Links here and here; the usual conflicting reports of just how many terrorists and hostages died, and that won’t get determined until later in the day – but the Algerians apparently did assault the facility where the hostages were being held, and hostages apparently did die. I suspect that this was a case of a series of bad decisions cascading into a catastrophe, and not the “God will know his own” policy favored by, say, Russian counter-terrorism agencies… but we’ll know more as we go along.
Moe Lane
PS: Notice the explicit lack of This is not a time for partisan politics in the text above; mostly because I don’t actually know whether it is a time for partisan politics or not. If it turns out that the Obama administration is essentially blameless in this matter, fine: if they contributed to it somehow, nail ’em to the wall. This White House has already gotten enough innocent US citizens killed, and Barack Obama’s first term isn’t even over yet…