The men behind the Mumbai carnage have reaped our blood, our tears, our anger. They have filled every Indian with rage as we watched our most innocent and our most brave gunned down and burnt. Now it's time to make sure we think about our response and think it through. And revenge must be a dish served cold. Chilling, preferably.   After 9/11, remember, the U.S. spent a month planning its response. The first strikes on Kabul came October 7, 2001. Given the state of preparedness we have shown before the Mumbai strike, it seems likely that we need some time to decide what we do next too. It also seems like something our politicians want- the easiest way to turn the nation's rage away from them, would be to give them something else, tangible, to hate. Like the country next door.   But we have done this before, and got nowhere in our war on terror. And doing nothing at...

With Obama so clearly ahead in all the polls, following the race has lost a little of the adrenalin. Ok - I admit it.I am a complete sucker for closely-fought races. Nobody watches India beating Hong Kong at the Asia Cup, or for that matter Brazil whooping India in the soccer play-offs, it's no fun to speculate on a blue-chip share (present crisis notwithstanding), and it's certainly unexciting to cover an election with only one candidate likely to win. Which is why the US Presidential elections are already beginning to pale a bit - with Obama so clearly ahead in all the polls, following the race has lost a little of the adrenalin. I mean the man seems to be leading in every conceivable voting group I can find - besides the double-digit leads he has in most states nationwide amongst generic average-Americans, there're the African Americans, the Hispanic Americans, the Asian Americans (McCain leads only amongst Vietnamese Americans), and of...

Eventually it was all three speeches that Musharraf decided to read out. For the week preceding his address to the Nation- he must have been considering his options- just as drawing rooms across Pakistan were, just as journalists like us who were gathering in Islamabad were. PTV, with a flourish unknown to state television anywhere had a permanent popup box flashing on its screen- Impeachment or Resignation? it said. Impeachment or Resignation? Would he quit without a fight, or stand and face parliament? Or, as we had watched him do since the February 18th election, simply pretend nothing had happened, that he was going to continue as Pakistan's legally-elected President until his term expired in 2012, and extend our waiting game by another week, another month. But nobody I knew, nobody I met who knew him thought he could actually stay. So, when would he go? I believe, not even Musharraf knew until just before it happened. As I touched...

There are hardly any parallels to what happened in Ahmedabad- in terms of terror attacks, IEDs and suicide bombings, never has a hospital been targeted in the cruel and completely inhuman manner the Civil hospital in Shahibaug and the LG Hospital in Maninagar were. Hospitals are always the centre of action after any attack- it's perhaps the first time they have become the scene of the attack itself. ( I say perhaps, because there have been a few incidents of bombs near hospitals like the one near the Mallya hospital in Bangalore a day earlier, and others in Baghdad also near hospitals). If terror is a war, then what kind of war is this - that tries to kill the wounded, to maim those already suffering, and to destroy the healers? Agreed, we are all pawns and possible targets of these groups, but are there no exceptions? On July 7, Kabul saw another unwritten boundary crossed-when two diplomats were among...