To critics who advocate a harder line toward Iran, the government's indictment of 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the Khobar Towers bombing, handed down Thursday, just short of Monday's five-year anniversary of the attack, once again revealed an American reluctance to tackle Tehran head-on on state-sponsored terrorism.
But as the father of Sareen Safadi, the six-year-old killed in the Gaza bomb, hands out plates of food to visitors offering their condolences, nothing is resolved.
President Saddam may have oppressed his people, "but he spoke their language, shared their religion and didn't alternate between bombing and handing out food parcels".
His older brother John agrees, adding half-jokingly: "I'll do anything to keep this place: petrol bombs, hand-grenades, whatever I can get my hands on".
Abu Ayman's hand had been mutilated when he was manufacturing and examining pipe-bomb hand grenades last November for the battle for Taftanaz.
They also uncovered more than 30 explosive devices, including 20 live bombs, hand grenades and a five-gallon gasoline bomb with a timer.
The Itar-Tass news agency reported that investigators had found traces of explosives used in the airport bombing on the hands of Yevloyev's arrested brother.
And so the moral equivalence was blithely asserted between, on the one hand, bombing lots of people, and on the other hand, not bombing lots of people if it doesn't seem very likely to make things much better for everyone (except the people you have just bombed).
In explaining why, the Administration said that "U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of 'hostilities' contemplated in the law," even as we were bombing Libya and handing out guns, supposedly because it was limited and small and no Americans would get hurt.
The police said they also discovered bombing plans including a hand-drawn map of the school, praise for the Columbine killers in his journal and an audiotape that the authorities say was to have been played after Mr. Schallenberger died.
