[Shadow_Group] Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?, by Robert Scheer (LATimes.com)Just Say 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11

[ItalysBadBoy]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheer11jan11,1,5649056.story


L.A. Times: Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?,

by ROBERT SCHEER 
January 11, 2005

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 3 - hour historical film by Adam Curtis 
recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., (BBC)
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. 
Nor does it challenge the notion
that a terrifying version of fundamentalist Islam 
has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the world. 

But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative 
than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
directly challenges the conventional wisdom
by making a powerful case that the Bush administration,
led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives,
has seized upon the false image of a unified international
terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire
in order to push a political agenda.

Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be 
a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon 
than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, 
with Bin Laden as its head, would suggest.

While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat of terrorism 
is both real and growing, it disagrees that the threat is centralized:

"There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups
around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas
and who will use the techniques of mass terror 
— the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. 

But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful 
hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. 
Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, 
from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, 
the British and Americans are chasing a Phantom Enemy."

The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions 
and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible
narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission 
nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence 
from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States.

Everything we know comes from two sides that both have
a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda:
The terrorists themselves and the military and
intelligence agencies that have a vested interest
in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as
"The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, 
simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy.







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