Last night about 10:30pm I began watching a live feed from IBN (in collaboration with CNN) at this link:
http://ibnlive.in.com/...
... and what I saw was unbelievable incompetence and arrogance from the Indian Government officials supposedly managing the crisis. Besides grandstanding and using the incident for personal political commentary, the politicians and government spokesmen were saying obvious falsehoods, repeatedly claiming the "actions" at the Taj were nearly completed and would be in "one hour"... this while random shots, explosions and a fire rages out of control.
UPDATE: CORRECTED LIVE VIDEO FEED LINK
At Nariman House, commandos and/or police stood on an adjacent balcony occasionally rising to fire random bursts of automatic weapons in the general direction of the Jewish center. Most of the time they were not even aiming. It is now reported that all hostages died there.
Several police captains and commanders were killed, apparently because they rushed into the battle without understanding the scope of the attack. Politicians then rushed to grandstand about what heros they were, while the local news anchors reported the same politicians had condemned the police commanders recently as corrupt.
The most bizarre and utterly incomprehensible sight I saw was a politician gathering about 20 commandos to pose in front of the media while one of the commandos was forced (and clearly he was not willing, all had tried to cover their faces with black scarves) to give a minute by minute account of their attempts to find and control the terrorists in the Taj, even as the fighting continued. The commandos commander was giving away critical intelligence about what they knew, what they did not know, where they were located, what they still needed to do WHILE THE TERRORISTS WERE STILL AT LARGE.
Then the IBN news anchors interrupted this coverage to report hysterically that shots were fired at the CST Station and the major local hospital (GT Hospital). The gunfire (or reports of gunfire) at the CST Station caused a stampede. A short time later they came on and said everything was now normal at the station and the authorities requested that incomplete reporting be curtailed (duh).
Unbelievable. Everyone who is concerned about terrorism should see as much of this video as possible, for it is the best case study of exactly what not to do. I went to bed about 1am, hoping against expectations the situation would be resolved by morning. Now almost 11 hours later, still chaos.
The Indian authorities are totally in over their heads, given that a handful of terrorists have killed about 200, wounded about 500 and still are fighting after 50 hours.
UPDATE: 1pm Saturday (53 hrs into the attack) I wanted to highlight live reports coming from a NYT reporter Keith Bradsher, thumbed into his Blackberry from the scene. He notes what was seen at all the attack site, the police and military failed to control the perimeters. This is basic response to any catastrophe, natural or man-made... set up a perimeter and control entry and exit of all personnel. That critical oversight has undoubtedly caused additional casualties and perhaps allowed escape of terrorists. That, and having a news conference of the commandos, is INEXCUSABLE. This does not take extensive training or Homeland Security sort of budgets, it just takes common sense and a small amount of planning.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/...
In addition, Bradsher observed that ambulances finally arrived a Nariman House about 40 hrs into the seige. There were already casualties lying about for 10s of hours. I'm sorry, no excuses can be made for such utter incompetence.