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It looks to me as if the War on Terror is getting very hot. I shall offer a guess that we've truly hurt the Islamists very badly and that this sudden, almost convulsive effort to attack Westerners is a desperation measure. For it to happen in Saudi Arabia hints to me two things: first, that the health of King Saud may at last be really failing and a war for succession imminent; and second, that the Islamists are feeling so pinched that they are playing their final trump card: attempting to take over the kingdom which is, after all, the main source of their funding and, sadly, their propaganda machine as well.

If so, this is about to get unbelievably violent and very attritive for the terrorists. We may start to see some young cannon fodder thrown into the fray in the form of further suicide terror within the Kingdom. We are starting to see bodies pile up and no obvious clue as to where they're coming from (this has been true for the last year there) - and that, after all, is the sort of thing the SAS is very, very good at. It may also be that Prince Abdullah has called in a favor of his own to offset the obvious international support the terrorists are getting from a host of other Islamic countries. If all this is true we may be seeing Algeria all over again, and that one was nasty indeed.

Some of the princes may stand and fight but the bulk of them will flee at the first hint of their own blood being spilled. They will either have to:

a) ask the Americans for help in retaining their kingdom

b) lose their kingdom.