From the New York Times…

An explosion of violence connected with Mexico’s powerful drug cartels has left more than 5,000 people dead so far this year, nearly twice the figure from the year before, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican newspapers. The border region of the United States and Mexico, critical to the cartels’ trafficking operation, has been the most violent turf of all, with 60 percent of all killings in the country last month occurring in the states of Chihuahua and Baja California, the government says. And it has raised fears that violence could spill across the border, because dozens of victims of drug violence have been treated at an El Paso hospital in the last year.

From the Washington Post….

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

All the usual suspects are up in arms about how this the end of American Freedom. I don’t have much sympathy for this line of argument. Many of those same people where complaining after 9/11 that there was not enough troop left in American to defend the homeland.

You want to worry about the end of your freedom, worry about SWAT teams that are increasingly being misused to make all sorts of arrests that should not be made using paramilitary tactics.

From the New Yorker….

Lashkar is a big organization with multiple arms and priorities and its leadership is undoubtedly divided over how much risk to take in pursuit of violent operations in India, particularly given the comfort and even wealth the group’s leaders enjoy from their unmolested activities inside Pakistan. If the boys in Mumbai had support from Lashkar, did the group’s leader, Hafez Saeed, who runs Jamat, know of the plan? If so, that would be a radical act that would likely mean the end of his charity’s tenuous legitimacy.

This type of absurdity is why Lashkar is such a problem. No one denies that Lashkar has been behind deaths of many people in India. In fact, it is part of their recruiting appeal.

So why is that it would take proof that they were behind the attacks on Mumbai to de-legitimacies the organization? Because it happened on TV? Because white people died in the attack?

The same thing could be said of Hezbollah. Someday they are going to kill a lot of people in the wrong country. But until they do, they have a sort of “legitimacy.” At least among the people who are not being killed.

From Danger Room…..

Iraq’s parliament on Thursday signed off on a Status of Forces Agreement that paves the way for withdrawal of U.S. forces within three years. The pact — which has been in negotiation for nearly a year — provides legal cover to U.S. troops stationed in the country after a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

But here’s the interesting part: the agreement also makes thousands of U.S. contractors subject to Iraqi law. According to the final version of the text, Iraq will have the “primary right to exercise jurisdiction over United States contractors” and their employees.

Oceans of ink were spilled arguing that it was a mistake for the US to depend so heavily on contractors in Iraq because history has demonstrated that mercenaries were unreliable. One thing that almost no one mentioned was that history also demonstrates that mercenaries are historically the first ones thrown under the bus.

This concession is a poisonous gift from President Bush to the left. On one hand leftest commentators are overjoyed that the hated security contractors might now face “justice.” On the other hand, this concession is going to vastly complicate Obama’s life.

I don’t think Bush approved of this agreement with such machivilian thoughts in his mind. But he could have hardly made Obama’s life harder if he tried.

From the Telegraph….

The commando told how he was shot at trying to save a guide who was gunned down.

“We had a guide with us, a hotel employee, a hostage himself, to lead us through the hotel. He was the one who was opening each room and stepping aside.

“On the third floor a door swung open and he was gunned down. He wasn’t wearing a bullet-proof-vest. I dragged him out of range of the shots, but as I did I received three rounds to my back.”

There are so many things wrong with this account that I could scarcely count them all. I hope it is not true. If it is not, the whole operation was amateurish beyond belief.

This week’s rant of the week is Vanderleun’s The Voice of the Neuter is Heard Throughout the Land.

As Indian’s experience in Mumbai demonstrates, Israel’s tragedy has become the tragedy of the whole world. Therefore we think that it is good to remember how the age of televised terror began.

From the New York Times….

Sharpshooters had neither protective gear, nor the high-powered telescopes that their counterparts in Western countries would most likely use in a standoff with terrorists. On Saturday afternoon, a sharpshooter who had spent over 60 hours perched outside the Taj Hotel said neither he nor his partner had fired a shot because they were not sure how to distinguish the gunmen from ordinary civilians trapped inside the hotel.

I realize that India is a poor country. But you would think that a nation that is buying an aircraft carrier for billions of dollars would be able to afford some few high powered telescopes for their commandos.

The more I read, the more I realize how difficult it was for the commandos due to their lack of equipment. Take this story from the Telegraph for example….

A group of exhausted commandos who had engaged the militants for two nights inside the cavernous hotel after their deployment, reclined exhausted in one corner of the hotel’s lobby.

They ate listlessly from lunchboxes. It was the first cooked food they had seen in three days, but they found it difficult to swallow as their nostrils were still assailed by the stench of charred flesh and choking cordite from thousands of rounds expended in battle.

Most of them had survived without food or water for nearly 60 hours, lying motionless by the side of putrefying bodies for hours waiting for the next burst of fire from the militants. “It was sickening. But there was no option,” a commando said, declining to be named.

One commando said that in the corridors above the ground floor there were corpses decaying in the city’s oppressive heat, the floors slippery with congealing blood.

On top of all their other problems, I don’t think the commandos had any good night vision equipment. I have read nothing that comes right out and says that. But in all the interviews the commandos complain about how hard it was for them to fight in the dark and in all the pictures you never see night vision equipment on the commandos.

If you think about the problems involved in hunting terrorists in the dark down hallways covered with dead bodies and at the same time not being sure how many hostages are all around you, you can understand why it took so long for them to clear the hotel.

But there is no excuse for Indian’s top commandos to be so poorly equipped. As I said before, this is a nation that is spending billions of dollars on crappy aircraft carrier that will do nothing to help India’s security (The Chinese will sink it in a heartbeat and they don’t need it to hunt pirates). To make matters worse, the Russians are making the Indians pay through the nose for the carrier.

I think it just goes to show how badly Indian’s defense budget is managed.

From the Washington Post……

Indian officials said Saturday that they had killed or captured 10 gunmen responsible for the three-day assault on India’s financial and cultural capital. Nearly 200 people died in the attacks that began Wednesday.

Everybody is saying that their were only 10 attackers in total. I can hardly believe it. Only 10 men to take down a city of 18 to 19 million people. It makes it hard to understand why the Indians took so long to get everything under control. I mean granted, they needed time to bring troops into the city. But 3 days to take care of 10 men?

Of course, some British officials are defending the Indian response. But in the process they invite the whole world to try the same thing in Great BritainFrom the Telegraph…..

“It was always the doomsday scenario which Peter Clarke and I both recognised as the most challenging. In the early stages of such an attack there would a lot of death and chaos. Our unarmed police would be able to do very little except report in. There would be many hours of chaos before the police, backed by the military counter-terrorist response teams were in a position to contain, let alone neutralise, the terrorist threats.”

The former officer added that British armed response teams are not as numerous, well trained or equipped as they should be to deal with a fast moving and violent a scenario as that which occurred in Mumbai.

I guess the bottom line is that a government that expects its police force to hand out flip flops and give out safe sex advice can not expect those same policemen to handle a real crisis.