Let them eat cake!

In the wake of every tragedy comes a whole lot of nonsense from the netas in power
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Let's begin with this, from our Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan: "I think it is unfair to say that there was a failure of intelligence.

If there was something available and we failed to pick it up, that will be considered at intelligence failure." So, to put things into perspective, what this implies is something was 'picked up' but the blasts occurred nonetheless; which makes it a failure to act. What do you think is worse?

Moving on to bigger fish, consider this wise comment from our esteemed Union Minister of Home Affairs, P Chidambaram: "Whenever there is any information, we share it with the states concerned and vice versa. Unfortunately, this incident slipped through. Intelligence is collected every day, every hour.

The blasts are not a failure of intelligence agencies. Whoever has perpetrated the attacks has worked in a very clandestine manner." In The World According to Chidambaram, then, terrorists ought to stop acting in secret and share their plans with the rest of us. Preferably via Twitter.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh surprised a lot of people simply by speaking. "The terrorists had the advantage of surprise," he said. "This time there was no advance indication.

Now our task is to find out who the culprits are and how we can work together to bring them to justice." Terrorists have allegedly taken cognisance of his concerns and may choose to inform us all in advance the next time.

Let's move to our Prime Minister-in-waiting. "It is very difficult to stop every single terror attack in the country. Terrorism is something that is impossible to stop all the time.

But 99 per cent of attacks have been stopped due to strong vigilance and intelligence efforts," according to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi. Excellent news.

What this means, then, is the bus bomb on December 2, 2002 (2 killed, 31 injured), Bombay Central station blast on December 6, 2002 (25 injured), Vile Parle station blast on January 27, 2003 (30 injured), ladies special train blast on March 13, 2003 (11 killed, 65 injured), twin blasts at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar on August 25, 2003 (46 killed, 160 injured) and train blasts on July 11, 2006 (209 dead) were the ones that got away.

In the words of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, India has been better than Pakistan where blasts take place every day, every week. "Even the US has to go through a 9/11. We are a country of 1.2 billion people," he says.

So, we should be thankful this doesn't happen daily. Do send him your messages of gratitude.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, "We have also succeeded to a large extent, but the geography of the US is different from ours."

I thought about this one for approximately 45 minutes, but couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. If you can, this report carries my email address; do enlighten me.
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And naturally, there were opinions voiced by our leaders from the opposition too. Like this, from LK Advani: "This repeated attack on Mumbai should be viewed essentially as a policy failure. It is not an intelligence failure." This ought to make bereaved families across the city feel a whole lot better.

The terrorists had the advantage of surprise PM Manmohan Singh