Here’s a link to part two of the Washington Post’s series on the Clinton administration’s efforts against al-Qaeda.

Lord of the Rings was inspired in large part by the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic poem. Fascinating stuff.

Spinsanity takes on the conservative obsession with using John Walker to bludgeon liberals/Californians/hippies/other targets of choice.

There’s something that confuses me. On one hand, terrorism experts talk about the fact that al-Qaeda is so decentralized that rounding up its leaders won’t do much good. I always hear about autonomous cells that act without approval or instruction from al-Qaeda’s leadership.

On the other hand, whenever I read a list of the members of al-Qaeda’s leadership, included in it is a list of operations they helped to plan. Mohammed Atef was supposedly one of the planners of the September 11 attacks, other guys helped with that or with the embassy bombings. We also know that all of the al-Qaeda members spent time training in Afghanistan, and we heard Osama bin Laden say that the people who carried out the attacks on September 11 weren’t told of their mission until right before they boarded the planes. Finally, it seems like cells all over the world work to support each other. The Spanish cell that was broken up a few weeks ago engaged in petty crime and siphoned the funds to the September 11 crew, among others.

So which is it? It seems to me that removing al-Qaeda’s leadership should do severe damage to the organization. Is there something I’m missing?

The Washington Post today runs the first of two articles on the Clinton administration’s efforts to take out Osama bin Laden after the embassy bombings in 1998. His cruise missile attack on Afghanistan is well known, of course, but there were a lot of efforts under way behind the scenes that didn’t come to fruition.

The Christian Science Monitor has the best article on women in Islamic societies that I’ve read so far. Over the past month or so, every article I’ve read that actually has quotes from Muslim women says that Westerners need to get over the veil, that there are bigger fish to fry. This article, which discusses women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, discusses what role women play in those conservative Islamic countries and what issues they face. It’s a great article. (The sidebar discusses how women were treated in the prophet’s lifetime. Islam was actually very liberating back then, it established legal rights for women in an era when they basically had none.)

The BBC has a great end-of-year feature on the words of 2001. One of them is weblog.

The New York Times has an article about one spot in the front lines of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians — the Termit border post that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The post, largely manned by Muslim Bedouins who are Israeli citizens, is under constant attack by what seems like anybody who can get their hands on a weapon. What a desolate and miserable place. The story talks about a 14 year old Palestinian kid who throws homemade grenades at Israeli tanks for what seems like lack of anything better to do. He’s a third generation resident of a refugee camp, and there are no jobs for anyone in his family. What a meaningless existence.

The demise of adcritic.com is a pity. Such a useful site.

Monkeyfist.com has a cool new design and lots of nifty new features. They make me want to add stuff to this site!