Fallujah and Jeddah, A Tale of Two Cities

Fallujah...A hotbed of anti-American activity in Iraq. Or, at least it was until the USMC rolled over it. Of course, the guerillas simply rolled up their operations and moved them elsewhere. So, while our Marines get capped by second and third stringers in the insurgency, the big boys(on both sides) run the show from a safe distance.

Also of interest is Fallujah's historical ties to Wahhabism. Ibn Abdul Wahhab spent many years in what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and spread his teachings through out the region. His area of influence also encompassed what is now Fallujah, and for nearly two centuries that city has had a strong wahhabi following which even Saddam Hussein could not supress. Their dedication to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam makes Jerry Falwell look like a drunken sybarite.

Now, let us turn to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Today, the US consulate compound came under attack from unknown Islamic terrorists. While no US personnel were injured, eight people are known dead with two of the attackers captured. While Saudi authorities attribute the attacks to a "deviant group", a common catch-phrase for followers of Osama bin Laden, it should be noted that Osama and the House of Saud spring from the same philosophical roots...Wahhabism.

Now, US forces are mopping up in Fallujah and, in the process, desecrated several mosques and sites sacred to the al-Muwahhiddun, or Wahhabis an attack is made on a US compound in Saudi Arabia. Now, with the Saudis brutally efficient secret police network, they should have caught this attack before it happened. There is every evidence that the attackers were well trained in small-unit tactics and were wearing combat fatigues and flack-jackets. Could there have been support for this attack from inside the Saudi state or even the government?

But this is just paranoid speculation...Or is it?