First, this has been mentioned in two other Kos diaries,
here and
here. That being said, this needs far more exposure than it has already gotten on Kos. In fact, No Kos reader should miss this one.
The Power of Nightmares, a three part BBC documentary available for free download on the Internet Archive, chronicles the relationship between philosophy of the Neocons and the Islamic Fundamentalists.
Part one of the series explains how conservatives in both the US and Islamist countries were seeing a trend toward moral decadence in the fifties. This lead to the creation of the neocon philosophy in the US, and a new brand of Islamic extremests in the east. What united these groups is how both used mythology to give purpose to people's lives. Like in Plato's Republican, the politicians new the stories they were telling the people weren't necessarily true, but they used them to certain effect. In the US this manifested itself with neocons playing off fear of communism and fear of terrorism.
Part two of the series examines these myths and and explains why they are false. In the most shocking section the documentary shows how the name Al Quaeda wasn't even coined until in early 2001 because the government wasn't able to convince Bin Laden for previous terror attacks unless it used RICO to show he was part of an organized group. There was no organized group of terrorists and terror cells, but government prosecutors bribed witnesses and testifying that there were. Then after 9/11 the neocons seized on this idea of Al Quaeda being an organized group to spread more fear than was necessary.
Part three actually takes you into the caves and compares what Rumsfeld was saying to what was actually happening in Afghanistan. If you have ever wondered why the US never put that many troups in Afghanistan this explains it very well. In short, there was never anything there. This section also looks at the innocent Americans who were accused of terrorism in the US. It shows how one guy's video of his vacation was said to be a terrorist casing video, and showed how another group was arrested for going paintballing when the feds said they were training to attack the US.
Anyway, I would ask you to recommend this diary because I feel very strongly that it is something that every Kos reader must watch.