CNN reports at least six blasts during the evening rush hour on commuter trains in India's financial capital of Mumbai:

At least six blasts have rocked commuter trains at rush hour in and around India's financial capital of Mumbai, with at least 15 deaths reported.

Dozens of people were injured in the blasts, which took place around 6:30 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Tuesday when the trains were packed with commuters making their way home.

A correspondent for CNN's sister network, CNN-IBN, reported seeing 15 bodies at the Matunga train station.

Video from one station showed people with blood on them being treated, other commuters carrying victims and some people lying motionless near train tracks.

At least one train was split in half by the explosion.

A major terrorist attack on a democracy's financial hub... must be those damn Methodists again.

Fox News is reporting seven bomb blasts.

The Bangkok Post is reporting that all the explosions took place in the first-class compartments of the trains.

Forbes, citing Indian television reports, states that dozens have been killed.

Based upon these breaking preliminary reports, I suspect the Mumbai bombers may have used similar explosives to the ten-pound TATP backpack bombs that hit London just over a year ago.

Pajamas Media is providing information as it comes in from Indian blogs and news reports, and seems to be ahead of the wire services. An Indian blogger, Deep Ganatra, is reporting at least 63 dead and 400 injured according to local television media reports.

As of 11:00 AM, CAIR remains focused on a Koran that someone shot up in Tennessee and then threw at a mosque.

Glad to see they have their priorities straight.

Update: A fleeting moment of honesty at the Democratic Underground:

Silence on this board stems from difficulty blaming this on George W. Bush.

That's the fact.

I'll pass on that $20 bet BTW, but I still think we should invade Canada.

Have faith, little liberal.

Your fellow DUers were able to blame Bush for the terror attacks in London, so I'm sure you'll be able to get your thought together long enough find an excuse to blame him for these attacks as well.

Update: Deaths now reported as 130+, and is likely to climb with more than 300 injured. Indian Islamists have been arrested.

CNN-IBN reports another bomb has been found and defused.

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Military recruiting for June once again met or exceeded goals across all four branches (h/t Paul at Adventurepan:

• Marines: 105%
• Army: 102%
• Air Force:101%
• Navy: 100%

You'll note that the Marine Corps and Army, responsible for fielding most of the forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, have exceeded their goals by the largest margins, despite having higher target numbers than the other branches. They achieved this in the face of a mainstream media attempting to portray the military as rapists, racists, and murderers based up the alleged actions of a handful of men.

Since October 1, all four branches have met or exceed their goals:

• Army: 104%
• Marines: 101%
• Air Force: 101%
• Navy: 100%

Reserve forces recruiting has not been as even, but interesting enough, the Reserve and Guard forces most likely to be called upon for ground combat overseas (Army National Guard, Army Reserves, Marine Corps Reserves) have been the most successful in recruiting.

Who are the recruits?

Despite myths to the contrary, today's military is a far cry from the Vietnam-era draftees. Today's volunteers (PDF) are better educated than their peers, come from middle-class or upper middle-class homes, and tend to come from suburban and rural areas.

Certain areas of the country are somewhat under over and underrepresented geographically according to recruiting data, with the southern and rural states over-represented, the urban northeast, north central and west coast states are under-represented. Interestingly enough, their seems to be a rough correlation to this map.

Make of it what you will.

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If you can stand to watch it, The Jawa Report has obtained graphic footage of the bodies of two U.S. soldiers captured, tortured and killed in Iraq several weeks ago, as released in an al Qaeda video.

Sadly, if the terrorists can be beleived, the attack was in response to the rape and murder of a nearby Iraqi girl as I theorized on July 3:

On March 12, five soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Division allegedly raped a 15-year-old Iraqi girl killed her and her family, and then burned her body in an apparent attempt to hide the evidence of their crime.

Roughly three months later, on June 23, one of those soldiers confessed after soldiers from the same platoon were ambushed, and two GIs captured in the ambush were horrifically tortured and killed. Was there a cause-and-effect, tit-for-tat exchange of atrocities south of Baghdad?

Claims made in the video to this effect only bolster my theory.

Update:

Via Fox News:

According to the SITE Institute, the statement by the insurgents said that as soon as fighters heard of the rape-slaying, "they kept their anger to themselves and didn't spread the news."

"They decided to take revenge for their sister's honor," the statement said. "With Allah's help, they captured two soldiers of the same brigade as this dirty crusader."

The Mujahedeen Shura Council is an umbrella organization of several Islamic extremist groups, including al Qaeda in Iraq. It claimed responsibility for shooting down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Youssifiyah area in April.

U.S. investigators had said there was no evidence linking the deaths of the three soldiers last month to the alleged rape-slaying.

No physical evidence, perhaps, but the terrorists did cite the rape as their excuse, and they used what to my knowledge are new tactics to carry out the kidnapping. Time will tell.

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A video message to America's liberals, from the U.S. Marine Corps and Hollywood agent turned combat filmmaker, Pat Dollard.

Not safe for work. Click the first video link.

Bonus: Pat on Hannity & Colmes.

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That short statement seems to be an accurate description of the terrorists in the latest reported terrorist plot against New York City, where an al Qaeda member captured in Lebanon and his cohorts planned to detonate vehicle-borne explosives in an attempt to breach tunnels into New York City. Their goal was flooding lower Manhattan.

What idiots.

For starters, it is quite doubtful that Allah's brain surgeons could have managed to construct the kind of bomb that could breach the Holland or any other tunnel into New York City. I won't bother explaining all the multiple reasons (and there are many) that their plot would fail to breach the tunnel walls, but lets just for a second look at what would happen to the rest of lower Manhattan in the event of a tunnel detonation.

Â…

Â…

Â…

Did you see what happened?

Nothing.

Certainly, there would be panic and injuries and deaths inside the tunnel and I do not in any way want to minimize that. There would smoke from the blast from the bomb, and the noise and commotion of the emergency response from New York's Finest and Bravest, but there would be no measurable physical damage outside the tunnel, as lower Manhattan is above sea level.

The brain trust that came up with this cockamamie plan was hoping a blast under the riverbed—at a point lower than the bottom of the river—would somehow cause a Hurricane Katrina-like deluge that would flood the Financial District and collapse the U.S. economy. It would be laughable if they weren't planning this with such deadly earnest.

This is the latest al Qaeda plan to attack the United States, but there have been others.

A couple of homegrown Miami jihadi wannabes wanted to detonate an ANFO bomb to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago, but only managed to enlist the FBI in their support. They're in jail. More than a dozen Canadian hopefuls had a similar plot Up North, but they were also quickly detained.

Just for the record, this plot was foiled by the NSA monitoring Internet communications between would-be jihadists. Funny. but I didn't feel my civil rights were trampled at all.

The simple fact of the matter seems to be that the best minds al Qaeda have long since been killed or have gone to ground, leaving us with thankfully incompetent terrorists to plan most of the attacks against us. Most are no seasoned terrorists. Most are committing their first attacks.

This makes them harder to find in some ways, and easier to foil in others.

They're pitting their "B" team against our best and brightest, the same men and women that put the vast majority of their "A" Team in the ground, and it shows.

They may still get lucky—we often heard say that they "only have to be right once"—but as each passing terrorist generation is ground to mulch in southwest Asia or sent packing for a federal prison, the odds of them getting everything right as they did on 9/11 grows increasingly remote.

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One year later, Pajamas Media has a roundup of bloggers remembering the 52 people murdered by Islamists in London.

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Ray Robinson has been busy with his translators over at the Saddam Dossier, and has unearthed documents that an Arab regime—most likely Saddam's Iraq as these documents were found in Iraqi computers—supplied training manuals and military assistance to both al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. Among the instructions passed along to the terrorists are personal security instructions:

Respected brother,

Know that one of the main causes of information leaks is from personnel (translator's note: personnel talking), this is why we try to cooperate with you so that neither you or one of your brothers becomes the cause of a catastrophe that might hit one of the brothers or all of them.

Please follow these instructions:

1- Know as much as you need. (translator's note: don't ask too many questions)
2- Don't talk too much; it is said that "silence is wisdom."
3- It is recommended that all personnel wear Afghan clothing so they do not stand out from other people.
4- All the brothers should go to the market by themselves, alone.
5- It is not advised to move alone at night. (At night, walk the streets on foot)
6- As much as possible do not disclose your identity as an Arab.
7- Avoid excitement whether by glorifying or bashing.
8- Avoid being observed (translator's note: being followed and observed) and always notice who is walking behind you or following you from a distance; review the observation manual.
9- All brothers should be always armed even if with a small knife in their pockets.
10- Check your pockets and never leave important papers in them when moving around.
11- Always be careful in personal relations with Afghans or Pakistanis.
12- Avoid giving any information about the locations of your brothers.
13- It is forbidden to discuss work issues with the women.
14- It is forbidden to take children to parks and offices.
15- It is forbidden to talk about your work or the nature of your mission with anybody who is not related to it.
16- Beware of habit in your daily routine because the rule says, "Routine is the enemy of security."
17- If you are moving and have a large amount of money, beware of showing it in the market so you do not attract robbers.
18- Always beware when you are talking about the work because somebody not related to your work, the women or the children, might hear you.
19- Beware of rapid and spontaneous friendships with Afghans who speak Arabic.
20- In public places beware of talking about work issues because some Afghans know Arabic but you cannot notice this.
21- Always be forgiving when you are buying from, selling to or dealing with Afghans and avoid trouble.
22- Children are not allowed to go out by themselves whether to buy stuff or play.
23- Always make sure about the identity of your neighbors and classify them as regular people, opponents or allies.

While Robinson notes that it is not certain while Arab regime wrote these instructions along with the others contained in this translated document, he also states:

This document supports a few strong conclusions. It clearly proves that an Arab country was providing professional military assistance to Arab operatives in Afghanistan. While the document does not identify the country of origin of these Arab men, it's a logical omission since it wouldn't make sense to name the country in a memo whose purpose is to instruct how to hide one's nationality.

It is important to note, however, that in 1999, Iraq — along with Syria — was again identified by the U.S. Department of State as a government sponsor of terrorism, the only two Arab nations classified as state sponsors of terrorism at that time.

This document, of course, will be contested by those who refuse to believe that Saddam supported terrorism. These are the same people who refuse to acknowledge the fact that Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, two of the preeminent terrorist masterminds prior to the emergence of Osama bin Laden, lived in Baghdad as Saddam's guest for many years. These are the same people who refuse to acknowledge the fact that the 1993 World Trade Center attack was made possible by an Iraqi-American bomb-builder, Abdul Rahman Yasin, who returned to Baghdad and continued to live in Iraq for a decade following his mission.

For people so deeply and philosophically invested in denial, Robinson's work can never openly be acknowledged as being correct. To do so would mean that Bush didn't lie, and that Saddam's ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations was real.

For the rest of us, however, every document that Ray Robinson's team translates helps to build a picture of a Baathist regime every bit as dangerous as we thought it was.

Note: Mr. Robinson let me know he also taped an interview on Fox News television about these findings that will air every hour this morning.

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When it's my turn, I stride slowly, execute a right face, and bring my hand slowly to my brow. As I bring my hand back to my side I'm aware of the moisture in my eyes, which turn down as I execute a left face and leave the platform. I see for the first time how full the room really is, as there are many soldiers standing along the back wall. It's all I can do not to run outside, into daylight, away from that monument that means that my friend will never see his dreams of becoming a drill sergeant, an underwater welder, a husband or a father come to life. Run away from the fear that one day my own picture will be in front of that monument, that I'll never see my fiancée or my parents or my brothers and sisters again. Run away from the fear that I'll never become a teacher and raise a family. But I don't run. I walk as quickly as discipline allows outside, where my friends wait and share my grief.

A fallen soldier is remembered by another in Iraq, at Blue Crab Boulevard.

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Via Captain's Quarters, one of the oddest requests so far of the Long War shows that the President is winning the War on Terror:

Iraq's government is studying a request from some local insurgent leaders to supply them with weapons so they can turn on the heavily armed foreign fighters who were once their allies, according to two Iraqi lawmakers.

Leaders claiming to represent about 11 insurgent groups asked for weapons to fight foreign al-Qaeda elements in Iraq, said Haider al-Ibadi, a Shiite lawmaker and member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party.

"They want to take part in the war against terrorists," said al-Ibadi, who supports the proposal. "They claim they could wipe out the terrorists and work with the government."

Many of us understood months or years ago that as the Iraqi Army matured, it would eventually force the various insurgent groups to the bargaining table. The Iraqi Army is better trained and better equipped than insurgent groups, in what is essentially a war of attrition that insurgent groups cannot realistically hope to win.

At the same time, "red on red" violence has been growing in Iraq for soem time, as native insurgents have increasingly turned upon foreign-led terrorist cells that often target Iraqi civilians.

The Iraqi government should, of course, refuse to arm the insurgents. Arms that target al Qaeda on day could easily be turned back on Iraqi forces the next. Better armed militias are not in the nation's best interests, no matter who they claim to support.

But the request tells us two things:

1. The native insurgents feel they lack appropriate arms and ammunition. Desert conditions take a toll on even rugged Russian-designed arms, and tend to degrade ammunition. Coalition missions to dry up "rat lines" bring fresh weaponry from neighboring countries may be working.
2. Foreign fighters and those loyal to them have worn out their welcome among native Iraqis. Even the mostly Sunni insurgency seems intent on driving out al Qaeda. The fact that this new willingness to publicly engage al Qaeda occurred after Musab al-Zarqawi's death is perhaps not accidental.

If talks between the Iraqi government and the various Sunni insurgent groups can reach an agreement and maintain that agreement, the Army can then turn its attention to the sectarian violence in Iraq, and assist in cleaning out and disarming the various militias.

Iraq may not be free of sectarian violence for some time to come, but the fact that the insurgency seems to be losing its desire to fight a losing war is a step in the right direction that even the most diehard liberal will find hard to ignore.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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From the AP:

North Korea tests 7th missile amid furor

North Korea test-fired another missile Wednesday, intensifying the furor ignited when the reclusive regime launched at least six missiles, including a long-range Taepodong, earlier in the day.

Seven firings, none apparently lasting longer than six minutes, and the keystone was a spectacular failure that expired 40 seconds after launch.

Is this an impoverished Asisan dictatorship trying to project power, or Ron Jeremy's comeback tour?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:51 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Via the News & Observer:

Federal prosecutors charged a veteran of the Iraq war with murder and rape Monday following an investigation into the killing of an Iraqi woman and members of her family.
Steven D. Green, a 21-year-old former private first class who was discharged from the Army, appeared in a federal magistrate's courtroom in Charlotte Monday. Prosecutors said Green and other soldiers entered the home of a family of Iraqi civilians, where he and others raped a member of the family before Green shot her and three of her relatives to death.

The FBI said its agents arrested Green on Friday in Marion, N.C., and he is being held without bond pending a transfer to Louisville, Ky. Green had served with the 101st Airborne, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.

The case is being handled by federal prosecutors because Green has been discharged from the Army. According to an affidavit filed along with the criminal complaint, Green was discharged "before this incident came to light. Green was discharged due to a personality disorder."

Green was alleged to have killed three of the four family members, and participated in the rape. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He is the only soldier beign investigated in the Mahmudiyah rape/murder case to have been discharged.

Marion, NC is a small town near Lake James, west of Morganton.

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It's a regular Bush vs. Gordita:

Mexico's presidential election was too close to call Sunday, with a leftist offering himself as a savior to the poor and a conservative free-trader both declaring themselves the winner. Officials said they won't know who won for days.

Electoral officials said they could not release the results of Sunday night's quick count of the votes, which they previously said would happen only if the leading candidates were within one percentage point of each other. Luis Carlos Ugalde, president of the Federal Electoral Institute, said an official count would begin Wednesday, and a winner will be declared once it's complete.

As Dafydd notes at Big Lizards, the leftist candidate says that according to his figures he won, while the more conservative candidate notes the official preliminary count is showing him with a slim but important lead.

Under Mexican law, in the event of a tie, a winner is selected based upon the best human sacrifice to Aztec god of civilization Quetzalcoatl.*

* Not actually true, but it would be considered by most international observers to be a more humane way to settle a presidential election that the U.S. court system.

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It was an affront to common sense, a willful and undermining misreading of the Geneva Conventions, and a blatantly unconstitutional stab at grabbing power from both the Legislative and Executive branches, but the Supreme Court's much disputed and reviled Hamdan decision—which some have stated is on par with Dredd Scott and Pessy vs. Ferguson as "a great 'self-inflicted wound'"—might actually have a silver lining after all, as pointed out briefly by Captain Ed:

The ruling from the Supreme Court that essentially grants terrorists Geneva Convention protections needs to get reversed as quickly as possible. The court's majority decision declared that the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) issued by Congress in 2001 somehow did not cover the establishment of military tribunals for unlawful combatants, which leaves Congress the opening to fill the gap.

I actually prefer the method that Justice Stevens explicitly left open to the Bush administration in his opinion: leave them detained until hostilities cease in the war on terror. Radical Islam does not leave many deterrents to its lunatic pawns. Death in combat or a summary execution suits them fine. Public trials give them the opportunity to exploit our civil justice system as platforms for their screeds, as Zacarias Moussaoui showed. However, the perpetual and anonymous detention offered by Stevens does give the terrorists the one situation they find most repellent -- and that could persuade at least a few of them that taking on the US holds nothing but a miserable stretch of decades in an iron cage, with no public outlet for their hatred.

I've mentioned in the past that if we are going to extend Geneva Protections to terrorists (who are disbarred from Geneva Protections due to Article 4.1.2, no matter what Justice Stevens says), then we should specifically use the portion of the Geneva Conventions that favors us the most.

The world has been at war with Islamic fundementalists at shifting borders for almost 1,400 years. More than millennia of precedent indicates that Islam—which divides the world into the House of War and House of Submission—will be at war with the rest of the world as long as it exists.

While President Bush was taking steps with the tribunals struck down by Hamdan to provide some sort of attempt at providing trials, perhaps he shouldn't have bothered.

Ironically, the Supreme Court now gives us a containment option straight out of a horror story.

Edgar Alan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is perhaps one of the most classic horror stories; a man repeatedly wronged by another lures his victim into a dank catacombs where he first chains him, and then proceeds to wall him up alive.

Justice John Paul Stevens and the four other prevailing members of the Court have now set the stage for the terrorists we've captured to remain under U.S. custody without any sort of trial whatsoever for decades to come. They may conceivably be confined as prisoners of war—in good health, not bound in catacombs, mind you—until either they expire or jihad against the West ceases.

The Court has created the chance for the perpetual internment of captured terrorists without the mess of a jury trial. Somehow, I doubt liberals will be as happy with the Hamdan decision as they once were if this or following Administrations uses this option.

Frankly, I prefer tribunals, but I could force myself to live with this.

In pace requiescat!

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...sting like General Ali.

Via the Real Ugly American.

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On March 12, five soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Division allegedly raped a 15-year-old Iraqi girl killed her and her family, and then burned her body in an apparent attempt to hide the evidence of their crime.

Roughly three months later, on June 23, one of those soldiers confessed after soldiers from the same platoon were ambushed, and two GIs captured in the ambush were horrifically tortured and killed. Was there a cause-and-effect, tit-for-tat exchange of atrocities south of Baghdad? At least one key player seems to think so:

The official in Iraq whom the wire service quoted said the mutilation of the slain soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one of them to reveal the rape and slaying on June 22.

Would "feelings of guilt" mean that this soldier felt the torture and murder of men from his platoon was in retaliation for his own acts? Absent any other explanation, it seems a plausible assumption.

It is, of course, quite possible and even probable that the ambush and capture of Menchaca and Tucker at their Yusifiyah checkpoint was an act completely unassociated with the rape and murders down the road at Mahmudiyah. It seems that most of the neighbors were willing to believe this was a sectarian killing performed by Shiite militiamen.

But there was at least one notable exception.

Omar Janabi, a neighbor of the slain family, seems to be the star witness of this case, not only having conversations with the mother about here fears of a potential assault before the incident, but was also among the first to see the bodies.:

Janabi was one of the first people to arrive at the house after the attack, he said Saturday, speaking to a Washington Post special correspondent at the home of local tribal leaders. He said he found Abeer sprawled dead in a corner, her hair and a pillow next to her consumed by fire, and her dress pushed up to her neck.
"I was sure from the first glance that she had been raped," he said.
Despite the reassurances he had given the girl's mother earlier, Janabi said, "I wasn't surprised what had happened, when I found that the suspicion of the mother was correct."

And yet, three months passed without any indication that Janabi went to the Iraqi military or police to report his suspicions. Perhaps it was a cultural difference; perhaps it was fear of possible retribution, but in any event he believed U.S. soldiers from this unit was responsible for the capital crimes against his neighbors.

A Sunni in the heart of the Sunni insurgency, Janabi most likely "knew somebody who knew somebody" who would be capable of a retaliatory strike—perhaps a strike that took three months to reconnoiter, plan, and execute—that might send a message to the soldiers who committed these rapes.

Perhaps the tortuous deaths of men from Company B, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment weren't quite a random act of barbarity after all.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:57 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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He's worm food now:

Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told The Associated Press that al-Zarqawi had been buried in a "secret location" in Baghdad.

The U.S. military confirmed the burial but declined to give more details.

"The remains of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi were turned over to the appropriate government of Iraq officials and buried in accordance with Muslim customs and traditions," the military said in an e-mailed statement. "Anything further than that would be addressed by the Iraqi government."

al-Zarqawi died approximately an hour after sustaining catastrophic injuries in a June 7 airstrike. The cause of death was listed as a primary (blast) injury to the lung.

The last thing he saw on this earthly plain was American and Iraqi soldiers standing over him, side-by-side. I take some small satisfaction in that.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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