Monday, June 12, 2006

One would-be terrorist + pornography = a just ending

My new issue of the Atlantic magazine arrived today, ironically with a “Wanted” poster of Zarqawi on the cover. Bad timing, that. Over on page 92, there’s this anecdote (faithfully re-typed):

Despite their enthusiasm, al-Zarqawi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Muntassir did not appear to be natural revolutionaries. Their first operation was in Zarqa, in 1993, a former Jordanian intelligence office told me, when al-Zarqawi dispatched one of their men to a local cinema with orders to blow it up because it was showing pornographic films. But the hapless would-be bomber apparently got so distracted by what was happening on the screen that he forgot about his bomb. It exploded and blew off his legs.
I can’t add or subtract anything to that story. Good night!

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