MUMBAI UPDATE

Posted at 8:39 a.m. ET

It does appear that the siege in Mumbai is in fact over.  Given the chaos, we may not be satisfied that it's over until guests start returning to the Taj and the bar reopens.  There is actually very little new news out of Mumbai.  There will now be an investigation, there will be an impact on Indian politics, and possibly on India-Pakistan relations, if it's shown that the terrorists had a Pakistani connection.

We may never know the full truth.  A number of the terrorists are dead, and we have no idea what the survivors are saying.  There have been no ideological claims made.  If the terrorists had a cause they wished to publicize, they failed, because no cause is getting any free publicity, at least at this hour.

The American media has thus far acquitted itself well.  It has been primarily a television, rather than a press story.  The TV coverage was assisted to some degree by the fact that the attack occurred over a holiday weekend, when there was very little competition from other news sources.  The political class was eating, not talking.  Even CNN International performed well, although we were subjected last night to an "analysis" by the insufferable Christiane Amanpour, who announced that there were contradictions in the image of the event.  On the one hand, Amanpour informed us, we were told that the attack was well planned.  On the other hand, Amanpour intoned, there was indiscriminate shooting at a railroad station.

CNN needs to hire a private tutor for Amanpour, one who can whisper in her ear that there is no contradiction between a well planned attack and "indiscriminate" shooting.  If the purpose of the attack is to kill as many innocents as possible, there will be plenty of "indiscriminate" shooting.  (Actually, it's a spray of bullets, with a definite objective.)  CNN also graced us with Deepak Chopra, a self-help guy, who announced that it was all Washington's fault. 

But those were the exceptions.  Much of the reporting was responsible and restrained, and even most of the usual experts brought on the air were cautious in their observations.  There was, mercifully, very little talk of theoretical comparisons between President Bush and President-elect Obama on the terrorism question.

We await further details.  We're especially eager to hear more from Renee Nielsen, who has provided us with such remarkable insight.

November 29, 2008.