Fox News tells us that a high-school valedictorian - who, by the way, moved to Saudi Arabia and joined an al Qaeda cell - was arrested and charged with conspiring to kill President Bush:
An American citizen was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting Al Qaeda. If convicted of all the charges, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison...
Abu Ali was born in Houston and later moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was valedictorian of his high school class. He allegedly went on to pursue religious studies in Saudi Arabia in 2000 and federal prosecutors say Abu Ali joined an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia in 2001. The alleged Bush plot occurred while he was studying in that country, the indictment says.
How coy of them not to mention what high school he attended, given that they saw fit to tell us he was a valedictorian. Is that, somehow, supposed to be more important than the specifics of his "religious training" in Saudia Arabia? I couldn't find him mentioned in the class list of George Mason High School (the only Falls Church public high school I could find) for graduation years 1997 - 2000, so that doesn't look like the place, unless he's changed his name since graduating. Other schools in the area seem to be primarily Hebrew or Catholic, so those are doubtful.
Anyway, the buzz on the right side of the blogosphere along the lines of "How could someone come out of the educational system in the US and turn out like this?" has already begun.
The Baron, for one, isn't surprised:
Every day, I walk into a building where a picture of Bush is prominently displayed on a staff-member’s door with the caption “American Psycho.” Across the street, a picture of Bush used to grace the post office drop box (for weeks before someone ripped it down) that read “Kill me before I kill some more.” The CD store down the road has posters in the window for CD’s titled “Rock Against Bush.” I often hear people debating whether or not Bush means to kill innocent people. During the innauguration, one man wondered aloud if we would be so lucky as to have Bush catch pneumonia and die after his inauguration speech like William Henry Harrison did.
Update: Boy, was I ever on the wrong track. Abu Ali was a valedictorian all right - at the Islamic Saudi Academy. All the news reports about his top dog academic status, and they couldn't manage to let us know the name of the school?
Update # 2: Philly.com has another name for Abu Ali's alma mater.
Posted by kswygert at February 22, 2005 12:51 PM