I doubt this bombing was meant to be a statement to "rich, westernized" Muslims - no more so than the partisans in France during WWII targetted Nazi sympathisers. But being as it was nightime, during Ramadan, it served as a recruiting poster for a host of unemployed young Saudi males. But my guess is it is merely testing the water - how much longer will it be before the Saud family / oil production is targetted? I guess when it finally happens the spin zone will only say that Al Queda is on the run and is merely desparate diehards.

This is where the rubber meets the road, or the fit hits the shan. Al Qaeda, and the whole jihad movement are NOT primarily aimed at the West. They're aimed at Islam. They proclaim that they carry the banner of True Islam and want to purify the Islamic world of various contaminations. The West is the source of much of the contamination, and a major danger to Islam, but the real fight is over Islam and not the West. As long as the targets were Western and the casualties (mostly) nonIslamic, it wasn't difficult for muslims to applaud, or, at least, remain uninterested. When the attacks target muslims, however, muslims are pressed to decide where they stand and choose sides. This is where the Great Jihad will either take fire, and the whole range of problems and dangers greatly increase, or it will start to fizzle. If muslims, generally, begin to turn against Al Qaeda, the whole movement will begin to lose heart. It may still be dangerous and active for some time to come, but it will have received a huge check, in a matter crucial to the ideology of the whole movement. If, otoh, muslims, generally, really do sympathise, then the movement threatens to grow by leaps and bounds, and all existing muslim governments are threatened.

Big question - are we Sure that the target were Muslims? Debka (and again, take with a grain of salt) is reporting that the primary victims in the attack were Lebanese Christian Arabs, attacked by Lebanese AlQaeda Muslims. There has been a strong Lebanese connection with AlQaeda, born out in the terrorist database that I maintain. It is possible that Imad Mughniyeh was involved in some capacity as well. Some commentary: "DEBKAfile Reveals: Suicide bombing of Riyadh’s Muhaya housing compound work of an al Qaeda Lebanese unit. Target selected was main residential quarter for Lebanese Christians employed in Saudi Arabia. They were deliberately attacked on Ramadan. http://debka.com/article.php?aid=658 " http://debka.com/article.php?aid=657 http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10718 - Whalid Phares swhitebull - not good at all, including the fall of the House of Saud (well, now THAT's not necessarily a bad thing- it gives us an excuse to move in to stabilize the eastern part of the country where the oil wells are located so that they dont fall into the wrong hands!)

Debka seems to have a history making false assumptions, I woudl take this with a large pinch of salt.

Let's dispense with the silly notion that Ramadan will be a violence-free, peaceful month. Some 1400+ Ramadans have come and gone in the history of Islam. You could count on half the fingers of one hand the number of Ramadans that have passed where Muslims stopped killing people.

According to the NYTimes, at least 7 of the dead were Lebanese, and those are just the ones that have been accounted for so far. Still more probably buried under the rubble. And if there were at least 7 from Lebanon confirmed dead, statistically, there should be more Lebanese wounded as well, IF their population was distributed proportinally among the victims - maybe about 42%, or 48 wounded as well. That sure seems like a targetted attack to me. I would be curious to know for sure if this was primarily a secluded compound for Arab "guest-workers" swhitebull

This from the official Saudi news agency: "If any good can come of such horror as the Riyadh blast, it is surely that no one who now hears the name Al-Qaeda will have any image in their mind other than one which truly reflects what the organization stands for: Innocent men and women being rushed to hospitals dripping with blood or trying to comfort their terrified children. Al-Qaeda are terrorists, pure and simple. They stand for nothing but death, destruction and disunity." For my part I have to say, it's about time that was said. It wasn't said this clearly or this openly after it happened here. While there was a token of official 'sympathy' for the victims after 9/11 in the official news agencies in SA, there was certainly nothing like political unity with the US. Instead, the US take on this as the work of Al Queda, who were terrorists, who were murderers, who were not good Moslems, who were largely Saudi, and who must be vanquished for the good of all humanity was portrayed as mere 'spin', and the Saudi spin was - much as it still is in France and Germany - that America deserved it, or had planned it, or had allowed it to happen, or that Israel had done it, or some combination of the above. All those arguements eventually seem really hollow when it happens in your back yard. I'm no friend of the House of Saud, but maybe now they'll stop giving aid and comfort too our mutual enemies in the hope that they'll never come home to roost because Al Queda and the Taliban is first and foremost thier mess.

I guess when the chickens come home to roost, it must finally be a problem. I still dont see any cessation of fundraising events to the families of homicide murderers who kill Israeli women and children, nor any sympathy for Those victims. swhitebull- although I am sympathetic to the victims of this heinous crime, it's too bad al-Qaeda didnt take out members of the "royal" family as well {considering that the Sauds were a bunch of Bedouin thugs who ousted the original keepers of the Keys to Mecca- the Husseins of Jordan), just to drive home the point. A couple of distaff "princes" here or there separated from THEIR body parts would do wonders to really get these bozo's attentions. Let chaos reign, and we can get serious of separating eastern Arabia from the hinterland, and give the shi'ites back their control of the area before the Sa'uds stole it from them.

"Debka seems to have a history making false assumptions" Their story isn't an assumption; it's an allegation of fact. And, they have a pretty good record of accuracy with respect to specific claims of fact, as far as I can tell. They often deal in specifics, and name names, rather than go on in generalities. I've heard another report from a different source describe the area as including a well-known location run by local Arabs where...how to put this?... Saudis can enjoy various entertainments locally outlawed. Can't verify that claim, either. But, that report, Depka, and the major American networks all seem to agree that the area was adjacent to a number of palaces of members of the royal family, which leads everyone to speculate that the royal family was a clear target, if only indirectly. Hit some of their employees as a way of hitting at them.

A lot ofthe saudis drink, all from theblack market,a bottle of 'liquid' will set you back $100 mainly from poorer embasies. AS for Debka, during the Iraq war virtually everyone slagged off how poor its facts were. Liek the invasion starting a few days before it did etc. Think it is probably quite good for Israel and Palestine, but loses its credo outside there.