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Al-Balawi's widow said her husband "started to change" after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His brother said al-Balawi "changed" during last year's three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians. (Emphasis added)
When al-Balawi volunteered with a medical organization to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, he was arrested by Jordanian authorities, his brother said.
It was after that arrest that the Jordanian intelligence service apparently coerced or "recruited" al-Balawi to become a spy who would penetrate al Qaeda's hierarchy and provide actionable intelligence to the CIA.
"If you catch a cat and put it in a corner, she will jump on you," the brother said in explaining why al-Balawi would turn to suicide attack.
"My husband was anti-American; so am I," his widow told Newsweek. Her two little girls would grow up fatherless, but she had no regrets.
Answering Helen
Are we starting to get the picture of what the United States is up against in the Muslim world?
Does Helen Thomas deserve an adult answer to her question about motive? Has President Obama been able to assimilate all this?
Or is the U.S. political/media establishment incapable of confronting this reality and/or taking meaningful action to alleviate the underlying causes of the violence?
Is the reported reaction of a CIA official to al-Balawi's attack the appropriate one: "Last week's attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day."
Revenge has not always turned out very well in the past.
Does anyone remember the brutal killing of four Blackwater contractors on March 31, 2004, when they took a bad turn and ended up in the wrong neighborhood of the Iraqi city of Fallujah -- and how U.S. forces virtually leveled that large city in retribution after George W. Bush won his second term the following November?
If you read only the Fawning Corporate Media, you would blissfully think that the killing of the four Blackwater operatives was the work of fanatical animals who got along with their neighbors the reprisal they deserved. You wouldn't know that the killings represented the second turn in that specific cycle of violence.
On March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated the then-spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sheikh Yassin -- a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheelchair. (Emphasis added)
That murder, plus sloppy navigation by the Blackwater men, set the stage for the next set of brutalities. The Blackwater operatives were killed by a group that described itself as the "Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade."
Pamphlets and posters were all over the scene of the attack; one of the trucks that pulled around body parts of the mercenaries had a large poster photo of Yassin in its window, as did store fronts all over Fallujah.
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