Tuesday, February 27, 2007

It's like 2002 all over again

Why, exactly, does house blogger for The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, link in a "Heh Indeed" way to the Islamophobic Little Green Footballs and its post hypothesizing that the 3 French expats killed in Saudi Arabia were killed because they were infidels who took a "wrong turn" towards Mecca? Because the evidence doesn't indicate much other than this being an al Qaeda unit that was waiting for the first foreigners to come along in an area in the Saudi desert, but not particular close to Mecca or Medina, and not in an area where the road sign that LGF shows would be relevant. In fact, the incident appears to have happened much closer to the Iraqi border than Mecca, illustrating the true source of instability in the region.

UPDATE: News accounts differ on whether the tourists were on a Muslims-only road; the BBC says so, but the New York Times says not, as the road leads to a site recently opened to tourists. The Financial Times says that the tourists had been spotted by the terrorists at a campsite and then followed; more a sign of bad luck than a "wrong turn." [Notice the subtle word play in that phrase, by the way].

Incidentally, LGF proprietor Charles Johnson was the propagator of a never-confirmed claim that Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was killed because he was non-Muslim, when all evidence indicates that he was killed by extreme nationalists who targeted him for being Armenian.

One more thing: even the LGFers are wondering why Sully linked!

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