Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The information now emerging from AP and other sources about Saudi Air Force pilot 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamran is extremely disturbing inasmuch as it point to the possible existence of al-Qaeda cells inside the Saudi military.
Eric Schmitt, Frances Robles and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs at the NYT reported that Alshamran watched videos of mass shootings with Saudi friends at a dinner party the Wednesday before the Friday shooting. Then a terrorist watchdog site announced that it had found his Twitter account, on which he had posted a quote from the 9/11 mastermind Usama Bin Laden and gave evidence of hating Americans. He was enraged by the US wars in the Middle East and by the American complicity in dispossessing the Palestinians at the hands of Israel. Given that he was 21, his main experience of US wars was the rollback of ISIL in Iraq and Syria in alliance with Shiites and leftist Kurds, neither of them a favorite among Saudi conservatives.