The danger is less that a state will sponsor a terror group and more that a terror group will sponsor a state—as happened in Afghanistan Zakaria: Stepping away from the partisan screaming going on these days, the 9/11 commission hearings and—far more revealing—the panel's staff reports paint a fascinating picture of the rise of a new phenomenon in global politics: terrorism that is not state-sponsored but society-sponsored. Few in the American government fully grasped that a group of people without a state's support could pose a mortal threat. The mistake looks obvious in hindsight, but was, sadly, understandable at the time of 9/11. What is less understandable is that this same error persists even today.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on Mar 28, 2004 - 46 comments

Graham Alleges a 9/11 'Coverup' Long a favorite issue of alternative (and tinfoil-hat-oriented) media, now this is getting picked up by a prominent Democrat. It would appear that Graham is the only moderate Democratic candidate to even approach topics that reflect negatively on the Bush administration. Certainly, when even the US military speculates that yesterday's attacks in Saudi Arabia were started by Al Qeada, and people in Chicago and Seattle are reminded of the reality of ongoing threats, it is reasonable to ask if the "War on Terror" is indeed being won. Is Graham someone with the power and place in the spotlight to make that a serious issue for voters?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on May 13, 2003 - 11 comments

Judge, citing al-Qaida-Iraq link, awards $104 million to Sept. 11 families A judge ruled yesterday that lack of evidence should be no barrier to suing people who cannot be found. "The judge wrote that lawyers relied heavily on 'classically hearsay' evidence, including reports that a Sept. 11 hijacker met an Iraqi consul to Prague, Secretary of State Colin Powell's remarks to the United Nations about connections between Iraq and terrorism, and defectors' descriptions of the use of an Iraq camp to train terrorists." --This would hardly be the first documented example of a court being overtly political, but the judge himself has no problem commenting on how shoddy the case was. "The judge noted that the experts provided few actual facts that Iraq provided support to the terrorists." --Apparently, the judge had just been waiting for Saddam to cease to be a diplomatically immune head of state before ruling against him. Is the low standard of evidence needed for civil rulings allowing the courts to begin establishing something that the military and intelligence can't? [more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on May 8, 2003 - 33 comments