Couple of facts about the War on Terror and Al Queda...

[Solon]

First, the War on Terror is no more winnable than a war on war. Terrorism is a TACTIC, a very old tactic, I might add, that certain people use to fight a larger, more powerful, enemy.

Second, Al Queda, let me count the ways, oh yeah, the organization didn't exist before 2001, best I can tell. That's the first time Bin Laden mentioned it. Also, how extensive and powerful Al Queda is protrayed by the US and our media is also not true. Let me explain, back in '98, we had a bunch of guys in custody for the embassy bombings that occured, so the DA wanted to pin it on terrorist number one, Bin Laden, problem was that there were no direct connections, until they found this one guy, Jamal al-Fadl, a former associate of Bin Laden. Jamal stole supposedly millions of dollars from Bin Laden and was on the run for fraud. A deal was struck where he testified about a huge, nebulous, but powerful secret organization call Al Queda, with Bin Laden at the head that controls and orders arounds subordinates around the world to do their bidding.

Bin Laden himself claims that the organization was established in 1989 as "the base" of operation for fighting against the Soviets. However, the extent of its members has not been proven to extend more than to Bin Laden himself and a few associates. This isn't to say that Bin Laden is innocent or somehow not associated with other terrorist groups or cells, just have to bring up the fact that he doesn't really order anything. This nebulous "Al Queda" is no more than a group of loosely associated groups that mostly go to Bin Laden for money, if needed, and probably view him as a "holy man", a spiritual leader, so to speak. Many of these groups operate completely independantly out of sheer practicality, this isn't the Mafia we're talking about here. This is also part of the reason why the TOTAL amount of members of Al Queda captured is not only down to the single digits, but also why they seem to have about 100 #2s and probably a thousand #3s.

[niyad]

1. as I remember, "al-qaeda" is a CIA invented name, anyway.

[Solon]

2. Past the edit stage dammit...

I wanted to mention that Jamal himself is now under FBI witness protection, and was given money by the US government in exchange for his testimony.