The preliminary list of charges

Wow! After one whole week, she figures it out! Somini Sengupta and Jane Perlez now have the list of evidence that we already know of. But rather strangely, they attribute to an unnamed "Western intelligence official" and another unnamed "retired DoD official" some of the facts that were given out by the Mumbai police commissioner Maria in an interview 3 days back! Anyway, the NYT is slowly waking up to the truth. Let us hope they don't go back to their bullshit about how "some security experts insist" the "militants" are "likely to be Indian muslims". I hope they apologize to Indian muslims but I am not holding my breath. Mind you, the article is not without its signature Sominism - she quotes a worthy, upstanding LeT terrorist to let us know what a bad, bad, bad country India is!

But the article - titled Mumbai Attack Is Test of Pakistan’s Ability to Curb Militants - is quite detailed and informative about the LeT-ISI-Mumbai attack link and is certainly worth a read. It lists the mounting evidence against Pakistan and calls out the Zardari government. Here's a snippet:

LAHORE, Pakistan — Mounting evidence of links between the Mumbai terrorist attacks and a Pakistani militant group is posing the stiffest test so far of Pakistan’s new government, raising questions whether it can — or wants to — rein in militancy here.

President Asif Ali Zardari  says his government has no concrete evidence of Pakistani involvement in the attacks, and American officials have not established a direct link to the government. But as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice landed in Pakistan on Thursday, pressure was building on the government to confront the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which Indian and American officials say carried out the Mumbai attacks.

Though officially banned, the group has hidden in plain sight for years. It has had a long history of ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The evidence of its hand in the Mumbai attacks is accumulating from around the globe:

¶A former Defense Department official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that American intelligence analysts suspect that former officers of Pakistan’s powerful spy agency and its army helped train the Mumbai attackers.

¶According to the Indian police, the one gunman who survived the terrorist attacks, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, told interrogators that he trained during a year and half in at least four camps in Pakistan and at one met with Mohammad Hafeez Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader.

¶And according to a Western official familiar with the investigation in Mumbai, another Lashkar leader, Yusuf Muzammil, whom the surviving gunman named as the plot’s organizer, fielded phone calls in Lahore from the attackers.

That is a damning indictment of Pakistan. The ball is now in their court. The article has lots of details about the LeT but doesn't really get to the bottom of this nefarious group. More on that later.