Sunday, June 25, 2006

Tomorrow's clarifications today

Sunday's New York Times Magazine has a long article by Christopher Caldwell about Londonistan. It's worth a read, and not simply because it manages to make Melanie "Scary Spice" Phillips seem respectable. But one paragraph needs some elaboration:

Abdel Bari Atwan ... edits Al Quds al Arabi, an international Arabic-language daily. Its offices are upstairs from a housing authority in Hammersmith, where the redeveloped part of King Street peters out into hairdressers and used-clothing shops ... Atwan interviewed Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Afghanistan in 1996 and recently wrote an authoritative history of his movement. When Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the March 2004 Madrid bombings, it was to Atwan that the claim was faxed.

Well, there's a story behind that. The claim of responsibility came not from al Qaeda per se, but from a group within its propaganda orbit, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. This is a group that has twice embarrassed the GWOT, once by endorsing George Bush in 2004 election, and once by being the basis of a US terror warning via a threat that lacked any substantiation.

UPDATE 5 JULY: On the topic of whether al Qaeda actually endorsed George Bush in 2004, Mike Power has a relevant link.

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