December 08, 2008
Mumbai Attack Mirrors '93 NY Landmarks Plot
Did anybody read Andrew McCarthy's book Willful Blindness? The NY Landmarks plot wasn't thwarted in a straight line, more like a series of fortunate blunders. That's an eye opening book.
To the topic at hand, Strafor makes an interesting point about three similarities between the Landmarks plot and the Mumbai attack and concludes the planner, or the plan perhaps, were the same:
Stratfor: As indicated, the striking similarities between the Landmarks plot and the Mumbai attack suggest that Ramzi Yousef and other early al Qaeda operatives who helped prepare the Landmarks plot in New York authored the Mumbai plan. Considering that the militants launched their original attack from Karachi, Pakistan, and the previous involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency — which has connections with al Qaeda leaders in western Pakistan — it is very likely that al Qaeda in Pakistan at least provided the blueprints for this attack. On-the-ground operations like training, surveillance and the actual attack appear to have been carried out by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in connection with Indian Islamist groups.Here we see more evidence of the existence of an ideological or strategic battle space that exists in the radical Islamist world, which has been greatly influenced by al Qaeda. Like a contingency plan that might sit on the shelf for years or decades before it is useful, terrorist plots (especially good ones) can have a long shelf life and be applied in various scenarios.
HT: Eagle1
By Jane at December 8, 2008 09:01 AM | | l digg this
