Word: saudi
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...this is a good time to strike given the historic changes in the region. Although the fatalities are nothing near the scale of 9/11, it was a massive attack politically, because it happened in the heart of Riyadh after two years of the war on terrorism and warnings of Saudi extremism. This was meant not only to kill Americans, but also to send an earthquake through the Saudi government. Hitting Saudi Arabia is a major escalation...
...maintained that the U.S. lacked the stomach for a fight, and whose leader's audiotaped call for retaliation for the U.S. invasion went largely unheeded. But lest anyone count Osama bin Laden's movement out of the post-Saddam Middle East equation, it struck back to devastating effect in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday: Some 29 people, including at least eight Americans are reported to have been killed in three coordinated suicide bombing attacks on heavily-guarded compounds housing foreigners in Riyadh. The attack was not wholly unexpected. On May 1, the State Department had warned Americans to stay away from...
...attack marks a dramatic shift for al-Qaeda, which had for the most part avoided conducting terror operations on Saudi territory. And that could signal a change in al-Qaeda's strategic priorities in response to 18 months of pressure on the organization by the U.S. and its allies, as well as the changed reality in the Middle East now that the U.S. has settled in for a long occupation of Iraq...
...emphasize a new focus on operations in the Arab world. "Among the priorities of Al-Qaeda's new strategy, besides strikes at the heart of the United States, are operations in the Gulf countries an countries allied to America, particularly Egypt and Jordan," says an email sent to a Saudi newspaper last week ostensibly from Al Qaeda operative al-Ablaj...
...Saudi attacks raise a further question: Will al-Qaeda now move to translate its hostility to U.S.-allied Arab regimes into direct attacks on those regimes, or will it simply target U.S. personnel and civilians on their soil? Palestinian Islamist groups, for example, tend to challenge the Palestinian Authority not by targeting Palestinian security personnel, but by sending suicide bombers into Israel at times when the PA is seeking to implement cease-fires. There would certainly be a danger of a backlash against Bin Laden even from sympathetic Saudis if he launched a campaign of violence at home against fellow...