iraq and alqaeda related

[violencia.Proletariat]

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mcc...00506290912.asp (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200506290912.asp)

heh what do you think?

[Socialistpenguin]

I've said it once, and I will say it again: BULLSHIT! Were is this guys sources? Out of all his banal "journalism" I see two sources. That's it. Also, the site is not very reliable when it advertises conservative books. Oh well. I take comfort in the fact that when the revolution comes, him and other reactionaries will be slaughtered.

[Forward Union]

President George W. Bush forcefully explained last night
I fell asleep after I read this

[workersunity]

What a bunch of idiots, that site with all its founders deserve to be fire bombed

[Severian]

It's a pile of lies. The fact is that years after the invasion, after going through all kinds of Iraqi intelligence files, Washington has totally failed to come up with any evidence of a connection between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda.

Which is why, as McCarthy complains, Bush has chosen not to try to make the case for one. He would be debunked and discredited. So he just uses repitition and innuendo to imply there was such a connection.

"Ahhmed Hikmat Shakir — the Iraqi Intelligence operative who facilitated a 9/11 hijacker into Malaysia and was in attendance at the Kuala Lampur meeting with two of the hijackers,"

Not the same man. There were two people - one an Iraqi intelligence operative, one an al-Qaeda operative - with names that were similar but not even exactly the same.

"Mohammed Atta's unexplained visits to Prague in 2000, and his alleged visit there in April 2001 which — notwithstanding the 9/11 Commission's dismissal of it (based on interviewing exactly zero relevant witnesses) — the Czechs have not retracted?"

Complete bullshit. A number of Czech officials have in fact said Atta's supposed meeting with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague never occurred. Not to mention the FBI. It's a myth.

"The Clinton Justice Department's allegation"

Does McCarthy believe everything the Clinton administration ever said?

Etc. I could go on. Everything on this list is old and refuted long ago. But that never stops people like McCarthy from repeating this stuff, or some people from believing it.

[Andy Bowden]

"Al Qaeda" isn't what most people think it is - namely an international, cohesive organisation with thousands of members in every country. The term "Al Qaeda" was never even coined by Bin Laden, it was put forward by a thief who had stolen some of Bin Laden's money, who claimed "Al Qaeda" was an organisation Bin Laden was in so he could be convicted in absentia for the bombings of the Kenyan and Nairobian embassies. Bin Laden only started to use the term "Al Qaeda" after the Americans made it up for him.

"Al Qaeda" which translates as "The base" or "the basic ideals" is probably more dangerous as an idea - a millenarian struggle between good and evil, Muslim and infidel - the attack on New York was a change in tactics for Islamic fundamentalists. Instead of targeting the "Near enemy" ie the local regimes they targeted the "far enemy" - America. The Islamist belief was that the local populations in the Arab world were too corrupted to overthrow their regimes, as shown when the Egyptian people failed to overthrow the Egyptian regime in the wake of Sadat's murder. What was necessary was for Islamists to attack the "infidel" to inspire Arab masses to overthrow their regimes.

So "Al Qaeda" does not exist as an international and cohesive terror organisation - but rather an idea - an idea which calls for Islamists, be they in Algeria, Indonesia, etc to attack the west directly instead of their client regimes.

So it could be argued that "Al Qaeda" the idea is more dangerous than "Al Qaeda" the fictional international and all-powerful terror organisation.

See The Power of Nightmares by John Curtis or read Al Qaeda by Jason Burke, they're both very good works on the actual nature of Islamic terrorism.