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Who are "al Qaeda" terrorists, anyway? [View All]

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stickdog Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jul-07-05 10:11 PM
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Who are "al Qaeda" terrorists, anyway?
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Israel quite obviously deals with a large number of hardline Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attacks on a weekly (or, at best, monthly) basis:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/victims.html

The webpage linked above lists over 350 separate fatal incidents resulting in well over 1000 Israeli fatalities since September, 2000.

But I haven't yet located a single incident out of these 350+ in which more than 30 Israelis died. Nor have I found a single example of a well-coordinated, multiple-attack terrorist strike (defined as three or more separate fatal acts of terrorism executed within a span of three hours). Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I could direct me to these entries?

Now, it seems to me that the more sophisticated and spectacular an act of terrorism is -- the more, shall we say, made-for-TV -- the greater chance that this dramatically successful act of terrorism was state sponsored to achieve some political end. This is purely a function of the far greater MEANS and OPPORTUNITY of state sponsored mil/intel organizations when compared with those of the typical Jihadist terrorists they are tasked with foiling. Surely, we would all agree that this exact pattern (of highly dramatic and potent terrorist acts correlating with covert state sponsored activities) is quite typical in the historical records of many perhaps less "politically enlightened" regions -- such as Indonesia, South Africa and Latin America, for example.

Unlike Israel (which deals with far more numerous but typically far less potent Jihadist attacks), the USA & Great Britain appear to deal almost exclusively with spectacularly successful, well-coordinated, highly sophisticated MADE-FOR-TV Goldfinger/Dr. No-type terrorists.

The Jihadist terrorists attacking Israel don't typically choose highly symbolic strike dates (like 9/11 or 7.7 -- with years of inactivity between) to launch singular and discrete but highly memorable, extremely fatal and very well-coordinated multi-strikes. In contrast, real terrorist organizations almost invariably attempt to highlight the desperate straits of their causes by aggressively claiming full responsibility for their violent acts using previously known and recognized channels and spokesmen. Furthermore, these real Jihadist terrorist organizations do not put a premium on huge and horrifically fatal MADE-FOR-TV terror muscle-flexing but instead foster a continual atmosphere of perilousness by striking whenever, wherever and however they can.

Maybe I'm far too cynical, but I've started to suspect that the term "al Qaeda" has now come to simply signify any anonymous act of terror that might otherwise appear sophisticated enough to implicate state-sponsored mil/intel. I realize that this is a generalization at best, but please understand the context in which I'm daring to utter such blasphemous thoughtcrime. Our entire corporate media apparatus and political hierarchy have already convicted Islamic fundamentalists of today's crimes with nary a shred of backing evidence. In contrast, I'm not trying to convince anyone to jump to any hasty conclusions -- just to duly consider all logically probable alternatives.
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