Is al-Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

"The Insider" mailing list article, 17 January 2005.

http://www.theinsider.org/mailing/article.asp?id=809

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.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?

• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?

• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?

look at him noddin..."

for the BBC called "The Power of Nightmares". It explains that while terrorists do exist and are a threat, the idea that there is an organization called Al-Qaeda, which is organized to fight the US is totally bogus.

The film will show at the San Francisco International Film Festival (with Adam Curtis doing Q&A in person), but you can check it out at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

The film is very in depth and interviews all sides of the matter.

I can see chimpy playing maxwell smart too.

an argument could be made that the bush administration has made more of a threat out of it than it really is for political purposes, but al qaeda was identified as a threat by the Clinton administration.

bush and condi rice didn't pay attention to it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a real threat.

They use AQ, but it exists.

Twice an hour this morning on the government radio station I had to listen to the newsreader breathlessly announce the idiot's speech at the swearing-in ceremony.

Here was their top world news headline:

Bush says Bin Laden threat is America's top priority

Then the breathless report: "President Bush says America's greatest challenge is stopping the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden from attacking the country again."

Then 30 seconds of the moron's speech to try to heighten the fear to the max. I felt like smashing the radio the third time. Cleverly I turned it off instead.

The whole freakin world is taken in by this ridiculous propaganda.

And probably has many double agents such as this one:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/LEV209A.html

ISI connections:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO308C.html

And yes, many of those agents were working closely w/ folks in the CIA to pull off 911 to provide the needed push for the PNAC agenda.


And finally, there is no such thing as the one legged super hero, Zarqawi, in Iraq. Anyone who actually believes this is among the stupedist on earth.

Al Quaida does actually exist, and they can be a threat. That said, they are only one of a long list of dangerous terrorist groups in the world today that the media and this administration don't seem at all worried about because they don't involve Muslim extremists or any of the contestants on American Idol. We've had domestic terrorist groups here in America since its inception, but no one says much about those groups, or bothers to call them terrorists.