Mumbai 9/11: "Unko bachana kaun chahega?"

In Jihad in Mumbai, Gates of Vienna takes aim at the highly destructive cowardice informing Western political and press discussions of Islamist terrorism:

There’s only “terrorism”. There’s no jihad. Islam is not mentioned. If we say anything about it, we might damage the “interfaith dialogue” upon which the White House, the UN, and the Vatican have placed so much hope.

The GOV post links to several reports on the massacres, including B. Raman's November 29 analysis, which lists what he's gathered so far on different attacks launched by the terrorists around the city.

And GOV provides a link to a Rediff report titled Doctors shocked at hostages' torture. It seems that all those taken hostage by the terrorists were tortured, and in such gruesome fashion that the examining doctors, used to the sight of mutilated bodies, were sickened. One doctor said:

"Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again."

From Aaron Klein's report to John Batchelor last night (aired at 9:20 PM ET), which is not yet available on podcast, I am not sure that all the hostages at Nariman House were massacred on the first day.

The Rediff report also explains why only one of the terrorists survived a shoot-out with the police:

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."

There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies. [...]

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

I appreciate the sentiment but if they'd left the faces intact that could have helped in identification. B. Raman is looking to the Middle Eastern Muslim terror organizations for some tactics used by the Mumbai attackers:

In my view, the terrorist strikes in Mumbai had the stamp of Al Qaeda in the way they were conceived, planned and executed. There has also been a touch of the Hizbollah of the Lebanon, the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and other Palestinian organizations.

This tends to support my initiation suspicion. ("I think the attacks would fit the profile of Hezbollah's MO." -- November 27)

But with the faces of the attackers virtually obliterated, and if the bodies are quickly disposed of without DNA testing, we have only the surviving terrorist's word for it that all the others were Pakistani.

I don't post pictures on this blog but in the second-to-last picture in this (UK) Daily Mail report, the picture showing two gunman, the taller man on the right does not look Pakistani to my eyes. The photograph is fuzzy but he looks as if he could be from India's northeast, maybe Assam state.

In any event, if the faces of the slain terrorists were indeed mutilated beyond all recognition, there may have been more than one reason for this.