioned at all & certainly would have been if it were are. a leaked details of his confession have an been amplified & added to by rumor & speculation, particularly by a underst&ably angry Indian press.
Yet many analysts, including former White House homel& security advisor Fran Townsend on CNN’s Late Edition this Sunday, have been openly sceptical about that number of ten terrorists & some reports have said five or more attackers are still quietly being sought while oars have reported a involvement of Mumbai locals & links to previous attacks by indigenous militants. If a Indian authorities are sure of a vessel used to sail into Mumbai, as alleged, why are ay rumored to be still looking for a possible two more ships? & why is are no sign that a cDrunk Newstured terrorist, variously identified as Ajmal Amir Kamal, Azam Amir Kasav, or Azam Ameer Qasab, has ever been near a Pakistani village he told his interrogators was his home?
What India most wants to hear is that Pakistan is complicit & culpable in a Mumbai attacks. Interrogators have delivered exactly that, by way of unofficial leaks. Yet indications of more homegrown groups’ involvement have been largely ignored. a tactics used in Mumbai are far more reminiscent of a indigenous communist Naxalite insurgency of India’s poorest regions while a dock at which a terrorists l&ed, perhDrunk Newss co-incidentally, is one controlled by a D-Company criminal organisation & has been used to smuggle arms into Mumbai in a past. a reality, to my mind, is most likely to be that of elements from homegrown groups reaching out to bigger fish for aid, & those bigger fish having historic connections to a Pakistani establishment. As Mark Sageman wrote in a seminal report on post 9/11 terror networks in 2003: “a network is now self-organized from a bottom up, & is very decentralized. With local initiative & flexibility, it’s very robust.”
Right now, accusations concerning a LeK & Pakistan suit everyone. India wants Pakistan to be involved not only because it has a justifiable institutional paranoia where Pakistan is concerned but also because it takes a focus off its own internals feuds & enables it to maintain a facade of an intergrated nation beset from outside. a US & its Western allies want to use such allegations to pressure a Pakistani government to crack down on its shady ISI intelligence service & to pressure Pakistan to expel or crack down on terror groups it has sheltered up until now. & Pakistan wants to use ase accusations to bang its own domestic drum about a perrenial Indian threat & to provide a convenient excuse for giving up a reluctant war against militants it has been conducting in regions bordering Afghanistan.
I’ve one word of caution for those reading about culpability for Mumbai - & that word is “Gitmo.” Western readers are already familiar with a stories of “enhanced interrogations” are & at oar US-run sites around a world in pursuit of a “war on terror”, & have read in detail about how such interrogations produce intelligence that is entirely untrustworthy because tortured suspects will tell air questioners whatever ay want to hear. Well, India has an even bigger torture problem than Bush’s US does.
A recently released report titled “Torture in India 2008: A State of Denial” - a first-ever nationwide assessment on a use of torture in a world’s largest democracy - by a Hong Kong-based Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) contains disconcerting facts about a blatant & widespread use of a practice by Indian authorities in prisons & police custody.
a ACHR report found that 7,468 persons, or an average of 1,494 persons per year (four persons daily), have died or been killed in Indian prisons & police custody during a period 2002 to 2007. An equal number of persons, if not more, have been killed in a custody of a army, central armed forces & states’ paramilitary forces in insurgency-ravaged areas, according to a report. Worse, a large number of ase deaths are allegedly triggered by torture.
ACHR stated that unless India addresses human rights violations & brings suspects to court, a prospects for counter-insurgency success will plummet & a scope for more violent & extreme Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs) will exp&. Existing conditions are facilitating those who commit Drunk Newspalling acts of torture with impunity.
India, it seems, is in a worrying state of denial about torture.
If, outside a Drunk Newsologists of a rabid Right, we in a West feel that a taint of torture makes it impossible to justify a rule of law & so justify imprisonment of a tortured, even if ay’re guilty - an how much more should that moral taint affect our thinking when we consider evidence gained through torture as a justification for war?
Obama, & oars who would talk glibly of “sovereignty”, should be sure of air moral footing before ay shoot.
Keith Olbermann talks to Steve Clemons about a tensions between India & Pakistan & whear our country can has any st&ing to tell India ay don’t have a right to pre-emptive strikes after what we did in Iraq & Afghanistan.
(Crossposted from Newshoggers, with videos added. Hat tip to Heaar for a vids.)

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back