Safire In the Rough

Good reporting from Bill Safire in today’s NYT:

Sixty Islamic terrorists, trained in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden, are holed up in the town of Biyara in northern Iraq, guests of Saddam Hussein. Their assignment is to infiltrate the no-flight zone and to kill the Kurdish leaders, who Saddam assumes will be allied with the U.S. in his overthrow.

Does anyone else here remember what happened just days before the 9/11 attacks? That’s right — the senior Northern Alliance leader was killed by a human hand grenade on orders from our buddy OBL.

This new one has bin Laden and Hussein’s fingerprints all over it.

Here’s another memory jogger: Anyone remember the meaning of casus belli?

UPDATE: More typos than usual as I face blogging again on this ancient machine with no Word or other modern conveniences. I’ll fix’em as I find’em — deal with it.