For some Americans, the catastrophic events of September ll,200l may have overshadowed the Khobar Towers bombing of June 25, l996.Yet as horrific as the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center were, the bombing in Dhahran-terrible in its own right-should still command our attention. There is no distinguishing of the importance among these, or any other terrorist events, to those who lost their loved ones in them. That the Khobar Towers tragedy was fol¬lowed by ones even larger in scale does not diminish its importance: it furthers it. The "Bleeding Kansas" of the 1850s prefigured a far bloodier Civil War in the I 860s, and the blasted facade of Building I 3 I anticipated the yet more deadly ter¬rorism of the twenty-first century.