The Threshing Floor

1. Powerful people want you, dear citizen, to cast the blame on India and Pakistan. And maybe Condi Rice and George Bush, since they're leaving anyway and are obviously incompetent.

This Debka story and analysis posits that intelligence services (the NSA and Indian RAW) knew about these planned terrorist attacks and did nothing. Nothing!

Brian Ross even reported this on ABC News, which by chance I happened to see. So it must be true (wink wink wink)!! http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=brian+ross+mumbai&Search.x=27&Search.y=4

Note that Brian and Charlie take pains to point out that the warnings (plural) given to India by the US were 'very specific.' Mumbai officials took some precautions but discontinued them as they were 'burdensome' to the hotel owners.

Do you see the little judgment game going on here? Brian Ross and Charlie Gibson have perfected the schtick -- the earnest questions, dogged persistence and regretful but subtle head- shaking disgust -- needed to make millions and millions of Americans draw the preferred conclusions.

And what conclusions are those? Well, it so happened that the person who watched this with me knows nothing about false flags or anything like that. Just an average person who doesn't pay close attention. The reaction to this news was along the lines of Wow, can you believe the incompetence of these guys? I would suggest that this reaction is exactly what ABC News had in mind.

The emotional message goes like this: Dear Americans, Indian officials stupidly ignored our warnings, and the hotel owners shortsightedly and lazily skipped the precautions. Now you know that not only does Pakistan harbor Al Qaeda terrorists, but also that India has a lackadaisical approach to terror-fighting. Oh, and now they'll expect the selfless USofA to bail them out, after they completely shirked their duties fighting the greatest threat to Western Civilization. You just can't trust Muslims. And we'll have to go and do it because that's the kind of people we are. Can you believe this outrage? Yes, we knew you could. That's why we get paid the Big Bucks. Love you more, Brian and Charlie and all your rich friends at ABCCBSNBCFOXCNN

But I digress...The Debka article naturally offers us the very subtle Israelicentric spin: Don't you be looking at us! You Americans and Indians knew all about this and did nothing. Even your Brian Ross and Charlie Gibson say so! Ha. Gotcha. (Thanks, Brian and Charlie! wink wink wink wink)

2. RAW (Indian external intelligence apparatus) has some history of mole infestations.

This goes back to mid-2004. A senior ranking intelligence officer defected to the US after being suspected of compromising Indian national security.

The Indian government fears that the defection of Rabinder Singh, who held the senior rank of joint secretary and who headed the agency's Southeast Asia department, is only the tip of the iceberg in a possible infiltration operation by the CIA and Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service

Many interesting details here, like this:

The newspaper said when RAW's bosses discussed the issue with a former top security official, they were asked not to proceed against the alleged defector.

That split the RAW hierarchy. While one group wanted immediate action against Mr Singh, another refused to allow his arrest. The time lost gave Singh the opportunity to make a quiet getaway.

Okaaay. Interesting.

3. In at least one case, we have reports that the Indian police really did...well...nothing.

A photographer claims that Indian police officers in the train station refused to fire on the terrorists.

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."

Now why would they do that? Were they following orders to stand down? Who would give such orders, and why? Might this be related to moles in RAW? Might this be related to Israel?

4. Or, did this operation go down the wrong pipe?

Did the rogue false flag operation get punked by another rogue element in the criminal underworld? It's very confusing, but I think that's what Wayne Madsen is getting at here.

WMR's Asian intelligence sources have provided additional information on the wave of terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Under pressure from Washington, this past May Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani cut a secret deal with the US and India, to turn over to Delhi a number of residents of Pakistan wanted by India for terrorism. One of those included in the deal was the CIA's erstwhile asset, Mumbai-born Dawood Ibrahim, a veteran of CIA operations in Afghanistan during the mujaheddin war against the Soviets.

Ibrahim, according to our sources, has been under the protection of Pakistan's ISI since June. He is being protected in Quetta, near the Waziristan tribal region. The CIA is fearful that if Ibrahim is deported to India, RAW and Russia's Vladimir Putin will obtain the entire dossier on the CIA's sponsorship of criminal activities and terrorist attacks. ISI would prefer Ibrahim to move to the UAE, perhaps Dubai, where he has extensive financial interests. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is a business rival of Ibrahim and the ISI would like Ibrahim to be at a distance from Pakistan's president and "settle scores" with his old "allies" and new enemies in Langley from outside Pakistani territory.

Ibrahim is reportedly using his gangland "muscle" in India to send a clear message to Delhi and Washington that he is a force to be reckoned with. The son of a Bombay (Mumbai) police constable who, himself, dabbled in organized criminal activity, Ibrahim has his informants and agents peppered throughout the Indian police, RAW, and Pakistan's ISI. Ibrahim also knows a great deal about the CIA's operations on the sub-continent, including having the "goods" on the CIA's "Afghanist" agents, as well as agency veterans of Kathmandu who dabbled in personal loans from Ibrahim to pay off gambling debts, personal favors for the CIA, highly sought after prostitutes, and drugs. Many of these veterans of Nepal are now senior analysts and operational personnel at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Eeesh. Crazier than a badger on crystal meth, to borrow a phrase.

The CIA has every reason to blame the Mumbai attacks on a coterie of "Islamist" groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, "Al Qaeda," and a new group called "Deccan Mujahedin." If the media takes a closer look at Ibrahim they will find links to Langley and that is something neither the CIA or Pakistan or India wants to see happen lest other "dirty laundry" also comes to the forefront. Ibrahim's joint casino interests with the CIA in Kathmandu apparently involves money laundering for top Indian politicians in New Delhi, as well as some of India's more well-known "Bollywood" actors.

He is kicking ass and taking names, apparently.

Ibrahim also sent a warning message to Israel by seizing Chabad House in Mumbai, reportedly a haven for right-wing Jewish Orthodox groups and Israeli military "trainers" who pose as backpackers on holiday in Kashmir during their reconnaissance missions. Apparently, the Israelis' uncouth behavior toward Kashmiri locals, including cheating taxi drivers and lodges, became known to Ibrahim who figured he could also take advantage of his assault on Mumbai to teach the Israelis a couple of lessons.

Yes, we just learned about this the other day.

By torching the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, Ibrahim has also earned a few extra points with Pakistan's government. The Taj Mahal is owned by the Taj Group, an enterprise of the multi-billionaire Tata family of India. Tata stands to make a fortune from the US-India nuclear technology sharing pact as a defense supplier for India's future modernized nuclear arsenal. The targeting of the Tata-owned hotel was a stark warning, via Ibrahim's gang, that America will pay dearly for backing India's expanded nuclear ambitions. And for that, Islamabad obviously looked the other way as Ibrahim's men deployed to Mumbai by sea from Karachi.

Ugly. Christopher Story calls it the rats in a sack syndrome, when the underworld characters start to take each other down to save themselves. It looks like that's what happening here. All the lies and betrayals and double crosses and triple crosses and money laundering and drugs and prostitutes and weapons and murders...it can make people snap.

UPDATE: More information here, especially on Dawood's legendary reputation. I don't know. It seems sort of James Bond meets Robinhood to me.

His childhood familiarity with police routine and inner workings of the justice system gave the ambitious teenager an unmatched ability to outwit the authorities with evermore clever criminal designs. Among the unschooled ranks of Bombay gangland, Ibrahim emerged as the coherent leader of a multi-religious mafia, not just due to his ability to organize extortion campaigns and meet payrolls, but also because of his merciless extermination of rivals.

Dawood, always the professional problem-solver, gained the friendship of aspiring officers in India's intelligence service known as Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). He soon attracted the attention of American secret agents, then supporting the Islamic mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Dawood personally assisted many a U.S. deep-cover operation funneling money to Afghan rebels via American-operated casinos in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Eager to please all comers, Dawood occasionally got his wires crossed, providing travel documents and other amenities to Islamist airplane hijackers. In response, Washington spymasters tried to unofficially "impound" his investment in the Nepalese casinos. Dawood's fury is legendary among locals. An honorable businessman, he held to the strict belief that a deal is a deal and there can be no reneging for any reason.

He answered me and said, "If you are alive, you will see, and if you live long, you will often marvel, because the age is hurrying swiftly to its end. It will not be able to bring the things that have been promised to the righteous in their appointed times, because this age is full of sadness and infirmities. For the evil about which you ask me has been sown, but the harvest of it has not yet come. If therefore that which has been sown is not reaped, and if the place where the evil has been sown does not pass away, the field where the good has been sown will not come. For a grain of evil seed was sown in Adam's heart from the beginning, and how much ungodliness it has produced until now -- and will produce until the time of threshing comes! Consider now for yourself how much fruit of ungodliness a grain of evil seed has produced. When heads of grain without number are sown, how great a threshing floor they will fill!" 2 Esdras 4:26-32