The Al Qaeda Myth

Thanks. Everyone hates to go to the Nazi card, but in this case I thought it would make what I was saying clear.

 

I notice you never bothered to answer what the "global war on terrorism" has to do with Iraq.

While your at it, ask those same families how they feel about never capturing Bin Laden, or even fully securing Afghanistan for that matter, before launching another war in Iraq.

The Al Qaeda myth has been perpetuated beyond what is necessary, thereby flying in the face of the families of 9-11, rather than consoling them, IMO. Now even more Americans are dead in the wake of 9-11 for a seemingly unrelated reason.

 

Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a state sponser of terror. He basically paid the suicide bombers in the Palestine/Israel conflict. Apparently, he was also working with the terrorist organization MEK and training them in Iraq (which I did not know until reading it here), which dispells the notion that there were no terrorists in Iraq before we got there. I have mentioned the suicide bombers before in other threads. That alone qualifies Iraq as part of the war on terror as far as I am concerned.

 

Again, we had not caught Bin Laden or even secured Afghanastan. So why did we "globalize" the fight? If Bin Laden had already demonstrated himself as enemy #1, why are we diverting our attention? Please answer that question.

...and what does that have to do with Al Queda? You yourself are perpetrating the Al Queda Myth by mentioning terrorist activity unrelated to Al Queda in an Al Queda thread.

 

If the despotic regimes are fueling terrorism then democratizing the ME is a mechanism in the war on terrorism. AQ is fighting in Iraq, so that's obviously a part of the War on Terrorism. 9/11 happened because of the US containment policy with Iraq, so 'has to do with' both Iraq and the War on Terror. A better question would be 'why do you think Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terrorism?'

The Afghanistan argument is a non-starter. You'd have to show he was still IN Afghanistan when we intervened in Iraq. Good luck.

 

your response vis-a-vis hezbollah is vague....whatever you accuse hamas and hezbollah of, it pales in comparison to the crimes of israel....also, you fail to mention that israel was established because of terrorism with the irgun and stern gang and leaders like menachem begin, yitzhak shamir, and ariel sharon who have their hands drenched in blood and were wanted terrorists

i agree that hamas has killed some innocent civilians,but no where near as much as israel, but i dont see how you can call hezbollah a terrorist organization when they liberated south lebanon from 20 years of illegal israeli occupation....if anything they're a national liberation movement and political party

 

saddam hussein never sponsored what the us would consider terrorism

and it is common knowledge that the us is working with the terrorist organization the mko/mek in iraq and i've already posted several articles in another thread proving this....also, one of the mko/mek members works for fox news as well

 

I'm surprised that this article doesn't mention how China exaggerates the Al Qaeda presence in Xinjiang in order to justify crackdowns there. Another pretty obvious example of the theme that doesn't get much media play.

 

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 because the PLO was shelling Israel from an area of Lebanon they'd seized from the Lebanese government. Israel withdrew in 1985. That's hardly 20 years of illegal occupation.

And its not hard to call hezbollah a terrorist organization when they attacked UN peacekeepers, including killing 243 Marines in Beirut.

 

the un said the occupation of lebanon was illegal

i've also read the us military's report on this incident you mention above

1- they dont know who was responsible, so i would need you to present some proof that it was hezbollah....remember lebanon was in the midst of a civil war so it could've been anybody

2- that is not an act of terrorism and the report agrees, because the target was military

again, i cannnot think of an act of terrorism that hezbollah has committed

 

The PRC issued a government report on the subject in January 2002.

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/sept02/eastAsia.asp

 

Attacking soldiers doesn't make you a 'terrorist', last I checked.

 

The target where peacekeepers, not military:
A key point in determining the plaintiffs' eligibility to recover damages was the issue of whether the Marines were engaged in combat in their mission to Lebanon. Lamberth said the bulk of the evidence pointed clearly to a peacekeeping mission operating on stringent peacetime rules of engagement.

"As pointed out during trial, the (Marines) were more restricted in their use of force than an ordinary U.S. citizen walking down a street in Washington, D.C.," the judge wrote.


http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/30/iran.barracks.bombing/



As for other acts, from Wiki, (agree or disagree...but it provides a list):
Terrorism
Using names like the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization, Hezbollah is also believed by the United States to have kidnapped and tortured to death[citation needed] U.S. Marine Colonel William R. Higgins and the CIA Station Chief in Beirut, William Buckley, and to have kidnapped around 30 other Westerners between 1982 and 1992, including the American journalist Terry Anderson, British journalist John McCarthy, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy Terry Waite and Irish citizen Brian Keenan. Hezbollah was accused by the US government of being responsible for the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63; of being behind the suicide truck bombings that killed 241 U.S. Marines in their barracks in Beirut in October 1983; of bombing the replacement U.S. Embassy in East Beirut on September 20, 1984, killing 20 Lebanese and two American soldiers; and of carrying out the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome. Hezbollah denies involvement in these attacks and no evidence has come forth since.

Alleged Hezbollah terrorist involvement
Note: Hezbollah has been suspected or accused of complicity in the following attacks although they deny involvement and no evidence has been given.

On February 16, 1992 Abbas al-Musawi, Hezbollah's secretary general was killed by a rocket attack launched by an Israeli helicopter gunship. On March 17, 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was car-bombed. Responsibility for the attack that killed 29 people was claimed by a group that identified itself as Islamic Jihad. The stated motive was retaliation for Israel's assassination of Abbas al-Musawi.
On July 18, 1994 a Jewish community center in Argentina was bombed (AMIA Bombing) killing 85 people. A Lebanon-based group called "Partisans of God" claimed to be the author of the attack. The Argentinean government formally charged Imad Mughniyah as a suspect in both attacks, and in October 2005, Argentinean courts formally charged Hezbollah member Ibrahim Hussein Berro with the attack.
On July 19, 1994 a Panamanian flight was bombed in the (Alas Chiricanas bombing) leaving 21 people dead, including 12 Jews. The bombing was claimed by an unknown group called Ansar Allah.
On July 26, 1994 eight days after the AMIA Bombing in Argentina, a car bomb exploded outside the Israeli embassy in London, injuring 14 people. Thirteen hours later a similar car bomb exploded outside a Jewish charity in North London.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

 

A non-state entity attacking peacekeepers? That's what I'd call it.


Hezbollah and its affiliates have planned or been linked to a lengthy series of terrorist attacks against the United States, Israel, and other Western targets. These attacks include:

a series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s;
the suicide truck bombings that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983;
the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane’s pilot leaning out of the cockpit with a gun to his head;
and two major 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina—the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy (killing twenty-nine) and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (killing ninety-five).

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9155/

 

Well, this is pretty much a textbook example of exaggeration which the PRC actually admitted for once:

"Beijing's estimates of the extent of al Qaeda influence were overstated, with claims that there were 300 Uyghurs in Afghanistan in late 2001 and that all Uyghur separatists in Xinjiang were linked to al Qaeda. Later this was reduced to claims of 100 Uyghurs in Afghanistan, and altogether 1000 Uyghurs in Xinjiang trained by al Qaeda and the Taliban"

What relevance does this paranoia have to the discussion? This discussion is about how governments exaggerate terrorist presence to justify certain actions - and it something that Asian and Western governments have in common. You're so hypersensitive about the PRC it's not even funny, yet you constantly criticize the US government. Just because the PRC does things that I don't like doesn't mean that I'm insulting you or your family, I'm just exercising my right to state my beliefs on it, just like you did by posting this article.

 

Link please. tia

We'll need proof that AQ was there PRIOR to us waging war in Iraq.

So that means we should wage full scale war with Iraq? By your logic, wouldn't that incite more terrorist activity?

...and the BEST question is why did we expand the WOT globally? That question supercedes yours. When you have proven that AQ was impacted in any significant way by Iraq prior to our invasion, then the answer to your question is self evident. Until that time...

How would demonstrating Bin Ladin's location affect our decision to wage war in Iraq? Good luck.

Don't forget that Afghanistan was still largely unstable ...regardless of Bin Ladin's whereabouts.



Not sure I understand your point and how Bin Ladin's uncaptured situation helps your case for going to war in Iraq.

 

what's tia? you need a link that AQ is in Iraq?

No we don't. You asked why Iraq was relevant to the War on Terror. Al Quaeda IS in Iraq.

You asked what relation Iraq had to the War on Terror. Whether or not we should have intervened in Iraq is a different question. But the answer to that question is 'yes.' (And is there such a thing as a half scale war?)

By my logic? What are you referring to? I said despotic regimes cause terrorism, so by that logic - no. However, I'll conceed that intervention might cause a short term spike in terrorism although its hopeless to try and quantify it as the largest cases of terrorism we happening prior to the intervention.

Uh, because there are terrorist in different places on the globe?

Lol, what? You're making no sense. I don't have to prove AQ was in Iraq before the intervention. That wasn't your question.

Because you keep repeating the same tired rhetoric about failing to find bin laden and fallaciously connecting it to the intervention in Iraq. There is no link between the two unless you can show one. For all we know, bin laden was out of Afghanistan shortly after our intervention there, or really its possible he was gone before that (just as he moved before we struck their camps during the Clinton administration), so the intervention in Iraq hasn't effected the mission to find him at all.

Yeah, and what does that have to do with your warbling about Iraq.

Yeah, I got that you didn't understand what I was saying. Hopefully its a little more clear now. You asked what relation Iraq had to the WOT. I replied with several ways it has relation to it. You asserted the intervention had hindered our ability to catch Osama. I pointed out you have no evidence of any such thing.