(Washington Post) Jim Hoagland - After nearly a decade of aiming its heaviest blows at distinctly American targets, al-Qaeda is operating closer to home. Its two most important terrorist attacks in May were on foreign workers at Saudi oil installations, in Yanbu and then Khobar. Those atrocities followed two bloody suicide bombings in the kingdom last year, as well as other skirmishes there, and al-Qaeda-style attacks in Morocco, Turkey, and Spain. But this is the kind of attack that al-Qaeda passed up when its branches were clearly under the control of bin Laden and his most influential adviser, Ayman Zawahiri. The terrorists now strike inside Saudi Arabia, even though the U.S. military presence they used to justify their first attacks has been withdrawn. They have not finished in Europe, either.
2004-06-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive