Bombay Massacre

One of the terrorists was photographed walking nonchalantly through the rail station with his rifle and backpack, by a photographer from the local paper. His observation was that there were plenty of armed police in the station, but without orders from their superiors, none would draw his weapon and fire, even after some of the policemen had been shot.

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."

After all was said and done, only one of the attackers survived the experience. Notwithstanding their inability to shoot, the Bombay police department apparently have the technique of extracting information from suspects down pat.

But it seems the police grilling was so intense that before he left the hospital for an undisclosed location, he pleaded with the police and the medical staff to kill him. “Now, I don’t want to live,” he said.

There's criminals, then there's REAL criminals, then there's these guys. In these guys case, remember you're not really abusing your detainee unless he's begging you to kill him. At this point, you know you're doing it right. Jack Bauer would approve.

The terrorists came to Bombay from Pakistan. The Paki intelligence bureau is little more than a branch of Al Quaida, and we've actually used them to get Taliban fighters to leave Pakistan to avoid an impending bombing, only to cut the fighters off, and bomb them in Afghanistan, where they thought they'd be safe. The head of Paki intelligence actually visited Bombay to expresses his shock (Shocked, you hear!) at the attack, and deny all involvement in it. More likely a post action evaluation.

Much discussion has ensued regarding the probability of such an action having the same success here in the US. In Texas, some 3% of the civilian population has CCW, which is comparable to most states with shall-issue laws. There are armed cops in most public venues, such as train stations and airports, and most of them are not shy about using their weapons. Heck, in the Aurora Mall, East of Denver, the police would arrive in time to find 2 dead terrorists, no weapons, and no one who had seen anything. And the Aurora cops are not slow.

Post action evaluation: 10 terrorists in a densely populated area, facing no real resistance killed about 150 people. That's about 15 each. The shooter at Va Tech killed 31 with only a pistol. For being "heavily armed" and "highly trained" and operating in a classic gun free zone, I'd have to say their performance was, at best mediocre. Here's a list of mass killings for comparison. Note that most of them were done solo.

Bombay was a soft target, and easy to hit. The US would be somewhat more difficult, depending on organization and timing. Obie promised to leave the middle east with his tail between his legs, like a whipped Spaniard. These guys will be wanting to remind him of this, and apply whatever pressure they can to speed up the process. Something to look forward to, along with getting your CCW. As they say: When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.