The Case of the Telltale Hoax
Who was behind the Mumbai massacre?
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
DIGG THIS
 The
idea that a nuclear war could be started by a hoax caller may seem
too Bizarro Worldish, even for the post-9/11 era, but there
you have it:
"A hoax
caller claiming to be India's foreign minister threatened Pakistan's
president with war during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks,
prompting Islamabad to put its air force on its highest alert
for nearly 24 hours, a news report said Saturday."
How did the
Mumbai prankster get through to the president of Pakistan? Simple:
caller ID! Naturally, these things can be faked, but what do they
know in Pakistan? (Although I'll bet the caller wouldn't have gotten
through to Gen. Pervez "No
Nonsense" Musharraf, the previous "president"-cum-dictator.)
 What
this underscores – apart from the tenuous character of human existence
and the utter absurdity of life – is how delicate the balance of
terror is these days. One false move and – ka-boom! – the
world (or a good chunk of it) goes up in a puff
of smoke. If you like your humor dark and unsweetened, then
this is mordantly funny. What's not so funny, however, is the probable
answer to the obvious question: who made the call?
My guess is
that whoever did it had a direct connection to the organizers of
the
Mumbai terror. After all, their goal was clearly to provoke
a war between India and Pakistan, and one can hardly conceive of
a more direct way to accomplish it. The call, I believe, also provides
a clue to the identity of the Mumbai terrorists.
It's a truism that murderers have a distinct modus operandi: they
do their evil deeds in a particular fashion, and there are certain
telltale signs – signatures, if you will – that habitual killers
impart to their grisly work. In this case, we have been here once
before – on 9/11. In that instance, too, a caller got through to
a president – at the White House via the Secret Service. According
to former New York Times columnist William Safire:
"A threatening message received by the Secret Service was
relayed to the agents with the president that 'Air Force One is
next.' According to the high official, American code words were
used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible."
Read
the rest of the article
December
9, 2008
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2008 Antiwar.com
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