Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Interesting detail from Joshua Micah Marshall:

Several days ago a friend who is renowned for his expertise on al-Qaida and Islamist terrorism generally told me that there had been a wave of shootings of Westerners in Saudi Arabia recently. But the Saudis had dismissed them as simply criminal incidents arising out of disputes over the illicit trade in liquor. I don't know the precise numbers. I don't think we're talking about that many people. But it seemed to make him wonder whether these might actually be low-level terror attacks which the Saudis were simply covering up, by deceptively categorizing them.

As I mentioned yesterday, CNN has noted two such recent incidents. Have there been more? How bad is it out there? How many such incidents did the White House know about when it ordered a "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner hung behind Bush as he told sailors on the Abraham Lincoln that we'd essentially done what we set out to do in Iraq and Afghanistan?

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