Skeptic
13th January 2005, 03:17
Subj: LA Times: Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda does not exist?
Date: 1/11/05 11:42:03 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: [email protected]
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Nico Haupt posts:
...now let's bet within how many hours the CIA will produce a new "bin
laden audio/video" or someone plants a car bomb in Iraq....
January 11,
2005
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...0,5399604.story (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11jan11,0,5399604.story)
Robert Scheer:
Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
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?
Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered,
well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance
various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror,
including the 9/11 attacks....
Date: 1/11/05 11:42:03 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: [email protected]
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Nico Haupt posts:
...now let's bet within how many hours the CIA will produce a new "bin
laden audio/video" or someone plants a car bomb in Iraq....
January 11,
2005
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...0,5399604.story (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11jan11,0,5399604.story)
Robert Scheer:
Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
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?
Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered,
well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance
various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror,
including the 9/11 attacks....