Category: Terrorism

Two excellent essays in the latest edition of Policy Review. Shmuel Bar writes one on the religious sources of Islamic terrorism, while Michael J. Mazarr writes a piece on the psychological soures. Both are worth a look.

Bruce Berkowitz reviews John Keegan’s latest book, “Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to al-Qaeda.” Berkowitz’s conclusion: Keegan can draw upon a lifetime of studying armed conflict, and the facts of battles from ancient times to recent times fall readily to his mind. Alas, Keegan’s strength is also his curse. His approach…

Some pretty big security measures in Europe’s airports – strange that at one point, for one flight, 22 different US agencies were requesting to vet passenger lists.

This report from AP: Far from being crippled by the U.S.-led war on terror, al-Qaida has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq (news – web sites) is swelling its ranks, a report said Tuesday.

Readers Niall and John have expressed dissatisfaction with my linking to the pictures and videos of the murder of Nick Berg. As always I appreciate input from anyone, especially regular contributors like Niall and John. Niall notes: I don’t think there’s any reason why anyone outside of intelligence or the media should see this tape,…

Andrew Sullivan has been getting a bit livid lately. Here he is yesterday: Here they are – absolutely horrifying beyond belief. My heart goes out to his family. We will now see what the mainstream media is made of. You think we will see “slideshows” of this? I can see why he is indignant, it…

More torrid pictures/videos, this time showing a US citizen being beheaded by Arab militants. And we have to wait for more photos and videos from Iraq – this is getting very bad. This is shocking stuff, carried out apparently in revenge for the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Some curious remarks by the White House: “It…

The June edition of the Atlantic dropped through my letterbox today, as usual there are a huge amount of articles worth reading. But the World in Numbers section this month stands out. It is a graphical representation of Al-Qaeda attacks since 1996 – when Osama declared a Jihad against US troops in Saudi Arabia. Fascinating…

Nick paints a grim picture… A 10-kiloton nuclear bomb (a pipsqueak in weapons terms) is smuggled into Manhattan and explodes at Grand Central. Some 500,000 people are killed, and the United States suffers $1 trillion in direct economic damage. That scenario, cited in a report last year from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard…

France has received a terror threat from a previously unheard of Islamic group. Will Paris be next?