Al Queda is not a threat

[Taverner]

They got us on 9/11 because of gross incompetence by the Bush Administration. That incompetence carried well into Bush's administration.

Every other attempt has been a pathetic failure.

-Remember the Edinborough Airport bombing attempt? Two doctors, supposedly Al Queda's brightest and best, had this novel idea of filling a van full of gas and driving it into an airport. The problem: traffic barriers right in front. These guys didn't even have the smarts to case out the joint before they did it. The result, 3rd degree burns on the doctors, laughing Scots everywhere else.

- The shoe bomber. The guy uses MATCHES???? MATCHES???? When lighters are fully allowed on planes? I'm surprised the guy was even able to tie his shoes.

- The underwear bomber. Funnier than the Edinburough guys. This guy tries to make his underwear explode, but he doesn't do it in a bathroom, no. That would require thinking. Instead he does this right in his seat, in front of a lot of people who don't want to be blown up.

Now many of us here don't live in Pakistan or Afghanistan, so we have no idea that we have been BOMBING THE SHIT out of these countries, and in doing so we took out almost all of Al Queda. At the same time, we also took out thousands of innocent civilians. I'm not going to get into this issue except to point out that Al Queda is gone. There is no threat. War on terror: won.

It's like we're sitting in Hitler's bunker, picking our teeth with his bones, and saying to ourselves: 'Let's keep WWII going on indefinitely! I'm sure there's some Nazis to the East! (Patton seriously considered continuing into Moscow, so this is not such a strange idea.)

[msongs]

1. when your government is the most effective al queda recruiter, some changes would be useful nt

[Taverner]

9. GITMO is the best recruiting tool, agreed

[woo me with science]

17. GITMO and the fleet of murder drones. nt

[Taverner]

22. Yep. It's almost as if they want Al Queda to rebuild

Which comes down to the question:

Is it ineptitude or is it willful evil?

Cases can be made for both, and the fact that it's easier to do a drone strike from an office in Langley than it is to order pizza doesn't give us any answers either way

[woo me with science]

25. $$$$$$$$$$$$$

Entrenched power and overwhelming financial reward enable human beings to rationalize and justify virtually anything.

[Taverner]

31. This is true

Sad, and true

Why conspiracy when simple greed will suffice...

[UserNSAv32]

27. Drones and GITMO are great Recruiting Tools

if another country was using drones against my state I would fight back in any and all ways possible including attacking so called non military targets. the USA Are the Terrorists now and have been for some time now.

[RevStPatrick]

2. I think the people of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam might disagree...

Now, if you had said "Al Queda is not MUCH OF a threat" I would be more likely to agree with you.

[Taverner]

7. Islam v Christianity has been going on in Africa for centuries

That's what happens when two divergent religions try to colonize a continent

[RevStPatrick]

35. Huh?

Al Queda bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.
Hundreds of people died.
I don't think that was simply about Islam v Christianity.
It was about American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia.

[Taverner]

36. Oh I thought you were referring to CURRENT events

You do know there is a war going on in those countries, Islam v Christianity, except with child soldiers and warlords

[muriel_volestrangler]

41. In Kenya and Tanzania? No

Neither has "child soldiers and warlords". Kenya has some ethnic-based political fighting.

If you ever need a quick overview of a country, the BBC profiles are a good place to start:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13681341
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14095776

[disidoro01]

3. What??

We are re-arming them in Syria, so they can turn on us like they did after we created them to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan back in the 80's. They are not a threat now but once we rebuild them, they will be.
I believe they never should have been a threat, we never should have created them, trained them or funded them.
If you point is to pull out of the ME, I agree wholeheartedly.
There was a threat and it's the threat we created and now we want to re-create it.
We need to stop exporting terror because it is wrong and because sometimes it comes home to roost...9/11

[Taverner]

5. I agree we are doing this in Syria right now

And this can only turn out bad...

But even when Al Queda was the big boogeyman of the 90s and 00s, most of their plots failed

Remember the LAX Y2K bombings? Of course you don't because border cops caught them blatantly trying to bring bombs over the border.

These guys are inept - we have nothing to fear here

And yes, we do need to GTFO of the Middle East. And the rest of the world. The US military is too damn big, and its budget is what will kill us all, not Al Queda

[Blackford]

4. That's wholly bullshit, sir.

I lost a co-worker who was a beautiful young lady in the 7/7 bombing in London, sir.

I take umbrage at your assertion that Al Queda is not a threat.

[Taverner]

6. Did not mean to offend but most of the people who planned that, plotted that, are dead

Most of the big wigs of Al Queda were killed in drone strikes. Granted, they also killed a lot of innocents.

But if you want justice, you have it.

[Blackford]

8. Justice is not complete, sir

Until the whole of Al Queda is destroyed forever, justice will remain incomplete.

They must be utterly and completely destroyed.

[Taverner]

10. You are waging a war on an idea, not a group

Ideas don't die with bombs

Ideas die with evidence

[Blackford]

11. Al Queda is a well defined group, sir. n/t

[Taverner]

12. And they are mostly dead

What's left is hardly a threat

If we are going by group definition, then maybe, JUST MAYBE, there might be 200 left

That's from the CIA

If anything, they would inflate the numbers

You want to kill all 200 of those people? How many innocent bystanders are you willing to sacrifice.

You are aware that we have killed more innocent people in drone strikes than all of Al Queda's actions, right?

[Blackford]

13. We must agree to disagree on the threat level

because until every last one of them has been hunted down and killed, they will remain a treat in my opinion.

[Taverner]

14. OK - I understand - this is personal

And no one has any right to admonish you for your anger

Agree to disagree

[woo me with science]

21. What you just expressed is justification for war without end,

which is exactly what Orwell predicted, and what the MIC and those who profit from it seek.

[frylock]

23. that ain't going to happen..

ever.

[Historic NY]

29. I agree, there are still a few unaccounted for leaders

in the echelon just waiting for their chance.

[disidoro01]

20. And

Bullshit back to you. If you can't read, don't post and it's apparent you didn't read my post.

[Blackford]

26. Pardon me, but I was not responding to a post of yours. n/t

[Politicalboi]

15. They have never been a threat

Our own government IS the threat IMO.

Al Queda, big tough terrorist who fly over military bases instead of taking off from NY.

I am NEVER going to believe Al Queda was responsible. I know they couldn't stop jets from intercepting them, but somehow it happened. Billions spent on defense, but our DEFENSE building gets hit.

All believable for a 6 year old. But I guess we have plenty of those here in America.

[Taverner]

18. I don't buy into the false flag hypothesis for one big reason

It worked

What else did Bush do that worked?

Absolutely nothing

Say it was Cheney, and not Bush, or some rogue element of the MIC...

In today's world of ever present cell phones, constant surveillance, etc someone would have evidence of a smoking gun

Now ineptitude, complete and utter ineptitude, that I can believe

Because, yes, people can be that stupid

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. You know, mihop...nope

It takes too many people...it will leak. We are talking tens of thousands here.

LIHOP, either by incompetence or design, sure. It takes what? Ten people?

I tend to lean on the latter why? The USPA could have never been implemented without it.

I don't think they were incompetent, they appeared such, but hey were not incompetent. They achieved every policy goal, and remaking the country into a chimera of itself.

After many years of thinking about it...nope, no incompetence here...and I have no idea what scares me more, incompetence, or this level of fundamental chance. They reached every goal of the pnac plan including the new Pearl Harbor.

[ForeignandDomestic]

38. Once I discovered shortly after the event..

That the Bin Laden family through their investments via the Carlye Group would be making money off of The War On Terror and the US hunting down their family member Osama, I knew we had just entered bizarro world.


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/business/bin-laden-family-liquidates-holdings-with-carlyle-group.html?smid=pl-share

[ForeignandDomestic]

39. ^

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/business/bin-laden-family-liquidates-holdings-with-carlyle-group.html?smid=pl-share

[Recursion]

16. I know the families of some dead diplomats who disagree

The embassy bombings? The Cole bombing?

[Taverner]

19. And since the drone strikes?

Even if we count Benghazi, there were maybe 2-3 "al queda" ops involved

They couldn't even guard their leader and founder - which to me shows a broken group. Like the Japanese Red Army, or Nazi Germany

[msanthrope]

28. Mumbai, the PETN package plot, the BA bomb plot, the Times Square bomb plot and Fort

Hood? Why forget those?

[Taverner]

30. Only two of those were sucessful

And Mumbai was only sucessful because it was an ISI op, not truly Al Queda

And despite the "ties" the shooter had with Al Queda, that had lone gunman written all over it. And of course, ineptitude. When you have an officer giving classes on how he wants to wage jihad against the US, they should have taken notice.

[msanthrope]

40. All of those plots were successful. The goal of terrorism is to terrorize...and you can only

terrorize when the public knows what you have done. So every single plot we know about is a successful exercise to a terrorist. That is how Al Qaeda operates...they recruit on every public action. Anwar Awlaki posted hundreds of video to YouTube extolling the exercises of AQAP...including the ones you would call 'failures.'.

You seem to lack a basic knowledge about AlQaeda and how it works.

[polichick]

32. Gotta follow the money - wars are very profitable...

Even fake wars.

[Jamastiene]

33. They are continuing to use Al Qaeda as a "boogeyman."

Americans are now conditioned to believe any sort of boogeyman story and be afraid if the government tells us to. It's sad, really.

[Taverner]

34. I know. When I hear people call the Boston Marathon bombing "Al Queda"

I just shake my head and do a facepalm

[Archae]

37. The mistake is in describing Al-Qaeda like we do some James Bond bad guy organization.

Like "SPECTRE" with Blofeld as "Number One" and everyone under him.

Al-Qaeda is a name that any clown can use.
One guy can set up a website in some other country, call himself the "Al-Qaeda Holy Warriors To Blow Ourselves Up For Jihad ," and our lazy-ass news media lumps that one guy in with Osama Bin Laden.

In reality most of these Al-Qaeda groups have no connection to each other, and in fact when these groups meet they become very busy trying to kill each other.

[Taverner]

42. Why did a bunch of scenes from 'Life of Brian' pop into my head?

We're the Judean PEOPLE'S Front. We hate the Romans - almost as much as we hate the People's Front of Judea.

[Archae]

43. LOL!

Yup!