AP Reports Increase in Al-Qaeda Membership and Activity

How is this possible???? Dufus-shrubbie assures us we are winning the war on terror and that Al-Qaeda is in decline. I'm guessing that in a few days the shrubbers will be accusing the AP of being unpatriotic and a threat to worl peace.

It's also kinda hard to fight when your troops are over extended.

dues?

n/t

they came. If that man had an ounce of integrity he would resign right now!

Evidence included one discarded official Al Qaeda membership card and a list of who still owes dues.

Zarqawi's name was at the top.

I supported it, I gave the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt and that is a mistake I will not make again.

They fought a half-assed war agianst the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, they let bin Laden get away in Tora Bora, they didn't send enough troops and most of Afghanistan is today controlled by warlords or the Taliban. Terrorist training camps are once again open for business in the Afgahn countryside. But we do have a nice mayor in Kabul named Hamid Karzai.

poppy fields that are in full bloom in Afghanistan.

3 minutes

We haven't done any better in Afghanistan than the Soviets did. We control Kabul and the countryside is still under the control of the tribes. Of course, the Soviets really tried, we haven't.

Shrubnutz and the neo-goons have pissed off the entire world. If we don't impeach these psychos soon we're going to have WWIII on our hands. Because it looks like that is what exactly they want.

Renewed poppy havest in Afghanistan + spooks = AQ recruitment?

Nah, forget I said anything.

'Nuff said.

Sort of a no-brainer to me. Let's see, Bush declares a white hats, black hats holy war, we invade a sovereign nation, occupy it, kill thousands of civilians, torture, embarass and humiliate prisoners . . . if you were a Muslim what side would you be on? Interesting that this story would break at a time when America has to have more troops to continue its occupation in Iraq. If I was going to try to get the American people to accept a draft, I would release news stories about a BIG terrorist attack looming for America, and then release stories about how the enemy's numbers were "swelling." This strategy might also work to wrangle in those whose support has been wavering a bit since the Abu Ghraib (Abug Garrump, Ab buga gar, Agababu - as Bush would say) prison scandal. If the press fails to question the timing of this story and the terror alert story it will be criminal.

You know, I like to follow this stuff to try to figure it out, so I keep articles. Look at these two and compare them with the new AP article:

1. UN report - June 2002 - 800 al-Qaeda members
2. NY Times - June 2002 - 200-300 members at that time

U.N. Report Sees 800 Qaeda Members at Large-Expert
Mon June 23, 2003

PARIS (Reuters) - The United Nations will issue a report next week showing Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda militant network has some 800 members ready to strike economic or tourist targets, a French consultant to the report said on Monday.

..."The report of the U.N. Security Council...which will appear next week, will show that a third generation of al Qaeda is forming," Jacquard told France 2 television.

It would show "that before September 11, Osama bin Laden anticipated the American attack and sent out about 800 fighters from Afghanistan, all top officers of al Qaeda.

I only have the ICH URL:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3910.htm

While the NY Times said this at the same time: June 2002

Although sworn members of Al Qaeda were estimated to number no more than 200 to 300 men, officials say that at its peak this broader Qaeda network operated about a dozen Afghan camps that trained as many as 5,000 militants, who in turn created cells in as many as 60 countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/international/16QAED.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

So it looks like Alqaeda, if you believe it exists in the form it is presented by the US and UN, has increased over 2,000 percent over two years ago, if we believe the article referred to above. Here is the URL:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AL_QAIDA?SITE=MNWIN&SECTION=HOME

And the mainstream press keeps reporting this shit without a comment. Like they never read their archives?

edit: subject line