WashingToneLocian Wrote:
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>
> First, Americans were killed in Mumbai, or haven't
> you been paying attention to the news? Second,
> Bush's goal was to defeat Al Qaeda. These guys are
> obviously linked to Al Qaeda. Third, the decision
> to go to war with Iraq is a civilian decision. It
> was not made by the military. Bush is wholly
> responsible for this debacle.
I believe two Americans were killed. Both were from Virginia, actually.
These guys are not OBVIOUSLY linked to al-qaeda, either.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/27/asia/28group.php
Global terrorism experts said Thursday they had never heard of the group. And based on its tactics, they said, it was probably not a cell or group linked to Al Qaeda.
"It's even unclear whether it's a real group or not," said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the author of the book "Inside Terrorism." "It could be a cover name for another group, or a name adopted just for this particular incident."
Chrtistine Fair, senior political scientist and a South Asia expert at the RAND Corporation, was careful to say that the identity of the terrorists could not yet be known. But she 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.
"There's absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it," she said of the attack. "Did you see any suicide bombers? And there are no fingerprints of Lashkar. They don't do hostage taking, and they don't do grenades."
Hoffman agreed that the assault was "not exactly Al Qaeda's modus operandi, which is suicide attacks."
However, Bush didn't just vow to go to war against al-qaeda. He vowed to go to war with anyone who wasn't "with us". So his omnipotent war against extremists should have been going after these groups, as well.