Maybe They Were Americans On the Inside, Trying to Get Out

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You may have seen that an Al Qaeda affiliate is claiming it actually killed Americans in the Riyadh bombing last week; the pictures of dead Arabs on Saudi TV were just propaganda. I can't vouch for the rest of the casualties but here's one of the American victims I do know about: Nina Nasr Jubrane, age 26, newlywed, born and raised in the town of Qelhat, Lebanon, where I am staying, a recent graduate from the University of Balamand, through whose kind offices I am posting this message. I went to her funeral today. She was apparently planning to move to Canada eventually, so maybe that counts as American. She was a Christian too, so maybe that makes her a military target. But one of the other Lebanese victims (also a woman) was a Muslim. If you had told me two years and three months ago that I would be arguing about stuff like this, I'd have killed myself twice.