I know that a lot of people here on dKos are critical thinkers. We never bought into the rationale for war against Iraq because the evidence wasn't compelling to us. There was no connection with 9/11. There was no clear threat to the US from Iraqi WMDs, even if some of us thought that Iraq possessed them. We're proud of having seen through that smokescreen.
It made more sense to go into Afghanistan because that's where Osama bin Laden was: the guy who ran Al Qaeda and funded the attack on the WTC. We had to destroy the infrastructure of a terrorist organization with cells operating in 60 nations. It's a talking point among us critics of the administration that one of the worst flubs made by the neo-cons is that they dropped the ball on Al Qaeda by going into Iraq.
But what if some of our ideas about Al Qaeda are as much a fiction of this administration's as the WMD's were?
More under the fold.
London Observer Chief Reporter Jason Burke, author of
"Al-Qaeda: the True Story of Radical Islam", believes that the organization known as Al Qaeda was no more than a hard-core of 20-30 militants, largely eliminated after the war in Afghanistan. Burke claims Al Qaeda is a "convenient label applied misleadingly to a diverse, disorganized global movement".
The following quoted materials come from a transcript of the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares". I've seen a number of people on dKos recommend this 3-part series... but I haven't seen a thorough diary discussing the implications of it. In the wake of the London bombings, I think it's appropriate to take a fresh look at Al Qaeda.
(These transcripts were contained as part of a BitTorrent download of the video found here)
VO: In January, 2001, a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom of four men accused of the embassy bombings in east Africa. But the Americans had also decided to prosecute bin Laden in his absence. But to do this under American law, the prosecutors needed evidence of a criminal organisation because, as with the Mafia, that would allow them to prosecute the head of the organisation even if he could not be linked directly to the crime. And the evidence for that organisation was provided for them by an ex-associate of bin Laden's called Jamal al-Fadl.
JASON BURKE , AUTHOR, "AL QAEDA" : During the investigation of the 1998 bombings, there is a walk-in source, Jamal al-Fadl, who is a Sudanese militant who was with bin Laden in the early 90s, who has been passed around a whole series of Middle East secret services, none of whom want much to do with him, and who ends up in America and is taken on by--uh--the American government, effectively, as a key prosecution witness and is given a huge amount of American taxpayers' money at the same time. And his account is used as raw material to build up a picture of Al Qaeda. The picture that the FBI want to build up is one that will fit the existing laws that they will have to use to prosecute those responsible for the bombing. Now, those laws were drawn up to counteract organised crime: the Mafia, drug crimes, crimes where people being a member of an organisation is extremely important. You have to have an organisation to get a prosecution. And you have al-Fadl and a number of other witness, a number of other sources, who are happy to feed into this. You've got material that, looked at in a certain way, can be seen to show this organisation's existence. You put the two together and you get what is the first bin Laden myth--the first Al Qaeda myth. And because it's one of the first, it's extremely influential.
VO: The picture al-Fadl drew for the Americans of bin Laden was of an all-powerful figure at the head of a large terrorist network that had an organised network of control. He also said that bin Laden had given this network a name: "Al Qaeda." It was a dramatic and powerful picture of bin Laden, but it bore little relationship to the truth.
[ EXCERPT, CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO : BIN LADEN AND SOLDIERS ]
VO: The reality was that bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri had become the focus of a loose association of disillusioned Islamist militants who were attracted by the new strategy. But there was no organisation. These were militants who mostly planned their own operations and looked to bin Laden for funding and assistance. He was not their commander. There is also no evidence that bin Laden used the term "Al Qaeda" to refer to the name of a group until after September the 11th, when he realized that this was the term the Americans have given it.
VO: In reality, Jamal al-Fadl was on the run from bin Laden, having stolen money from him. In return for his evidence, the Americans gave him witness protection in America and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many lawyers at the trial believed that al-Fadl exaggerated and lied to give the Americans the picture of a terrorist organisation that they needed to prosecute bin Laden.
SAM SCHMIDT , DEFENCE LAWYER EMBASSY BOMBINGS TRIAL: And there were selective portions of al-Fadl's testimony that I believe was false, to help support the picture that he helped the Americans join together. I think he lied in a number of specific testimony about a unified image of what this organisation was. It made Al Qaeda the new Mafia or the new Communists. It made them identifiable as a group and therefore made it easier to prosecute any person associated with Al Qaeda for any acts or statements made by bin Laden--who talked a lot.
BURKE : The idea--which is critical to the FBI's prosecution--that bin Laden ran a coherent organisation with operatives and cells all around the world of which you could be a member is a myth. There is no Al Qaeda organisation. There is no international network with a leader, with cadres who will unquestioningly obey orders, with tentacles that stretch out to sleeper cells in America, in Africa, in Europe. That idea of a coherent, structured terrorist network with an organised capability simply does not exist.
VO: What did exist was a powerful idea that was about to inspire a single, devastating act that would lead the whole world into believing the myth that had begun to be constructed in the Manhattan courtroom.
VO: The attack on America by 19 hijackers shocked the world. It was Ayman Zawahiri's new strategy, implemented in a brutal and spectacular way. But neither he nor bin Laden were the originators of what was called the "Planes Operation." It was the brainchild of an Islamist militant called Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who came to bin Laden for funding and help in finding volunteers. But in the wake of panic created by the attacks, the politicians reached for the model which had been created by the trial earlier that year: the hijackers were just the tip of a vast, international terrorist network which was called, "Al Qaeda."
Look, I like to think I'm a member of the "Reality Based Community", and especially since Markos is going after those who are making wild assertions without a lot of supporting evidence, I realize I'm sticking my neck out by writing a diary like this that challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about Al Qaeda.
The irony here though is that the real conspiracy theory here isn't being put forward by me: it's being put forth by the Bush Administration. They are positing a worldwide network of terror. That's a significant claim, and the burden of evidence is on the administration.
Burke's suggestion is the antithesis of a conspiracy theory: he believes that the threat posed by this organization has been overblown and exaggerated... and may not be supported by the facts.
[ EXCERPT , "MEET THE PRESS ," NBC TV ]
TIM RUSSERT : The search for Osama bin Laden: there was constant discussion about him hiding out in caves and I think many times the American people have a perception that it's a little hole dug out of the side of a mountain.
DONALD RUMSFELD [ OFF CAMERA ]: Oh, no.
[ CUT TO DIAGRAM OF HIDDEN CAVE HEADQUARTERS MARKED "SOURCE: THE TIMES OF LONDON", DEPICTING A MULTI-STORY UNDERGROUND COMMAND POST ]
RUSSERT : This is it. This is a fortress.
RUMSFELD: Yes.
RUSSERT : A complex. Multi-tiered. [ READING , AS LABELS ARE DISPLAYED ON DIAGRAM ] "Bedrooms and Offices" on the top, as you can see. "Secret Exits" on the side, and on the bottom. "Cut Deep to Avoid Thermal Detection." A ventilation system, to allow people to breathe and to carry on. The entrances, large enough to drive trucks and even tanks. Even computer systems and telephone systems. It's a very sophisticated operation.
[ CUT TO STUDIO ]
RUMSFELD : Oh, you bet. tThis--this is serious business. And--and there's not one of those; here are many of those.
[ CUT TO TORA BORA , AFGHANISTAN : B-52S BOMBING MOUNTAINS ]
VO: For days, the Americans bombed the mountains of Tora Bora with the most powerful weapons they had. The Northern Alliance had been paid more than a million dollars for their help and information, and now their fighters set off up the mountains to storm bin Laden's fortress and bring back the Al Qaeda terrorists and their leader.
[ NORTHERN ALLIANCE SOLDIERS SEARCHING CAVE OPENINGS ]
VO: But all they found were a few small caves, which were either empty or had been used to store ammunition. There was no underground bunker system, no secret tunnels: the fortress didn't exist. The Northern Alliance did produce some prisoners they claimed were Al Qaeda fighters, but there was no proof of this, and one rumor was that the Northern Alliance was simply kidnapping anyone who looked remotely like an Arab and selling them to the Americans for yet more money.
Where were those underground complexes where bin Laden was hiding, like some James Bond villain? Apparently they were as fictitious as the Iraqi WMDs. The neo-cons had exaggerated the power and influence of the Soviet Union during the Reagan administration... which was even then in the process of collapsing. The neo-cons had exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. Have they done the same with bin Laden's organization, too?
We heard reports of Al Qaeda sleeper cells being found in Buffalo, Seattle, Portland, Detroit, etc. And yet, none of these leads ever resulted in prosecution of real terrorists involved in activities against the Homeland. They just dropped off the radar.
None of this is to imply that there's no threat from Islamic terrorism: 9/11 spoke for itself. As did Madrid. And Bali. The latest tragedy in London is more evidence that Islamic terrorists can and will strike at the heart of western cities. Terrorism is real. Islamic terrorism is dangerous.
But are these tentacles of one great octopus... or the actions of small groups who may share a common hatred of the west? Is Al Qaeda more like a top-down, highly disciplined organization, like an army... or is it more like local "meetups" that have some loose level of communication?
One of the problems inherent in detective or espionage work is that one's root assumptions tend to color the results of one's investication. Attitudes get reinforced and fulfilled by whatever evidence is at hand... which can lead down blind alleys, and can cause disparate bits of data to form sinister, nefarious overtones. That's what conspiracy theorizing is all about: connecting tenuous dots that support the premise.
VO ... in Detroit. Four Arab men were arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.
[ VIEWS OF ARREST PHOTOGRAPHS OF SUSPECTS . TITLE : DETROIT ACCUSED ]
VO: They had been accused by another immigrant called Mr Hmimssa. But Mr Hmimssa was, in reality, an international con man with 12 aliases and wanted for fraud across America.
[ CUT TO PHOTOGRAPH ; TITLE : YOUSSEF HMIMSSA , US GOVERNMENT WITNESS ]
VO: Despite this, the FBI offered to reduce his sentence for fraud if he testified against the men. And to back up Mr Hmimssa's allegations, the FBI turned to the videotape. On the surface it was the innocent record of a trip to Disneyland by a group of teenagers who had nothing to do with the accused, but the government had discovered a hidden and sinister purpose to the tape.
RON HANSEN , REPORTER - THE DETROIT NEWS : The government expert who has looked into surveillance tapes--"casing tapes," as he referred to them--said that one of the objectives of making these kinds of tapes is to disguise the nature, the real purpose, of the tape, and he explained it that the tape is made to look benign, made to look like a tourist tape to obscure its real purpose as a tape to case Disneyland, and that the very appearance of it as being just a tourist tape is actually evidence that it's not a tourist tape.
[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; YOUTH IS SPEAKING TO CAMERA ]
YOUTH [ HOLDING IMAGINARY MICROPHONE ]: Al-Jazeera, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Hello?
[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; INTERIOR OF INDIANA JONES RIDE ]
RON HANSEN : I could never get past the fact that the tape just looked like a tourist tape. The Disneyland ride, for example, was a lengthy queue, people just making their way to the ride. The camera occasionally pans to look at the rocks on the wall, made to look like an Indiana Jones movie, and after several minutes the camera pans across and shows a trash can momentarily, and then continues off to look into the crowd. The expert basically said that, by flashing on that trash can for a moment, the people who are part of this conspiracy to conduct these kinds of terrorist operations, they would understand what this is all about: how to locate a bomb in Disneyland in California.
[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS IN RESTAURANT ]
YOUTH , WAVING : Hello!
RON HANSEN : All the talking and bantering were intended to disguise the hidden message contained within the tape.
[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS DANCING ON VIDEOTAPE ]
VO: The government was convinced that the tape was full of hidden messages. A brief shot of a tree outside the group's hotel room was there, they said, to show where to place a sniper to attack the cars on the freeway.
[ CUT TO SHAKY VIEW OF SHADOW ALONG SIDEWALK AS INDIVIDUAL CARRIES CAMERA ]
VO: And what looked like a camera which had accidentally been left running was in reality a terrorist secretly counting out distances to show others where to place a bomb.
[ CUT TO VIEW OF US AIR FORCE JET LANDING ]
VO: And the government also said that the Detroit cell was planning to attack US military bases around the world. Yet again, they found hidden evidence of this in a day planner they discovered under the sofa in the house in Detroit. What looked like doodles were in reality, they said, a plan to attack a US base in Turkey.
WILLIAM SWOR , DEFENCE LAWYER , DETROIT SLEEPER CELL TRIAL , INDICATING COPY OF DRAWINGS FROM DAY PLANNER : The government brought in its security officer from the base to testify that she interpreted this as being the main runways. She identified these as being AWACS airplanes and these as being fighter jets. She said that these solid lines were lines of fire and she also said that this down here was a hardened bunker.
VO: But the drawings in the day planner were discovered to have actually been the work of a madman. They were the fantasies of a Yemeni who believed that he was the minister of defence for the whole of the Middle East. He had committed suicide a year before any of the accused had arrived in Detroit, leaving the day planner lying under the sofa in the house. Despite this, two of the accused were found guilty. But then, the government's only witness, Mr Hmimssa, told two of his cellmates that he had made the whole thing up to get his fraud charges reduced. The terrorism convictions have now been overturned by the judge in the case, but it was acclaimed by the President as the first success in the war on terror at home.
If you are convinced that someone is part of a vast terrorist conspiracy, you'll find the evidence wherever you look.
It's critically important to the security of the world that we understand the nature of the terrorist threat. If we don't know our enemy, we'll fight the wrong war... with the wrong tools.
The question is... have we all been wearing tinfoil hats since 9/11?