Fact and Fiction

Portions of al-‘Awfi’s confessions are now on You Tube. Part 1 is here and Part II is here. If anyone has the time, they could have a lot of fun listening in and trying to sort out the fact from the fiction. It could be a bit like the scavenger hunts I used to play as a kid only instead of finding a ball in the barn you could find out, say, if kidnappings really are part of AQAP’s plan.

I have listened to the confessions once and given the transcript a quick read over, but I’m not yet ready to post anything. The same still goes for Salih’s interview – although I loved how he called out the Washington Post, quoted his favorite proverb and mentioned that Yemen’s success rate on rehabilitation was 60 percent. This latter number is much lower than what many have proposed and I would love to get firm numbers and/or names, but this seems a pipe dream given how close al-Hitar and the MOI guard this information, still it was a nice tease.