The Fog of War

Singapore’s Straits Times has an AFP dispatch I haven’t seen anywhere else, about one “Abdul Haye,” who failed to appear for an Air France flight from Paris to Los Angeles that was canceled on New Year’s Eve. Haye was again scheduled to fly to Los Angeles on January 7, but failed to appear for a second time, frustrating French police who were waiting to ask him what happened on New Year’s Eve.
“Abdul Haye” apparently lives in Bombay, but it is not clear whether there is one such person or two–two passports have been issued in that name for Bombay residents. Also, no one knows whether “Abdul Haye”–one or the other such individuals, if there are two–is the same “Abdul Haye” who was captured fighting for al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but later escaped.
So goes the hardest, murkiest war in American history. It is hard not to sympathize with American officials, who have to make decisions every day on the basis of such fragmentary information, knowing that they can never guess wrong.

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