Tuesday, May 13, 2003

What's the death toll up to in the Saudi Arabia car bombings as I type this? Twenty?

Good thing we spent all that time, money, and blood depriving Saddam Hussein of weapons he either didn't have or did have but never intended to use against Western targets.

The standard right-wing line, as you know, is that terrorism went on its merry way during 1990s while Clinton ignored it and focused on diddling interns. Right-wingers love to produce lists of what they see as unavenged terrorist attacks from the Clinton years. But here's a list of untoward events that have taken place on George W.'s watch, courtesy of CNN and The Guardian. You probably didn't even know most of these took place, because they don't fit into the Bush-rode-in-and-cleaned-up-Dodge master narrative:

2003

May 1:
A U.S. citizen was shot at a ship-repair facility in eastern Saudi Arabia by an unknown assailant, U.S. military officials said....

February 20: A Briton working for BAE Systems, Robert Dent, 37, was killed by a gunman who pulled up alongside his vehicle at a traffic light in Riyadh....

2002

September 29:
A car bomb in Riyadh killed a German man living in Saudi Arabia....

June 20: British banker Simon John Veness died in Saudi Arabia when a bomb exploded in the car he had borrowed from a friend, British and Saudi officials said....

October 6 2001, Khobar

A pedestrian explodes a bomb at a shopping centre on the eve of US bombing strikes against Afghanistan. Michael Gerald, a US oil engineer, is killed. Another American, a Briton and two Filipinos are injured....

May 2 2001, Khobar

US chiropractor Gary Hatch is badly injured at a medical centre by a parcel bomb delivered by a courier. He loses his left arm and an eye.

March 15 2001 Riyadh

Accountant Ron Jones from Hamilton, Lanarkshire, and an Egyptian man suffer minor injuries from a bomb in a bin near a KFC outlet.


And now the car bombings.

Funny, I thought the point was that our devastating victory in Baghdad had scared the crap out of everyone who's ever considered messing with us.

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