Al-Qaeda boosted by Iraq war, warns think-tank

[Spazito]

1 hour, 32 minutes ago Add World - AFP to My Yahoo!



LONDON (AFP) - The US-led war on Iraq (news - web sites), far from countering terrorism, has helped revitalise the Al-Qaeda terror network, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank warned.

The London-based body said in its annual Strategic Survey 2003/2004 that the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March, the worst terror strike in Europe for more than a decade, showed that Osama Bin Laden's terror network "had fully reconstituted".

snip

But another legacy of the war was what the IISS termed a highly questionable recourse to pre-emptive strikes as a means of counter-proliferation, as well as "the uses and abuses of intelligence as a basis for military action."


The IISS said the United States, which has dominated world affairs since the end of the Cold War, had failed to understand that Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks were "a violent reaction to America's pre-eminence" and it urged the superpower to temper "the appearance of American unilateralism".

more

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iiss...

[truthspeaker]

1. boy, I wish someone had warned Bush of that before the war!

Oh, wait, millions of people did.

[Spentastic]

2. Think Tank?

A fucking drunk tank could have worked that out.

[Supormom]

4. LOL

So very true.

[Magleetis]

3. No need to state

the extremely obvious, just the merely obvious.

[al bupp]

5. Ready Everyone

It's time for one big, collective, "We told you so!"

<Sigh>

[newyawker99]

18. Hi al bupp!!

Welcome to DU!!

[al bupp]

29. Thanks, Cheers!

[Dover]

6. Been there, thunk that. As this Aljazeera comic demonstrates..

Bush has already fallen for bin Laden.

If those "think tanks" were smart, they'd read the comic section.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/rdonlyres/850C2816-61E5...

[leftchick]

10. thanks for posting the link Dover.....

excellent!

[TolstoyAndy]

7. Keep kicking that rating, folks!

It's at a 4.51 with 57 votes (iirc).

[JM]

8. In a word - DUH!

Was this think-tank named The Organization For the Conclusion of the Obvious?

I must be a feaking MENSA then.

We are witnessing the Pimple Principle of International Diplomacy and National Security

JM

[Just Me]

9. Such advice was being touted before, during and after the war. n/t

[soup]

11. I wonder how they're funded?

The 'if I had a dime for everytime I've heard that' method?

[LoneStarLiberal]

12. As Zinni Said, It's the Difference Between Strategic vs. Tactical

In his remarks at a speech at the CDI last week, retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, former Commander of Central Command, had many interesting things to say about the state of our operations in Iraq and the "war on terror" in general. One of the most germane of his remarks is something I've felt strongly about from the afternoon of September 11th 2001 through this moment: We are not fighting the right kind of war.

Strategy in General Zinni's view is thinking about the roots and the problems of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism not just within the context of one Presidential administration, election cycle, or year; thinking strategically about this problem means thinking about it all the way down from the institutional level to the individual level and thinking about it from this very moment to 50 year or 100 years from now.

We have been and continue to employ a tactical plan to deal with al-Qaeda; that is, we are bombing camps, assassinating individuals, breaking their financial back, and arresting and/or murdering leaders. This approach addresses two levels of the problem (the security level and part of the logistical level) but does nothing address the roots of the problem; authoritarian governments, poor educational opportunities, poor economic opportunities, a poisonous underlying rhetoric (Sayyid Quttb et. al.), etc.

Until you begin to address these problems across the entire Arabic world, problems that are best addressed through engagement and incentives, pressing a tactical solution to a strategic question makes you feel safer in the short run yet does nothing to actually address the problem.

In my mind, one of the most compelling reasons we need to vote Bush out of office is that the folks who are creating and driving this policy of failure will continue to set the tone for the administration's policies if Bush wins another election. Rumsfeld is a tool and firing him doesn't help us with this problem; I'm talking about Wolfowitz, Feith, Wurmser, Perle, and Ledeen. These folks will always hang around as long as Cheney is Bush's VP.

Their world view, their intellectual background, is not capable of making it in the 21st century. They cannot conceive of problems nor effectively generate solutions at anything below the nation-state level because this is what their theoretical background holds is the most important level of analysis. Even if they wanted to, they simply cannot fix the problem that faces us.

[feminazi]

23. I agree, LoneStar

If we had put just a fraction of the billions of dollars we're spending on this war into improving the educational and economic opportunities of the disaffected, we would be a lot better off.

[nonbelief]

13. So that's what think tanks are for!

Five teenagers with a Pentium 2 and a dial-up modem could have come to the same conclusion in a lot less time and for much less money.

[Jacobin]

14. Gee, ya think?

[JohnOneillsMemory]

15. Even the CIA said this before the war, same CIA that * cited for war. n/t

[Just Me]

16. Too bad we DUers aren't well-paid to think for these tanks!!!! n/t

[Spazito]

17. LOL Too true!

I find the research done by DUers to be awesome. DU IS a think tank, an excellent one, imo.

[LeftistGorilla]

19. wow...

Only a couple of years too late....

[i_c_a_White_Ghost]

20. Umm...Ok...I knew that!

I saw the headline on foxnews website...Wow..that must have hurt

[killbotfactory]

21. Duh...

Who could have possibly predicted this?

[Darranar]

22. Well, obviously... n/t

[maddezmom]

24. in light of the new threat alert issued by Asscrack and Mueller

[jeff5]

25. These Geniuses Overlooked

the biggest benefit to Al Qaeda, the fact that we failed to finish the job in Afghanistan in our lust to go get Saddam. Instead of closing the back door to Pakistan and putting a period to the Osama story, which the entire planet supported us in doing, Cheney and his MBOC decided to hire Afghan warlords to act as tollbooths.

A decisive wipe-out at Tora Bora would have given pause to the next 17 would-be Osamas. Instead, the entire sane world is ready to vote our asses off the island, and I don't blame them.

[NNN0LHI]

26. Did it really require a think-tank to come to this conclusion? n/t

[Poiuyt]

27. The US is LESS safe under George Bush

The Democratic leaders need to pound this into the heads of anybody thinking of not voting for Kerry. Republicans think that Bush is so great when it comes to dealing with terrorism, but just the opposite is true. This is the one plank that Bush beats Kerry on (according to the polls). We need to educate the people.

[freeforall]

28. If the US had been paying attention and

looking at its actions and attitudes after September 11, 2004 it would have come to this conclusion on its own.

"The IISS said the United States, which has dominated world affairs since the end of the Cold War, had failed to understand that Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks were 'a violent reaction to America's pre-eminence' and it urged the superpower to temper 'the appearance of American unilateralism.'"

Maybe it's time for a little introspection, and adopting a more global consciousness.

(This is not to detract from the horrible events of Sep 11, but just to state that the US needs to realize they are no better than the rest of us. Some of their policies do not project equality to the rest of the world.)

[Solly Mack]

30. does repeating the obvious 3x work the same as repeating a lie 3x?

if so, please keep stating the obvious...until all hear and learn.

[oblivious]

31. I think we can conclude the IISS is nothing but a propaganda organ.

quote from the article:

The London-based body said in its annual Strategic Survey 2003/2004 that the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March, the worst terror strike in Europe for more than a decade, showed that Osama Bin Laden's terror network "had fully reconstituted".

But US intelligence has made it quite clear the alleged Al-qaeda-linked group that claimed cridit for the Madrid blast was fake, a phantom. The organisation does not exist. Yet here is IISS claiming Al-queda did Madrid.

Are newspaper editors so ill-informed that they can actually be convinced to publish this propaganda?

*********************************************************************
Here's an article from back in March about this group:

US intelligence officials do not know whether the group exists ... Another US intelligence official said, "This group, organization, or whatever it is, is a phantom." ... none of the brigade's e-mails has ever proved authentic, Venzke said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/13/o... /