Earlier this month I posted a diary titled
To Hell with the War on Terror wherein I attempted to make the point that we have all been snookered about this whole Global War on Terror bullshit. We've all been made suckers for a bunch of cynical, greedy war profiteers who wanted a war at any cost - as long as
the cost (of up to 2 trillion dollars) was to the American people and the profits were to
Halliburton,
Cheney, the
Defense Industry,
Big Oil, et al.
(more over the fold...)
Today I came across the following article on a related issue, the myth of Al Qaeda.
The Myth of Al Qaeda
Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden's group was small and fractious. How Washington helped to build it into a global threat.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 5:55 p.m. ET June 28, 2006
June 28, 2006 - The capture of Ibn Al-Shaykhal-Libi was said to be one of the first big breakthroughs in the war against Al Qaeda. It was also the start of the post-9/11 mythologizing of the terror group. According to the official history of the Bush administration, al-Libi (a nom de guerre meaning "the Libyan") was the most senior Al Qaeda leader captured during the war in Afghanistan after running a training camp there for Osama bin Laden. Al-Libi was sent on to Egypt, where under interrogation he was said to have given up crucial information linking Saddam Hussein to the training of Al Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological warfare. His story was later used publicly by Secretary of State Colin Powell to justify the war in Iraq to the world.
The reality, as we have learned since--far too late, of course, to avert the war in Iraq--is that al-Libi made up that story of Iraq connections, probably because he was tortured by the Egyptians (or possibly Libyan intelligence officers who worked with them).
Al Qaeda has been blown all out of proportion into a demonic boogeyman and a direct threat to every living American. The Newsweek article goes on to say:
(snip) Certainly al-Libi is looking less and less like the fearsome "bin Laden lieutenant" he was made out to be. And we find this sort of debunking has occurred with many Al Qaeda "lieutenants" whose gauzy reputations are reduced to pill-sized smallness once the culprits themselves fall into our hands.
Another one of these key figures was said to be Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. As NEWSWEEK first reported in "The Debate Over Torture" more than 18 months ago, the CIA's difficult interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was resisting standard questioning methods, set in motion a long train of Justice Department and White House legal memos justifying harsh treatment of terror suspects. This legal discussion ultimately contributed to the tougher interrogation standards applied at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Was all this effort at extracting information worth the blight to America's honor and reputation?
Hell no it's not worth it! It is to our
everlasting shame that we have allowed torture to go on in our name all over the world. The USA, who once led the world away from such hideous and barbaric practices, now the chief proponents of the inhuman abomination of willful torture. I can't
believe that we have done this to ourselves! I can't
believe that we have pissed away our hard-earned reputation for fairness, compassion, and the rule of law! I just can't believe it!
(snip) But it is true that the more we learn about Al Qaeda, the more we have to conclude that the group contained a lot more Abu Zubaydah types than it did Muhammad Attas. In contrast to the truly terrifying Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, and 9/11 master strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--both of whom took terrorism to new levels of competence--most Al Qaeda operatives look more like life's losers, the kind who in a Western culture would join street gangs or become a petty criminals but who in the jihadi world could lose themselves in a "great cause," making some sense of their pinched, useless lives. Like Richard Reid, who tried to set his shoelace on fire. Or Ahmed Ressam, who bolted in a panic from his car at the U.S. border during an alleged mission to bomb the L.A. airport. Or Iyman Faris, who comically believed he could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Or the crazed Zacarias Moussaoui, who was disowned even by bin Laden. Then you've got the hapless Lackawanna Six, and, more recently, the Toronto 17, who were thinking about pulling off an Oklahoma City-style attack with ammonium nitrate--or perhaps just beheading the prime minister--but hadn't quite gotten around to it.
Were these people potentially lethal? Yes. One doesn't have to graduate at the top of one's class to set off explosives in a satchel on a subway. Were most of them capable of hatching a minutely timed scheme to obtain and detonate a nuclear bomb in a city, or launch a biowarfare attack? No.
And should anyone doubt the Bush administration's purposeful glorification of goofballs, we are reminded of their determined commitment to this cause by this typical crock-o-shit:
Miami "terror" busts: conspiracy or thoughtcrime?
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Mon, 06/26/2006 - 16:27.
The standards for what constitutes a terrorist conspiracy continue to get radically dumbed down. Most Americans don't seem to care, as those targeted invariably belong to some fringe and seemingly extremist sect. In this case, it appears to be an offshoot of Moorish Science, an indigenous American tradition held to be utterly heretical by ultra-orthodox Sunnis of the al-Qaeda variety. However, this has not stopped the mainstream media from (inaccurately) portraying the suspects as linked to al-Qaeda. The June 22 arrest of seven men in Miami's Liberty City district came in a raid by some 20 FBI agents in full-on paramilitary gear. Yet authorities immediately admitted the so-called "conspiracy" seems to be little more than a bunch of bad-ass braggadocio.
These guys are really stretching it. They desperately want us to believe that Al Qaeda is a vast and looming menace. "They hate us for our freedom," they say without a trace of irony. Speaking of which, the
Newsweek article, the Myth of Al Qaeda referenced earlier goes on to say:
Ironically the most competent "Al Qaeda" leader in recent years, at least since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003, was Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who came close to subverting the American project and creating a sectarian war in Iraq. But he did that largely on his own, facilitated by the fortuitous conjoining of Iraq with the war on terror. Before the Iraq war Zarqawi was a nobody, hiding out in northern Iraq, largely unconnected to Saddam's regime even though Colin Powell, in his infamous Feb. 5, 2003, United Nations Security Council speech, claimed that Saddam had given Zarqawi "harbor." And he was not part of bin Laden's group. Would he have attacked U.S. interests at some point, somewhere? Almost certainly. But the Iraq invasion gave Zarqawi a chance to blossom on his own as a jihadi.
Another figure named by Powell in that U.N. speech, Abu Atiya, was said to be the Zarqawi and Al Qaeda link to terror networks in Europe. But according to a French investigation documented in Le Figaro newspaper, he turned out to be a minor figure. "If he was so important, then why was he returned to his home country, Jordan, and released at one point?" says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, who has closely tracked the fate of high-level "ghost" detainees. "He does not fit the profile of high-level Al Qaeda terrorists. Neither do any of these supposed Al Qaeda operatives that were trumped up by administration officials in 2002 and 2003. Every single one of these stories, when subjected to the harsh light of public scrutiny, has collapsed."
It seems that the neocon asswipes in the Pentagon and the Whitehouse just can't invent fake bad guys quickly enough. Most of these guys are simply no real threat. A bunch of uneducated, incompetent, and deranged religious fanatics who are capable of little more than serving as perfect foils for the gang of thugs who have taken over our country. More from the Myth of Al Qaeda:
(snip) But there was substantial evidence showing that, up to 9/11, Al Qaeda could barely hold its act together, that it was a failing group, hounded from every country it tried to roost in (except for the equally lunatic Taliban-run Afghanistan). That it didn't represent the mainstream view even in the jihadi community, much less the rest of the Muslim world. This is the reality of the group that the Bush administration has said would engage us in a "long war" not unlike the cold war--the group that has led to the transformation of U.S. foreign policy and America's image in the world.
Not only is Al Qaeda a manufactured and over-hyped enemy, but our government has never been
serious about punishing them (well, maybe a little when we first went into Afghanistan). The Newsweek article , the Myth of Al Qaeda concludes:
(snip) The ultimate tragedy of the Iraq war was not only that it diverted the U.S. from the knockout blow against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan--the deaths of bin Laden and Zawahiri would likely have persuaded most jihadis it was wiser to focus on the near enemy--but that Iraq also altered the outcome of Al Qaeda's internal debate, tipping it in bin Laden's favor. "Iraq ended that debate because it fused the near and the far enemy," as Arquilla puts it succinctly. America ventured into the lands of jihad and willingly offered itself as a target in place of the local regimes. And as a new cause that revived the flagging Al Qaeda movement. It is, no doubt, bin Laden's greatest victory.
So let's stop letting the assholes yank our chains. Let there be no more manipulative fear mongering! Let there be no more orange or green or purple Terror Alerts! Let there be no more usurpations of our Constitutional rights! And let there be no more Global War on Terror!
Bring `em home TODAY!
Can I get an AMEN?