Al Qaeda Leaders Seen in Control

Experts Say Radicals In London, Egypt May Have Followed Orders

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 24, 2005; Page A01

LONDON, July 23 -- The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East.

Investigators on Saturday said that they believed the details of the bombing plots in Egypt and Britain -- the deadliest terrorist strikes in each country's history -- were organized locally by groups working independently of each other. In Sharm el-Sheikh, where the death toll rose to 88 people, attention centered on an al Qaeda affiliate blamed for a similar attack last October at Taba, another Red Sea resort. In London, where 52 bystanders were killed in the subway and on a bus, police have identified three of the four presumed suicide bombers as British natives with suspected connections to Pakistani radicals.



But intelligence officials and terrorist experts said they suspect that bin Laden or his lieutenants may have sponsored both operations from afar, as well as other explosions that have killed hundreds of people in Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco since 2002. The hallmarks in each case: multiple bombings aimed at unguarded, civilian targets that are designed to scare Westerners and rattle the economy.

The officials and analysts also said the recent attacks indicate that the nerve center of the original al Qaeda network remains alive and well, despite the fact that many leaders have been killed or captured since the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings in the United States. Bin Laden may be in hiding, the officials and analysts said, and much is still unknown about the network. But they added that his organization remains fully capable of orchestrating attacks worldwide by recruiting local groups to do its bidding.

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/23/AR2005072301052.html

Experts: No single al-Qaida mastermind

LONDON (AP) — Car bombs at an Egyptian luxury hotel. Explosions in London subways. Suicide blasts in Baghdad. With the frequency of terror attacks apparently mounting, experts searching for common threads behind the attacks suggest that the war on terror is being waged against an ever-increasing well of recruits, bound together by motives and cause — rather than a single al-Qaida mastermind.

With havens in Afghanistan under pressure and their finances under scrutiny, militants may take philosophical guidance from the likes of Osama bin Laden but are largely relying on their own resources in carrying operations, experts interviewed by The Associated Press said Saturday.
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proves nobody knows what the fuck they're talking about, least of all self-styled experts.

Although I would say the "No single al-Qaida mastermind" article has the advantage of seeming to reflect some actual common sense, whereas this one reeks of the same propaganda and bogeyman mythologizing that's been shovelled out for lo these many years now.

On the other hand, "nobody knows what the fuck they're talking about" works for me just as well.

sw

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bogeymen. As soon as we round them all up, though, we'll be able to let all of those prisoners out of the internment camps. :eyes:

but, AQ is so decentralized now, making it sound like a giant monolith is just more Bush-Blair scare talk. AQ is the base of all of this stuff, but to say that there is one mastermind to it all is probably wrong. For one thing, the tube bombings were amateurish compared to say Madrid or Bali or definitely 9-11.