Word: al
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...threw the pair of shoes at President Bush on Sunday was a Shi'a Arab who for years has expressed his bitter frustration about the way things have gone in Iraq. Contacts in Iraq told me that the man came to despise the al-Maliki government because he believes it sold out not just to the U.S. but to Iran as well. He was furious that the al-Maliki government is fabulously corrupt and incompetent. How else can you explain the $100 billion of development money that disappeared down the rat holes in Washington and Baghdad? Or how the electricity...
...futures at a record high of $147 a barrel, the daily oil earnings for Opec's 11 members stood at $4 billion, this week, with oil hovering at around $43 a barrel, the cartel's combined daily earnings stood closer to $1.2 billion. Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali Al-Naimi said last month that Opec members needed a price range of between $60 and $80 a barrel in order to sustain their exploration and costly production. To achieve that, he recommended that the cartel, which pumps 42% of the world's oil output, makes "a significant cut" in production...
...fallen statue of Saddam Hussein, and the other of President George W. Bush ducking flying footwear at a 2008 Baghdad press conference during the last official visit of his term. In many Eastern cultures, hurling a shoe at someone is a grave insult. Iraqi TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi's decision to fling his size 10s made him an instant hero to many, although some noted that it broke Arab rules of hospitality, not to mention the journalists' code of objectivity. But the sentiment behind the shoe leather was widely shared: Iraq may have more of a future now than...
...Still, al-Zaidi may have done Bush a favor. In an ABC News interview the next day, the President conceded for the first time that al-Qaeda had no presence in Iraq before the U.S. invasion, adding, "So what?" In another news cycle, this admission would have dominated the headlines: that after the debunking of Bush's original excuse for war--Saddam's weapons of mass destruction--his argument that Iraq was a crucial nexus in the global war on terrorism also held no water. Thanks to al-Zaidi, nobody heard the other shoe drop...
...More recently, Daniel Schneider, Fritz Gelowicz and a third man are alleged to have formed the core of a cell known as the Sauerland Group linked to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek terror organization with ties to al-Qaeda. The group is believed to have been focusing on striking at U.S. targets as well. German police say that they observed the men purchasing and storing highly concentrated peroxide, which Germany's federal prosecutor believes was for making car bombs. The police further allege that the men scoped out U.S. military facilities or clubs where they believed frequented by Americans...