Sunday, March 25, 2001 Sneak Attack BY ROMESH RATNESAR The 300 men and women aboard the U.S.S. Cole had been at sea for two uneventful months when their vessel arrived in the Yemen harbor of Aden last Thursday. Unrest in the region and the Cole's upcoming six-month mission with the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, where it would enforce the international oil embargo against Iraq, had upgraded the ship's Threatcon to "bravo," the Navy's …showed first 75 words of 1444 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1444 total…and the modern, secular world it represents. The irony is that those same groups appear to be turning globalization into a weapon of their own, using it to gain access to more deadly technology and to more closely coordinate their efforts. Says former National Security Council counterterrorism expert Daniel Benjamin: "We're still in the boost phase for this kind of fusion." The attack on the Cole may signal the beginning of the blowback. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**