It’s interesting how much was clarified in the first hours of the war. On Thursday, the Palestine Liberation Front released a statement announcing the identity of the first verified casualty: PLF “1st Lieutenant” Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz was killed in Baghdad, “while confronting the treacherous US air bombardment on Iraq”.
The PLF is the terrorist group that, among other triumphs, hijacked the Achille Lauro back in the 1980s and pushed Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, into the Mediterranean.
What was a PLF terrorist doing attending a war council of Saddam’s inner circle in Baghdad? Well, I leave that to all the experts who’ve assured us that Baghdad has no ties to terror groups.
That was just the first of several myths to fall in the opening shots. If Hans Blix and Jacques Chirac are really interested in continuing with inspections, some of those missiles the Iraqis insisted they no longer have are now available for inspection in the sand on the Kuwaiti side of the border.