Thursday, August 07, 2003

As most readers probably already know, there was a car bomb atttack on the Jordanian Embassy:

A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy on Thursday, hurling vehicles in the air and killing at least 11 people, including a woman and two children, morgue officials said. More than 50 people were wounded in the blast.

Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, called the bombing of the embassy a terrorist attack and said it was "the worst on a soft target" since Baghdad fell to U.S. forces on April 9.

...Shortly after the blast, young Iraqi men stormed the embassy gate and began destroying pictures of Jordanian King Abdullah II and his late father, King Hussein. They were shouting anti-Jordanian chants but were quickly dispersed by U.S. forces and Iraqi police.
Anti-Jordanian chants? Say it with me now: "uh oh". It is very much not good news, especially because nobody can be sure if it's because Jordan allowed asylum to Hussein's daughters, or because of its relatively pro-American stance.

In any case, this could become a huge problem, as Jordan is one of the most pro-western countries in the region; if Iraqis maintain this attitude even after they develop some sort of democratic government, it could turn two prospective U.S. allies against each other, and seriously endanger the reformist agenda of Jordan's King Abdullah.

(Somehow, I doubt that the PNAC types planned for this little eventuality, either.)

Edit: Steve Gillard (at his classy new digs), said much the same thing. Congrats to Steve on the new blog, but one complaint: permalinks are a necessity nowadays.)

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