As Predicted, India Links Mumbai Attacks With Pakistan
Perfect pretext for continued bombing raids, increase in U.S. military aggression as promised by President elect Barack Obama - "official story" is manufactured around contradictions and lies

As we predicted would happen in our early report yesterday, Indian government authorities are now blaming Pakistan for being behind the ongoing attacks in Mumbai, providing a perfect pretext for expanded U.S. military aggression against a country that is also a target for President elect Barack Obama.

As we outlined yesterday, "With the corporate media desperate to pin the blame in order to score much needed propaganda points for the ailing war on terror, suspicion is likely to fall on Pakistan, a country that President elect Barack Obama openly threatened during his presidential campaign."

That has now occurred with both the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as senior Indian military officials fingering Pakistan as being behind the plot, despite the fact that the group who claimed responsibility is based in India.

"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, (is) based outside the country," said Singh, "We will take up strongly with our neighbors that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated,'' obviously making reference to Pakistan.

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Indian Major General R.K. Hooda has also blamed Pakistan, stating, "They are from across the border and perhaps from Faridkot, Pakistan."

Pakistani defense minister Ahmed Mukhtar told AFP, "In previous cases they have acted like this, but later it all proved wrong," Ahmed Mukhtar told Agence France-Presse.

"We are very much positive that Pakistan is not involved in this," he said.

The mainstream corporate media in the U.S. and Britain has dutifully relayed the propaganda, affirming an Al-Qaeda/Pakistan origin despite the fact that every aspect of the attack contradicts previous alleged attacks by Al-Qaeda.

The press has also gone into an obsessive overdrive with constant coverage of the events, despite largely ignoring similar bombings in the past which occur in India on a regular basis. That in itself is proof that a very specific agenda is being pushed.

Constant reminders that the attacks 'targeted foreigners, American and Britons' contradict the fact that a handful of foreigners were killed in comparison to over 100 Indians. Multiple reports of indiscriminate shooting also quashes the notion that any kind of targeted attack against westerners took place. But this is the story being sold because the tragedy will be used as another excuse to expand the war on terror and increase U.S. military strikes inside Pakistani territory.

Indian government representatives are uniformly beginning to repeat a scripted explanation of events in Mumbai, in the hope that it will become the accepted truth behind the ongoing terrorist attacks and exonerate their own officials and security forces from any blame or criticism over a failure to protect Indian citizens.

Government officials continue to claim that the level of planning, preparation and coordination could not have been achieved without help from experienced terrorists, particularly groups linked to Al Qaeda.

The press is also beginning to repeat the overture that the previously unheard of Deccan Mujahideen group is a front for Pakistani terrorists affiliated with followers of Osama Bin Laden.

While it is patently illogical to suggest that a foreign terrorist group intent on grabbing public attention by causing mass panic would subsequently hide behind a false identity, India's prime minister has blamed "external forces." stating:

"The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of panic, by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners,"

In actual fact very few foreigners were killed (four at time of writing have been announced dead) and the gunmen were witnessed firing into crowds of Indians.

Now further reports, such as this one from AP, are disseminating the same mantra:

Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with the Swedish National Defense College, said there are "very strong suspicions" that the attacks have a link to al-Qaida.

He said the fact that Britons and Americans were singled out is one indicator, along with the coordination of the attacks.

The facts tell a different story, however - one Briton killed, no dead Americans, no dead or injured Israelis, yet up to 125 Indians killed.

The only "evidence" of any Al Qaeda or foreign Islamist involvement has been the citing of the “coordination” of the attacks.

Apparently, the ability to use some kind of timing and communications devices, and possibly some form of calendar to determine an agreed upon date for the attacks now represents advanced coordination.

Indian authorities have requested that "citizen journalists" not spread information or first hand accounts regarding the attacks via web portals such as Twitter, citing concerns that the terrorists may gain "strategic information" from them.

However, it is not made clear how grenade toting gunmen, holed up and conducting running battles with crack Indian commando forces will have an opportunity to log on to their Twitter accounts and surf through the millions of stories to gain said strategic information.

Meanwhile, more considered reports are highlighting the fact that the assailants are more likely to be close to the fragmented but effective Indian Mujahideen movement, an Indian muslim group opposed to Hinduism.

As Jason Burke of the London Guardian comments, the jumble of tactics and targets seems to indicate a homegrown Indian outfit.

Equally, the style of the attack – more a mass guerrilla assault on a series of soft-targets in a major city than the standard spectacular blasts that we have come to associate with those strikes linked closely to the al-Qaida hardcore – makes it that much more difficult to decipher.

Using boats to attack is certainly original and rare – though al-Qaida used boat bombs against the USS Cole in 2000. Hostage taking is also not a usual feature of core al-Qaida attacks.

Indeed, the guns and grenade style is more reminiscent of the operations of militant groups in Kashmir (and elsewhere in India), Afghanistan or even in the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

As we highlighted in our earlier article, "Christine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation insisted the style of the attacks and the targets in Mumbai suggested that the militants were likely to be Indian Muslims - and not linked to Al Qaeda or the violent South Asian terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba,".

However, Neocon outlets such as Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard are setting the tone:

Indian intelligence believes the Indian Mujahideen is a front group created by Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami to confuse investigators and cover the tracks of the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a radical Islamist movement. The groups receive support from Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence and are al Qaeda affiliates.

The geopolitical consequences are clear, as geopolitical consultancy Stratfor highlights:

If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.

[...] the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government’s internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.

The truth behind the attacks is once again quickly becoming irrelevant, citizens and journalists are being encouraged not to ask questions and not to spread information. It is becoming clear that the attacks will be blamed on Islamic militants no matter what and will undoubtedly serve as further pretext to increase bombing campaigns in Pakistan and beef support for the ailing war on terror in Afghanistan.

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