What Robin Cook said about Al Qaeda this July

[moodforaday]

Here's what Robin Cook wrote in the Guardian, published on July 8:

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html


So Robin Cook was a tinfoil-hatter too? :sarcasm:

[bryant69]

1. That's not tinfoil

It depends on whether or not you believe this was a miscalculation or deliberate action by the Bush gang.

I believe it was a miscalculation.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[moodforaday]

2. But he's saying Al Qaeda was a CIA creation

all along. Which is a point "The Power of Nightmares" BBC documentary makes, too.

[bryant69]

3. I guess i don't know in what sense you are using Tinfoil Hat

I didn't know that it was controversial that in the early days we were big supporters of Al-Qaeda because they were going after the soviets?

What is controversial is saying "And then in 2000, when it was clear that President Bush would be the new president, the CIA directed al-Qaeda to speed preperations for their plan to fly airplanes into the twin towers."

Saying the CIA created them (which is probably a misnomer, but whatever) is one thing. Saying the CIA or the Bush Administration is controlling them right now is another.

[back2basics909]

5. CHomsky has also..

..laid out the history, the same version of that history a numbe rof times as well.

It's not tin foil, and when they left Afghanistan and Bin Laden went back to Suadi Arabia, he then was angry at the American military presence. Not sure if you guys remember but there were a number of rape cases, Service men raping Muslim women. Nothing large scale, nothing really out of the usual, but that when Bin Laden started wanting military troops out of Suadi Arabia. When that didn't happen, they turned against America. Non-civilian targets at first. After the first Iraq war and the sanctions, they started hitting more and more civilian targets.

[bryant69]

6. OK, again, there are quibbles one could make with this history

but the general thrust doesn't seem that controversial.

Do you think that the United States Government or the Bush Family was directing al-Qaeda when they planned 9/11? That's where you get into controversy and accusations of tin-foil hats.

[moodforaday]

7. Financing and training is one thing

and that is not controversial. But Cook and "The Power of Nightmares" say more: there was no such thing as Al Qaeda until US administration needed a name to pin the blame on. Here's a bit from the transcript:

VO: In January, 2001, a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom of four men accused of the embassy bombings in east Africa. But the Americans had also decided to prosecute bin Laden in his absence. But to do this under American law, the prosecutors needed evidence of a criminal organisation because, as with the Mafia, that would allow them to prosecute the head of the organisation even if he could not be linked directly to the crime. And the evidence for that organisation was provided for them by an ex-associate of bin Laden's called Jamal al-Fadl.

JASON BURKE , AUTHOR, "AL QAEDA" : During the investigation of the 1998 bombings, there is a walk-in source, Jamal al-Fadl, who is a Sudanese militant who was with bin Laden in the early 90s, who has been passed around a whole series of Middle East secret services, none of whom want much to do with him, and who ends up in America and is taken on by-uh-the American government, effectively, as a key prosecution witness and is given a huge amount of American taxpayers' money at the same time. And his account is used as raw material to build up a picture of Al Qaeda. The picture that the FBI want to build up is one that will fit the existing laws that they will have to use to prosecute those responsible for the bombing. Now, those laws were drawn up to counteract organised crime: the Mafia, drugs crime, crimes where people being a member of an organisation is extremely important. You have to have an organisation to get a prosecution. And you have al-Fadl and a number of other witness, a number of other sources, who are happy to feed into this. You've got material that, looked at in a certain way, can be seen to show this organisation's existence. You put the two together and you get what is the first bin Laden myth-the first Al Qaeda myth. And because it's one of the first, it's extremely influential.

VO: The picture al-Fadl drew for the Americans of bin Laden was of an all-powerful figure at the head of a large terrorist network that had an organised network of control. He also said that bin Laden had given this network a name: "Al Qaeda." It was a dramatic and powerful picture of bin Laden, but it bore little relationship to the truth.

Now Cook traces the very name to a US-held "database" of Islamic militants. Not really tinfoil perhaps - I retract that comment - but it completely demolishes the idea of Al Qaeda as a terror organization.

[bryant69]

8. So your real argument (or the argument that you repeating)

is that Al-Qaeda is a fiction created by the United States to cover their own mass murder of 3,000 people? Than why did you start off with that bit about the United States creating Al-Qaeda? If Al-Qaeda doesn't exist than in what sense did the United States create them?

[back2basics909]

9. No..

.. i don't beleive that at all. For many reason.

One thing the demolition people forget is the towers colapsed from the top, not the bottom as all demolitions do.

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west . . .

.
.
.

A war on Poverty - well gee gollly - who woulda thunk it

I know I ALWAYS feel better when my stomach is full and I have a comfortable dwelling around me. .

From the posted Article:

The breeding grounds of terrorism are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young men who feel denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for themselves. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war on terror.

And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.
______________________________________________

Why are not wise men running our countries?

Because the Achilles Heel of Democracy is that fools are allowed to vote

(sigh)