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"It's not a Somali...I know what I heard."

That was in reference to the MSNBC excerpt from Straight Vermonter in #36, which lists a Somali as the second guy, not to you.

"I have to ask, what is your background with all things Arab/Muslim?"

I know enough about the language to know how to ask where the bathroom is, so I can pick out little tidbits like surnames and what not (al-Masri, for example, means "the Egyptian," which is why the Yemeni Abu Mohammed killed in Algeria is not our guy).

Dog, I do appreciate the link, as that clarifies things a great deal. Okay, now we know that it *is* al-Hawasawi, which makes this a very happy day. The reason I questioned you is that a variation of the story identified the third man as Saif al-Adel, who would also be a nice catch. Though al-Hawasawi is certainly more reasonable than al-Adel, as the latter is known to be in Iran.

A final point to be made now is that if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured back in September (as MSNBC has evidently hinted) it means that al-Qaeda was able to plan and execute at least three mass casualty attacks in Bali, Moscow, and Mombasa without him and without those plots being disrupted. That would be bad, as blows like this are generally supposed to inflict major damage on an organization like al-Qaeda.