In Time, Bobby Ghosh, the magazine's world editor, has written perhaps the single most morally vacuous piece about the War on Terror since the attacks of September 11. Ghosh took a trip to Saudi Arabia and while there he decided not to dwell on 9/11 because "It seemed unfair to burden Riyadh with the legacy of its most notorious son -- especially since the city wants so badly to expurgate him from its self-image."...

...How did the Saudis do it? They used a combination of brute force and subtle persuasion. Few details are available on the crackdown on terrorist groups because the authorities here don't much like talking about it. So it's a fair guess that many of the means they used wouldn't pass any Western human-rights test. Riyadhis speak in whispers about midnight raids, arrests, torture and summary executions. The government also put the squeeze on al-Qaeda's sources of funding by imposing rules on previously unmonitored religious charities. In private, officials boast that bin Laden's organization receives no money from his homeland...