Bullet indicates Lawrence of Arabia was no liar

For anyone interested in learning more, Lawerence in Arabia by Scott Anderson is a pretty good book.

> Middle East conflict

Middle East is a big place; there's no single "conflict" the whole region is involved it, but a complicated mess of all of them.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/03/Sh...

And then the french and the british went and ruined the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement which could've mitigated some of the conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal%E2%80%93Weizmann_Agreem...

That said that Israeli-Arab conflict is just a drop in the sea of middle eastern conflicts, if you could remove Israel today with a press of switch it's not like the entire region would magically re-align itself and become peaceful.

Iraq and Iran didn't go into a war because of Israel, Saddam didn't invade Kuwait because of Israel, Lebanon didn't had a bloody civil war because of Israel, Iraq and Turkey haven't bombed the Kurds into submission for 60 years because of Israel, Iran and the Gulf states are not currently at a brink of war because of Israel, and ISIS for sure isn't there because of Israel.

Like it or not Israel is more of a stabilizing force in the Middle east these days than a disruptive one, Jordan and Egypt are functional more or less due to their tenuous but peaceful relations and continuous cooperation with Israel, the Gulf States have been trading with Israel for decades now and their relations are becoming more and more public with Israel going as far as opening an "unofficial diplomatic office" in the UAE http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/world/middleeast/israel-to...

The overall sentiment of the many middle class and higher educated Arabs is that their leaders should be more "like" Israel rather than continue to blame Israel for everything under the sun.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not pretty but lets put it into perspective over the past ~70 years the total casualties amount to less than 30,000 at about 3 to 1 ratio, even if we go as far as over 150 years and include the pogroms and the Arab revolts of the 19th century we still arrive at about 100-110,000 casualties with about the same ratio of 3 to 1. If put this into perspective the Syrian civil war has had more casualties than the entire Jewish/Israeli-Arab conflict since the middle of the 19th century, and the casualties of Aleppo alone amount to more deaths than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Israel's inception.

Can I watch Lawrence of Arabia to start?

> working together to bring down an empire.

Profitable work.

Though perhaps not for most of the people affected (T.E. Lawrence included), but screw them.

P.S. curiously, I do own a copy of Lawrence's book. I even read it, long ago, and from my recollection I'm not inclined to re-read it.

Hmn, the Audible edition is only $3.50 if I own the Kindle edition. And that's only $0.99

> .. of course.

Its a matter of course that the nature of covert action is that you must lie about it, even after the fact.

Less than you'd think; it was a non-standard gauge railroad that didn't go anywhere the Sa'udis cared about -- they needed railways connecting their ports to the interior, so spending the money on a Madinah to Jordan line didn't make sense. KSA has invested a massive amount of money on rail lines, but the north-south track is a recent development. Plus, Land Rovers don't care if you have to go over a few kilometers of damaged road, and fuel is unsurprisingly cheap. And if you don't want to drive, there's a lot of airports.

Those are just the most obvious evidence they chose to highlight in a brief article.

If they examined dozens of sites and found physical evidence that fully supports Lawrence's accounts, and no evidence that is inconsistent with those accounts, that's pretty persuasive. After all if Lawrence made his accounts up, you'd expect it wouldn't take long to find discrepancies between his inventions and the real geography of the locations and physical evidence.

I watched a documentary about Lawrence and some journalists visiting some of the sites including the Hallat Ammar attack. In the book Lawrence describes the attack being launched from a ridge (IIRC) 100m from the railway line. They found the ridge, but the railway line was 300m away, too far to be in effective rifle range. But then examining the site more carefully, they found that while the modern railway line was 300m away, the old WW1 era line had become buried with sand and was actually about 100m from the ridge.

It's been a very long time since I read SPOW. It's not always an easy read, but full of character and wonderfully evocative. Lawrence clearly loved and appreciated Arab culture. He gave accounts of their camp fire stories and humour for example, but didn't flinch from describing and discussing some of the uncomfortable aspects of the customs and behaviour he encountered.

Most likely, yes. An excerpt from a letter by his brother Frank:

"The Colt is a lovely pistol. The more I examine it the more I like it. There is a vast gulf between it and the ordinary revolver.

If you want anything in connection with it which you don’t want to write for I could get it for you. They keep two weights of bullets, I think 200 and 230 grains. The lighter weight has considerably higher velocity and penetrating power, though I suppose less shock."

>This would indicate that both Frank and T. E. had Colt automatics that used the 200 or 230 grain bullets. In 1914 this would have been the .45 caliber Model 1911. (The British also used the Colt 1911 in .455 caliber, but this chambering was not introduced until 1915.)

http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/history/telawrence.htm

You should see what they've done in Olduvai and Pompeii!