Inside the Ring

The king’s worries

King Abdullah II of Jordan is telling his American contacts that he sent a confidential memo to President Bush in January.

The king, a staunch U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, said he gave Mr. Bush an assessment of developments in neighboring Iraq and point-by-point recommendations for how to take the country to self-rule.

But Iraq is not King Abdullah’s prime worry. He looks south at Saudi Arabia and sees a fragile monarchy susceptible to overthrow by Islamic extremists. Such an event would create the region’s second radical Muslim dictatorship, along with Iran, and further threaten the king’s hold on power.

Jordanian officials contend they have kept the country free of al Qaeda cells for some time. The king’s top priority is economic growth to create jobs to help stabilize the monarchy. Elections are not in the immediate future.

Jordan is maintaining close military-to-military ties with Washington, and the king, who commanded his country’s special-operations forces in 1989, regularly talks strategy with Mr. Bush, sometimes outside the presence of aides.

Antibomb efforts

U.S. military forces continue to employ electronic signal broadcasters in Iraq as part of efforts to set off remote-controlled bombs before they damage passing vehicles.

At the same time, the terrorists are taking steps to make premature detonation more difficult, according to Pentagon officials.

Some convoys of military vehicles are using hand-held remote controls similar to garage-door openers in an effort to prevent being killed or injured by the deadly roadside bombs.

Officials tell us they are trying to use more-sophisticated methods to electronically jam the bombs, which have been the main killer of U.S. service personnel in Iraq since the end of major combat.

The terrorists, for their part, also are adapting their tactics by burying some of the bombs, making it more difficult for a remote signal to reach them.

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