Irrelevant Al Qaeda
For 7 years Bush and Cheney have used Al Qaeda as the Boogie Man to frighten the American public into the political submission of their liberties. Former CIA operative Bob Baer speculates that Osama Bin Laden is dead.
The last relatively reliable bin Laden sighting was in late 2001. A video that he apparently appeared in last year shows him with a dyed beard. More than a few Pakistani intelligence operatives who knew bin Laden scoff at the idea he would ever dye his beard. They think the tape was manipulated from old footage, and that bin Laden is in fact dead.
Now Ayman al-Zawahri, the brains of the organization, has taken to insulting our new President in a desperate move to prove his relevance in the face of a new American administration which clashes with the narrative Al Qaeda has been pushing for years.
In al Qaeda’s first response to Obama’s victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect — along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — “house negroes.”
As the British filmmaker Adam Curtis demonstrated years ago in The Power of Nightmares
The BBC has finally made The Power of Nightmares
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk1WkmioQvA]
I have thought for a long time that the price we have paid, in dollars, in liberty, in controlling our national inclination to kill foreigners first and ask questions later, for the sake of pursuing al Qaeda (or claiming that we are pursuing al Qaeda) has been far, far higher than the cost of 9/11. We have left a criminal regime in place for eight years and allowed them to run riot. Now terrible precedents have been set and will be very difficult to overturn. It still pains me beyond description, as a single example, that we as a nation more or less sat on our hands when the revelations about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo came out. There are still plenty of people whose only reply to these outrages is, “Freedom isn’t free.”
It isn’t quite so fashionable these days to shout “TRAITOR!” at anybody who expresses such a sentiment as mine, but then the damage has now been done. What does it matter if a sleepwalker finally wakes up after he has stumbled over the edge of the cliff? And should another attack of almost any scale occur, the frenzied bloodlust will reappear in an instant, and we’ll find the two worst possible people for president and vice president again.
But even if al Qaeda is never anything more than a gradually-diminishing boogie man, it has become so transparently clear that we’ll keep getting fresh sets of “axis of evil” boogie men, and we’ll continue to respond so eagerly to them, that there is little hope we will regrow a national pair and start using our heads again.
Better dead than a craven, cowering lackey of Dr. Strangelove and his Merry Band of Corporatists, I say.
I have thought for a long time that the price we have paid, in dollars, in liberty, in controlling our national inclination to kill foreigners first and ask questions later, for the sake of pursuing al Qaeda (or claiming that we are pursuing al Qaeda) has been far, far higher than the cost of 9/11. We have left a criminal regime in place for eight years and allowed them to run riot. Now terrible precedents have been set and will be very difficult to overturn. It still pains me beyond description, as a single example, that we as a nation more or less sat on our hands when the revelations about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo came out. There are still plenty of people whose only reply to these outrages is, “Freedom isn’t free.”
It isn’t quite so fashionable these days to shout “TRAITOR!” at anybody who expresses such a sentiment as mine, but then the damage has now been done. What does it matter if a sleepwalker finally wakes up after he has stumbled over the edge of the cliff? And should another attack of almost any scale occur, the frenzied bloodlust will reappear in an instant, and we’ll find the two worst possible people for president and vice president again.
But even if al Qaeda is never anything more than a gradually-diminishing boogie man, it has become so transparently clear that we’ll keep getting fresh sets of “axis of evil” boogie men, and we’ll continue to respond so eagerly to them, that there is little hope we will regrow a national pair and start using our heads again.
Better dead than a craven, cowering lackey of Dr. Strangelove and his Merry Band of Corporatists, I say.
Torrent’s already on its way in.
Torrent’s already on its way in.
He’s right, international terrorism is our greatest threat….it’s coming from Mexico.
He’s right, international terrorism is our greatest threat….it’s coming from Mexico.
Al Qaeda has always been irrelevant, they got lucky on 9/11 after which idiot Bush elevated them as equal players on the world stage to justify his “War On Terror” that made him a wartime President and provided Bush and his party victory in 2002 and 2004. What is relevant is what we do about the disasters caused by the counter-intuitive and counterproductive response to these marginal cave-dwellers, not to mention a minor thug in Baghdad whose removal has cost us over two trillion so far. Alas the people who Obama is relying on to shepherd in a new intelligence strategy do not inspire hope for change. I corresponded with Bob Baer about it today and he is as depressed as I am about who is heading up Obama’s transition teams to replace the military men now in charge of intelligence. John Brennan, who was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations by the CIA in the period of the run-up to the Iraq war, sat beside Tenet’s when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, black sites and secret prisons. The other transition leader is Jami Miscik who was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. She went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002 and helped draft the speech that Colin Powell was conned into giving to the United Nations which made the bogus case for war to the international community that has haunted Powell ever since. When George Tenet said, “slam dunk” to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided the amen chorus for that catastrophic political intelligence. So will there ever be any accountability for these monumental failures that led to Iraq and the war crimes, torture, abuse and secret prisons? With signs of preemptive compromise already in the air, this is change we to which we can’t afford to be deaf, particularly after eight years of being blind and dumb.
Al Qaeda has always been irrelevant, they got lucky on 9/11 after which idiot Bush elevated them as equal players on the world stage to justify his “War On Terror” that made him a wartime President and provided Bush and his party victory in 2002 and 2004. What is relevant is what we do about the disasters caused by the counter-intuitive and counterproductive response to these marginal cave-dwellers, not to mention a minor thug in Baghdad whose removal has cost us over two trillion so far. Alas the people who Obama is relying on to shepherd in a new intelligence strategy do not inspire hope for change. I corresponded with Bob Baer about it today and he is as depressed as I am about who is heading up Obama’s transition teams to replace the military men now in charge of intelligence. John Brennan, who was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations by the CIA in the period of the run-up to the Iraq war, sat beside Tenet’s when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, black sites and secret prisons. The other transition leader is Jami Miscik who was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. She went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002 and helped draft the speech that Colin Powell was conned into giving to the United Nations which made the bogus case for war to the international community that has haunted Powell ever since. When George Tenet said, “slam dunk” to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided the amen chorus for that catastrophic political intelligence. So will there ever be any accountability for these monumental failures that led to Iraq and the war crimes, torture, abuse and secret prisons? With signs of preemptive compromise already in the air, this is change we to which we can’t afford to be deaf, particularly after eight years of being blind and dumb.
What would happen if we simply left Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan?
What would happen if we simply left Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan?
Rick, Ha, their infrastructure wouldn’t get rebuilt!!
Rick, Ha, their infrastructure wouldn’t get rebuilt!!
Rick, Ha, their infrastructure wouldn’t get rebuilt!!
You can also download The Power of Nightmares free of charge from the Internet Archive.
You can also download The Power of Nightmares free of charge from the Internet Archive.
You can also download The Power of Nightmares free of charge from the Internet Archive.
Actually, I posited that here in Australia the government already realises that the bogeyman of “the terrorists” no longer has the power to frighten us. In The inflated cost of illegally copied DVDs I noted that the traditional claim that DVD “piracy” funds terrorism had been dropped and instead linked to the Australian government’s current bête noir, “child pornography”.
Actually, I posited that here in Australia the government already realises that the bogeyman of “the terrorists” no longer has the power to frighten us. In The inflated cost of illegally copied DVDs I noted that the traditional claim that DVD “piracy” funds terrorism had been dropped and instead linked to the Australian government’s current bête noir, “child pornography”.
Actually, I posited that here in Australia the government already realises that the bogeyman of “the terrorists” no longer has the power to frighten us. In The inflated cost of illegally copied DVDs I noted that the traditional claim that DVD “piracy” funds terrorism had been dropped and instead linked to the Australian government’s current bête noir, “child pornography”.
Thanks to both, Jon, for the insightful post, and Stilgherrian, for the download link.
Stories, we know, are one of the most powerful tools humans have developed.They are binded to our most intimate feelings, hopes, dreams, and obviosuly, fears, so, those who can, or have the position to, tell them to many of us, whether for good or bad, become persons or entities with a enormous degree of responsibility.
Many have tapped into that power for obscure interests, neglecting the very same responsability of their actions and estrategies.
And, by the way, let’s not forget that while we were listening to those who were, globally (I’m european), telling misleading stories of fear and terror, we didn’t pay the proper attention to those who were irresponsibly playing with what became our worse headache, the economy.
Thanks to both, Jon, for the insightful post, and Stilgherrian, for the download link.
Stories, we know, are one of the most powerful tools humans have developed.They are binded to our most intimate feelings, hopes, dreams, and obviosuly, fears, so, those who can, or have the position to, tell them to many of us, whether for good or bad, become persons or entities with a enormous degree of responsibility.
Many have tapped into that power for obscure interests, neglecting the very same responsability of their actions and estrategies.
And, by the way, let’s not forget that while we were listening to those who were, globally (I’m european), telling misleading stories of fear and terror, we didn’t pay the proper attention to those who were irresponsibly playing with what became our worse headache, the economy.
Thanks to both, Jon, for the insightful post, and Stilgherrian, for the download link.
Stories, we know, are one of the most powerful tools humans have developed.They are binded to our most intimate feelings, hopes, dreams, and obviosuly, fears, so, those who can, or have the position to, tell them to many of us, whether for good or bad, become persons or entities with a enormous degree of responsibility.
Many have tapped into that power for obscure interests, neglecting the very same responsability of their actions and estrategies.
And, by the way, let’s not forget that while we were listening to those who were, globally (I’m european), telling misleading stories of fear and terror, we didn’t pay the proper attention to those who were irresponsibly playing with what became our worse headache, the economy.
He’s right, international terrorism is our greatest threat….it’s coming from Mexico.
He’s right, international terrorism is our greatest threat….it’s coming from Mexico.