What do you believe Al Qeada is?

[berni_mccoy]

Poll question: What do you believe Al Qeada is?

Poll result (168 votes)
A real terrorist organization	(32 votes, 19%)	Vote
A once real terrorist organization that the administration is now using to get what they want	(37 votes, 22%)	Vote
A completely fictional organization	(99 votes, 59%)	Vote

[norml]

1. A Data Base

Al Qaeda = The Base


Osama Bin Ladin kept a data base with the names of those who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. This data base of names, kept by Osama, was Al Qaeda.

[FreedomAngel82]

2. If you've never

seen the documentary you should watch "The Power of Nightmares." It shows me that Al-Quida really isn't much to be afraid of. Bush and his people just make them to be more scary then what they are so they can do their plans. He could easily call up his Saudi buddies and have BinLaden turned in.

[ninty]

5. I agree

Power of Nightmares is great. In fact, it was shown on CBC Newsworld here in Canada. I doubt you'd ever get something like that on a major network in the States unfortunatley.

[kliljedahl]

28. Here it is, downloadable, or just viewable

Its in Bit Torrent format which I use all the time and will vouch for.



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[kliljedahl]

42. Forgot the link - Brain Fart

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[CJCRANE]

59. Yes

I heard that somewhere, that it was a database on a laptop.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. on the bushco payroll

[sce56]

9. Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

http://www.reopen911.org/Is%20Al%20Qaeda%20Just%20a%20B...

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"cut "
Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy


http://www.hugequestions.com /
http://www.erichufschmid.net/Axis_of_Perverts.html

[Name removed]

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[babylonsister]

4. When 9/11 happened, Al Quada and OBL were known.

The powers that be chose to ignore the signs.

[dbeach]

6. All CIA Duh..thanx for poll

OSS{pre CIA}
OS wald
OS ama

from 9/11/01 to 4/11/04 = 911 days

its all black ops so the nazis could complete their slow rise to power which began with the coup of 11/22/63 and on to 11/00 to 9/11/11 to 11/02/04

to 5/10/05 when real IDs passed..the US Constitution and bill of rts are gone..

[Swamp Rat]

13. Give this man a cigar!

[dbeach]

32. OOPS! Madrid bombing was 3/11/04

interesting that 191 deaths are reported which
when adjusted becomes 911

BUT its just another coincidence!

Ever notice how often 11 is mentioned in news reports..?

[Name removed]

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[berni_mccoy]

7. You have to wonder...

As vulnerable as we are combined with the fact that we have *not* yet been attacked again and the timeliness of all the Bin Laden videos last year, it certainly can make you suspicious that if this organization were really out to terrorize us, they would be doing more.

Our own Administration has said there are thousands of AQ cells here in the U.S. and I rarely hear of any bad guys getting rounded up here. So what's the deal? If AQ is real, they are completely incompetent and got astronomically lucky once. However, that does not seem like the most likely explanation...

[Frederik]

20. Yes, the "terror cells"...

That was always complete bullshit. Be afraid, afraid...

[oblivious]

8. It's an administrative convenience.

[lala_rawraw]

10. Operation Al Qeada is more like it... no?

[Warpy]

11. A loose criminal organization

made up of small and mostly incompetent terror cells whose members sit around drinking arrack and making plans that none of them have the ambition or intelligence to put into motion.

The competent cells could probably be stopped by a combination of international cooperation, solid police work, and tightening up the regulations governing offshore banking (something Clinton wanted in 1996 but which Phil Gramm blocked because it would have exposed Enron).

Their training camp has been obliterated, and while they're probably trying to rebuild in Pakistan, cutting off their funding would largely cripple them.

The junta is doing none of this because they feel another attack will cause the population to rally around them once again. We'll see.

[Ladyhawk]

12. Other: often misspelled. n/t

[Swamp Rat]

15. "Must join with Trapperkeeper!!!..."

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

48. Who are you, Moaumahr Gkaddaffey?

[berni_mccoy]

49. LOL!

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

63. Hee hee

[judy]

14. Check out the "Power of Nightmares"

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=4281

There, you'll find the answer. It is not entirely fictional, but it is not what they say it is...

[smartvoter]

16. They were known well in advance of 9/11. nt

[carnie_sf]

17. A republican front

that's trotted out whenever the administration needs to scare the populace into submission.

[Name removed]

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[leveymg]

18. Riddled with double-agents, led by an Agent Provocateur who, if

still alive, is on standby for further contract work, 365/7/24. Yet, UBL is not entirely aware of whom he really works for, or what their agenda actually is. He is steered by multiple control agents who are, in fact, cut-outs working for false-flag intelligence organizations.

He is a false image created in a hall of smoke and mirrors. Al-Qaeda is a deadly myth that justifies a revolution from above.

[TheWatcher]

19. Emanuel Goldstein.

[fujiyama]

21. More or less

a clearinghouse of various terrorist groups largely formed out of the Mujahadeen fighters (which were pretty much financed by the US).

I think the groups are more loosely affiliated than people think. That's the heart of the problem. There is no "president" or "CEO". I always found this central planning idea ridiculous to believe. It was a nice way to market the idea in some way comprehensible to clueless westerners.

It's also an organization that recieves passive and sometimes even active support from governments, including supposed US allies like SA and Pakistan.

[Frederik]

22. It's all about the drugs

Al-Qaeda was constructed as a bogeyman from around 1998 (by Richard Clarke first and foremost - a man who had previously worked on devising psychological warfare strategies, after all, and who found it necessary to bomb a medicine factory in Sudan because "al-Qaeda was making chemical weapons there"). I remember that I had read quite a lot about "al-Qaeda" before 9/11, that they were led by Bin Laden and operated out of Afghanistan and that we could expect something big from them. When the second plane slammed into the WTC, I thought "this is Bin Laden". Today I don't believe it's that simple.

I think "al-Qaeda", or whatever one wants to call it, is a front for a heroin trading network. Both Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri (the Egyptian "Doctor Death") are heavily into the global drugs trade.

They very rarely do any terrorist attacks (they probably did the 1998 emassy bombings, perhaps the USS Cole in 2000, and they had some involvement in 9/11, all the bombings around the world since then have been perpetrated by local Islamist groups, not "al-Qaeda"). If they were a terrorist organization you'd expect them to do some more, well, terrorism. The "war on terror" is a complete sham. It should end immediately.

Al-Qaeda also have very close connections to Pakistani and Saudi intelligence services. It was the chief of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence directorate, Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad (who was in Washington on 9/11) who ordered a certain Omar Saed Sheikh to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta before the attacks. Omar Saed was a leader of the Kashmiri guerrilla group Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the ISI-sponsored jihadist groups that were trained in the ISI's training camps in Afghanistan to fight for Pakistan in Kashmr.

Osama Bin Laden was hand-picked by prince Turki Bin Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence (and current ambassador to the UK), in 1979, to be the symbolic leader of the Afghan jihad, a joint US-UK-Pakistani-Saudi operation to bleed the Russians and expand Pakistan's influence in the region. It was on the CIAs (William Casey's) insistence that the ISI started cultivating opium in Afhghanistan to finance this operation. After the war had ended, the ISI kept on selling drugs and the Afghan war vets appear to have entered the drugs trade full-time.

As Daniel Hopsicker has found, the 9/11 hijackers seem to have been involved in drug trafficking while in the US - an aspect the media has been careful not to tell us about. Both Sibel Edmonds and Indira Singh have strongly hinted about the drug connection. Mrs Edmonds has of course more than hinted that money from this drug trade found its way into the campaign war chests of several US politicians, and that heads of govt agencies were also involved in it. No wonder Ashcroft put a gag order on her.

This network of Afghan war vets led by Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri have had a tendency to show up wherever the US conduct clandestine operations in the Muslim world, fighting on the side supported by the US (like they did in Afghanistan). In Bosnia, "al-Qaeda" appeared at the same time as the US started secretly arming the Muslims against the Serbs. US arms found their way into the Arab jihadists' hands. This was repeated in Kosovo a few years later (around 1998), when British SAS started training the Kosovo Liberation Army, Bin Laden turned up to do the same. Mohammed Al-Zawahiri, brother of Ayman, joined the KLA.

In the War against Serbia in 1999, NATO basically functioned as the air force of Europe's most ruthless heroin cartel aided by "al-Qaeda". This is the year after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The result of that war is a Kosovo which is a free zone for the heroin traffic from Afghanistan via Turkey into Europe, and a Kosovo-Albanian mafia that has become dominant in the drugs trade in Europe. "Operation eternal freedom" or whatever in Afghanistan has resulted in a huge increase in the heroin production in and exportation from Afghanistan. The war in Chechnya, where some of those "al-Qaeda" people also have been known to appear now and again, has made Chechnya a hub for the exportation into Russia. The new motorway through Croatia, built by Bechtel, has facilitated transportation from Kosovo into the European heartland.

War is a racket.

[oblivious]

51. Interesting post. I'd just read bits of that. I should read more.

[Devlzown]

23. Don't believe in it . Never have.

[Binka]

24. A Bad Hair Salon

I think Musharaf gets his coif done there.

[eridani]

25. You left out "a movement"

It used to bbe an organization, but it is fragmented, and imitative groups are all over the place.

[orpupilofnature57]

26. 9/11 Was a little too functional.Dork just told Matt terror alert , Bogus

[allemand]

27. I don't think we should commit the same error as the Bush administration

before 9/11 and "misunderestimate" the threat posed by militant Islamism.

As Jason Burke writes:
"What we have currently is a broad and diverse movement of radical Islamic militancy. (...) It involves tens of thousands of people, some merely individuals, some who have formed groups. (...) This movement is growing. Osama bin Laden did not create it nor will his death or incarceration end it. For all but five (or arguably three) years of his life, bin Laden was a peripheral player in modern Islamic militancy. He may have been the most charismatic and the best known, but there were, and are, and will be, many others who have the will and the capacity to foment violence, murder innocents and sow chaos around the world. (...)
The threat is grave. Thirty years ago a new Islamic political ideology began to resonate among millions of young men and women across the Muslim world. This ideology was a sophisticated and genuine intellectual effort to find an Islamic answer to the challenges posed by the West's cultural, economic and political dominance. Over the decades that ideology has changed and mutated into something different. Once, Islamic activists thought primarily in terms of achieving power or reforming their own nation. There was room in their programme for gradualism and compromise. There was room in their movement for a huge multiplicity of different strands of political thought. There was room for the parochial, radical and conservative movements of rural areas and for the clever, educated and aware ideologues of the cities. There was even room for those extremists who were committed to violence and who saw the world as a battlefield between the forces of good and evil, of belief and unbelief.
But increasingly, and this is a trend that is accelerating, the extremists are no longer perceived as the 'lunatic fringe'. Instead they are seen as the standard-bearers. And their language is now the dominant discourse in modern Islamic political activism. Their debased, violent, nihilistic, anti-rational millenarianism has become the standard ideology aspired to by angry young Muslim men. This is a tragedy."
Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda, The true story of radical Islam, Introduction, p.25-26

This idea of "the failure of political Islam" as described by Burke was first developed by Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel.

Burke, of course, had a very prominent role in the documentary "The Power of Nightmares".

[radwriter0555]

30. burke is an intel asset who's job it is to spin the info he has learned

into works of fiction to keep a few people terrified of the boogie man.

He's a CIA or some other murky intel outfit's spook....

[allemand]

31. Did you see "The Power of Nightmares"?

Or read the transcript?

[radwriter0555]

37. No. I don't "do" or subject myself to propaganda.

I research, listen, read and learn and form my own opinions instead.

[allemand]

39. Then you should read the works of Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy.

They are French scholars but their (very interesting) books have been translated into English.

[radwriter0555]

44. Why? Islam is just another cult; imagining it's having some scary boogie

man effect on the planet is pointless. It's nothing more than the fearmongering that swirled around hitler's destruction of the jews and how the jews were treated by all nations during that period.

It's the same systematic destruction of the muslims... and it creeps me out.

Demonizing Islam is way more creepy than IT is.

[allemand]

33. Jason Burke is the one who said: "There is no Al Qaeda organization"

in the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares".

I'm surprised that you call him a CIA stooge. Maybe you should believe in the existence of al-Qaeda, after all...

What he meant to say was that al-Qaeda is only a small group and not a huge Leninist-style organization. But it is certainly dangerous. And even more dangerous is the larger movement of militant Islamism.

[radwriter0555]

36. Jason burke can't make up his mind "WHO" al CIAda really is. HIS job

is to say what he's paid to say.

I know that Al CIAda is largely a figment and a CIA produced 'terror' organization that has been dessimated due to european cooperation to take it down.

[Englander]

38. Really? Where did you get that from?

I've never heard that before.

Maybe you mean James Bamford?

[Jara sang]

29. CIA no question about it. n/t

[Name removed]

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[yella_dawg]

34. Other

A real terrorist organization that was organized, trained, and funded by the US with the original goal of sabotaging the Russian effort in Afghanistan, and later used to execute "constructive" violence in the Mid East.

Ossama met with CIA higher-ups only a few months prior to 9-11. A documented cash transfer, in the same time frame, from CIA to the terrorists, via Pakistani intelligence emphasizes this connection.

Al CIA-da is the more proper spelling.


In the context of this poll, i.e. "does al qeada have a strong presence in Iraq?" they are fictional.

[allemand]

35. So the CIA is killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Why? Cui bono?

[Sterling]

54. Maybe it's the Iraqi's?

No it has to be foreign terrorists because Iraqi's only throw flowers at our victorious liberating soldiers.

It makes Bush look better to blame it on the boogie man, I do know that much.

[radwriter0555]

56. Hmmm, I dunno. Ask the Iran Contra players. The guerilla wars

in Columbia... the invasion of Grenada, the death squads in El Salvador, that little problem with Noriega; the israeli mossad pretending the palestinians are taking hits on them, the ISI paying off Atta...

It's all covert ops. It's all part and parcel.

[dhinojosa]

40. Isn't it a cheese sauce?

[Zynx]

41. Either a lot of lurker trolls voted or I'm very concerned over DU

al-Qaeda is most certainly a real terrorist organization. Not sure how much is left now, though.

[Frederik]

43. What makes you so certain of that?

If I may ask?

[allemand]

47. Exactly my thoughts.

Burke distinguishes between "organization" and "group". I hope that most DUers would at least agree that al-Qaeda is a group and that radical Islamism is something we should be concerned about.

[radwriter0555]

58. Why would you believe that? The story comes from the same folks who

brought you 911 and saddam's wmds... and you're going to trust them with nameless, faceless boogie men now?

Might want to re-think that position.

[H2O Man]

45. Other n/t

[Binka]

46. A CIA Bin Laden Connection Used For Drug And Arms Sales & Money Laundering

Osama you like medium starch right?

[Javaman]

50. The new super taco at taco bell.

[Junkdrawer]

52. A joint US/Saudi Organization originally used to get Saudi dissidents...

out of Saudi Arabia and into Afghanistan. Later, it was used for the neocon Pearl Harbor.

[Maiden England]

53. Thinking about other terrorist organizations

Terrorist's tactics reflect that they as a minority are trying to effect a

The IRA - numerous, frequent small and large attacks on various targets, claim responsibility
Etta - numerous freqent small and large attacks, various targets, claim responsibility
Hamas - numerous frequent small attacks and suicide bombings again, various targets, claim responsiblity
Iraqi 'insurgency' - constant and varied attacks of all sizes, various targets, claim responsibility.

(thats all from the top of my head)

Al Quaeda - Allegedly involved in US embassy attacks in 1998. Allegedly involved in the attack on the USS Cole. Alleged to have carried out group of hijackings 9/11. No claims of responsibility. Its just simply not the MO of a terrorist organization. IMO.

[Chomp]

55. My understanding

is that AQ is BOTH the creation of US black-ops AND the "genuine" product of radical Islamic thought.

The point Power of Nightmare made is that AQ was a self-fullfilling prophecy.

The neo-cons (from the 70s on) needed a bogey man and thus started creating the scary AQ myth.

At around the same time, the ideology of avant garde Islamist thinking had been rejected by people across the Muslim world - they were more interested in Westernising. This caused a radicalisation among the small rump who had had their ideology spurned (and that's all they were, a rump of disparate loonies and fanatics with little popular support at home.) This rump started looking to cause serious terrorist at first at home and then abroad. When they got wind that they were now being characterised as AQ, this suited them perfectly - it gave them a focus and, crucially, a brand name.

So, the creation of AQ served both neo-con and Islamist purposes & everyone's a winner!

BTW, I understand that AQ means "The Base". Isn't this also what the Republican Party call their establishment, smokey-room, Skull and Bones type benefactors/patriarchs/de facto leaders/contributors?

[Karenina]

62. You're exhibiting critical thinking!

Great post, Chomp.

Please check thread this out:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

I'm as tickled by Amis' concepts of Al-Q as I am by the regular sightings of the "almost caught" Undead-nobody-knows-how-many-legs-escape-artist Jordanian who be runnin' wild and loose in the streets of Iraq. The MAIN OBSTACLE to understanding is the INCAPABILITY (and unwillingness) of most to understand constructs OUTSIDE of their reference points.

[Name removed]

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[berni_mccoy]

72. Is it such a stretch to believe

When our own CIA sponsors terrorists of it's own (don't forget OBL WAS a CIA Asset, and we put Saddam in power). Here's another monster brought to you by the US CIA

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm

When it comes to trusting this administration, I like to listen to this speech by Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio...

http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater233....

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[They_LIHOP]

69. I dunno, but I'll tell ya who 'the hijackers' were...

They were INVITED GUESTS...

Part of an uber-secret, ultra-'realistic' training exercise, that was in it's final phase on 9/11.

Operation Vigilant Guardian, and the 'aborted' NRO training exercise wherein a plane was to crash into a government building, both simultaneously occurring on 9/11/01, are also part of the picture. So is Moussaoui.

The reason he, as well as the other 9/11 'hijackers' (who may or may not have actually boarded the aircraft), were here, acting like idiots and throwing up red flags all over the place was because that is what they were TOLD to do. They were the secret part of the otherwise public training exercise.

The exercise itself was designed to provide plausible denial for Cheney, et al, in case Congress and the Media ever bothered to ever actually follow-up on the BS that was 'the official story'. Plan B, as I call it, involved a whole lot of 'crossed signals', and 'people being unsure whether they were responding to 'the exercise', or 'the real thing', etc. Lucky for them, the only one's who bothered to come snooping were people that the administration and media could simply marginalize.

Beyond that, I'm personally not sure whether the planes were remote controlled, or whether the Saudi's involved actually betrayed their handlers and crashed the planes (the former being the far more likely, IMHO) during the exercise, but the one part that I'm 100% convinced of is that these men were invited guests taking part in a full-spectrum (including the mock-hijackers who 'snuck in' to the country, and who were for the most part Elite Saudi Military) terrorist-attack training exercise that just happened to be in full-swing on 9/11.

Over time, with a ton of research, I have concluded this to be the most likely scenario. I think perhaps the best evidence of this is the fact that Moussaoui's original defense was that 'the FBI knew we were here, knew why we were here, and were watching us all the time, and that is why you should not put me to death'. I mean, the guys in solitary all that time, he's trying to save his own skin, and he somehow pulls out THAT STORY?

I'm sorry, but considering soon after he began to send briefs of that nature to the court, all his court records (including those) were immediately sealed, and he was never allowed to get the testimony of his 'co-horts' from the 'German Cell', who he said could back up his version of 'the story', I can reach no other logical conclusion other than that he was most likely telling the truth, and extrapolate from there to the conclusion I've reached. And strangely, all I've EVER found simply confirms the scenario I've described, NOT the 'official story'...

If ANYONE can provide me evidence that supports the official story over my version of events, I'm all ears...

[Name removed]

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[oblivious]

73. Why you will never know if Osama is alive, dead, or captured.

Meet the press transcript

Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharaff quote: Well, there would be effects, but we shouldn't be so naive as to capture him and then go around telling everyone and going around with him everywhere. I mean, there is a method of dealing with the situation.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Musharraf: "It would be delicate here in Pakistan and the Islamic world." Is there a distinct possibility that Mr. Musharraf is afraid of capturing Osama bin Laden because he would fear that his government would be toppled?

Gary Schroen (chief CIA Osama hunter post-911): ...I think within the military and ISID at a a certain level, they certainly do know where he is....to take on bin Laden, there would be an uproar within that country and around the Islamic world that would really cause the foundations of the Pakistani government to be shaken.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7761272/