Follow-up to yesterday...
Well, it looks like the attack threatened yesterday happened - but mercifully didn't go off as planned. Details here. The big one wasn't the car bomb at the hotel, but notice a couple of other things:

• Two Stinger missiles (shoulder-mounted heat-seekers) were fired at a B757 as it was taking off from Mombasa airport. This would have been the first successful destruction of a passenger aircraft, not from aboard the craft but from the ground.
  
• There are also rumors (debka, so take with some grain of salt) that aircraft strafed the hotel building in Kenya which was bombed.
  
• There were four major, synchronized attacks: The aircraft strike, the Kenya bombing, the attack at the polling place in Israel, and a nearby major car bomb. (Which failed to detonate) Multiple widely separated, synchronized attacks are a classic al Qaeda calling card. (cf. Sept. 11, or the embassy bombings a few years ago)
  

So yes, sometimes it pays to be paranoid. One interesting point of analysis from debka: "The Mombasa attacks like the Bali bombing targeted exotic tourist spots frequented by Western vacationers - focusing on Australians in the first and Israelis in the second. "

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