Ex-British Foreign Sec: US Invented "Al Qaeda." It means "The Database."

[Octafish]

Robin Cook reported how Al Qaeda got its name. Sir Robin, the former British Foreign Secretary, is the guy who resigned his top-job to protest Britain's participation in the illegal Iraq Invasion, wrote the following for The Guardian.

Comment

The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means

The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such atrocities

Robin Cook
Friday July 8, 2005
The Guardian

I have rarely seen the Commons so full and so silent as when it met yesterday to hear of the London bombings. A forum that often is raucous and rowdy was solemn and grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of partisan emotions was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley made a humane plea to the press not to repeat the offence that occurred in Northern Ireland when journalists demanded comment from relatives before they were informed that their loved ones were dead.

SNIP...

Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we might understand each other.

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.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.

CONTINUED...

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1523840,00.html

One of my best friends is fluent in Arabic. He said "Al Qaeda" means "The Base." After he thought about it, he said it also can mean database.

The important thing is, Osama bin Laden represents your tax dollars at work. Not just in chasing him down for execution, but also from having served the U.S. in its clandestine proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and its resultant blowback. No matter who wins, or who's on top during, there are certain people who benefit: For there,s lots of money to be made off the Middle East through both war and oil, for the connected.

[Mythsaje]

1. Maybe, but,

from what I heard yesterday it actually means the "base" or "foundation."

[Octafish]

3. Right. That's what my friend said, too.

He was born in Egypt. I quoted him at the bottom of the post.



You know about Robin Cook? He's only the highest level government official in either the US or UK to resign over Bush's hard-on for war. Here's what he said in Parliament:

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term—namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create? Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?

Only a couple of weeks ago, Hans Blix told the Security Council that the key remaining disarmament tasks could be completed within months. I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted. Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply. I welcome the strong personal commitment that the Prime Minister has given to middle east peace, but Britain's positive role in the middle east does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the US and another rule for the rest.

Nor is our credibility helped by the appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament than they are in regime change in Iraq. That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress is greeted in Washington not with satisfaction but with consternation: it reduces the case for war.

What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops.

FULL TEXT and CNN article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/18/sprj.irq.cook.speech/

[Doc Bottom]

13. Base, foundation, toilet

"Base" or "Foundation" is a good literal translation. It may well be common parlance for "database."

I understand that Arabic dialects vary regionally a great deal.

A Palestinian person informed me that in Palestine, the word is most commonly used to refer to a western-style toilet (the sort you sit on, rather than the sort you crouch over) much as we would say, "the throne."

[FlemingsGhost]

2. Al Qaeda = CIA

Wake the fuck up, America.

[Octafish]

4. Fleming's Ghost Works to Protect Robin Cook

Love the moniker, FlemingsGhost. What an image!

James Bond's creator wouldn't believe it: The planet is imperiled by a cabal that has hijacked the United States government.



Even more, I love that you give a damn, FG. Here's something else Robin Cook had to say about the subject of war in Iraq:

Britain: Former minister Robin Cook says Blair lied over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction

By Chris Marsden
8 October 2003

Former Cabinet member Robin Cook has stated publicly his firsthand knowledge that Prime Minister Tony Blair knew that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction—at the very least weeks prior to his decision to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

In doing so he has confirmed that Blair deliberately lied to the British people about the danger posed by such weapons in order to justify a pact made with President George W. Bush months earlier that he would support a US-led bombardment and invasion of the oil-rich Middle Eastern state.

Cook further confirms that John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee also knew that no such threat from nuclear, chemical or biological weapons existed. Scarlett was formally in overall charge of drawing up the government’s widely discredited September 2002 security dossier which alleged that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. During the inquiry by Lord Hutton into the death of whistleblower Dr. David Kelly, the government’s main defence against charges that it had “sexed up” the dossier focused on the insistence that Scarlett “owned” the document and that the 45-minute claim was based on MI6 intelligence.

Cook has now effectively branded Scarlett to be as big a liar as Blair, equally aware that Iraq presented no danger to world peace having destroyed whatever WMDs it possessed under the pressure of more than a decade of economic sanctions and intrusive weapons inspections by the United Nations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/cook-o08.shtml

[ikri]

19. I've often thought

About whether Bin Laden is in fact a creation of Flemming's. He displays all the characteristics of a good Bond villain:

1. Super Rich. Virtually all Bond villains are independently wealthy, able to influence entire countries with their wealth. Bin Laden is super wealthy.
2. Hell bent on world domination. Bond villains generally try to control the planet either through financial means (irradiating gold, controlling the world's energy, etc.) or by setting themselves as emperors. The destruction of oil pipelines has been blamed on Al Qaeda and have led to rises in the price of oil and, most likely, helped to further enrich Bin Laden.
3. Head of a super secret crime organization. SPECTRE/Al Qaeda.
4. The injury/disability. Virtually all Bond villains have physical injuries or disabilities from superfluous nipples to huge facial scars. Bin Laden is either dead (the ultimate disability) or he has very real problems with his kidneys.
5. Powerful sidekicks. Bond villains tend not to fight unless they can avoid it, that's what hired help is for. Goldfinger had OddJob, Scaramanga had Nick Nack, etc. Bin Laden has Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (assuming he actually exists) and a multitude of "third in command"'s.

We don't need an army to hunt down Al Qaeda and/or Bin Laden, we just need Sean Connery.

[Igel]

Self-delete

I always wondered how people got those unnumbered postings. Now I know.

[Igel]

5. "Database" is a secondary meaning in Arabic; and

given how UBL used it, it's not what he had in mind.

Some Guardian reporter asked a friend what it meant, or looked it up in a dictionary, and got a skewed answer, or a range of answers and picked the one she liked.

[Octafish]

8. Correct. Osama wanted it to mean "The Base." As in "Foundation."

The CIA was the agency which wanted it to mean "Database." As in warmongering sub-stooges.

[K-W]

6. Exactly right, its a name for the Mujahadeen, now itis a myth

a fantasy organization used to distort the reality that does not in any way justify thier policy.

Once any revolutionary muslim decides to target the US he magically becomes a card carrying member of al queda and take orders from Zarkawi in Iraq, while bin laden is cloaked in mystery.

[Karenina]

7. Eating Lay's potato chips

and swilling Dr.Pepper in a Texas bunker. :evilgrin:

[Octafish]

9. We recruited them. We trained them. We paid them.

We expect them to be good. We didn't expect so many to survive.

But, survive they did. And now they're helping increase that big database of their own, the manual on fighting asymmetric warfare. And I'd bet Bush knows they aren't going to stay long in Iraq.

Here's what we should look out for, from 2000.

The "Love Bug Virus Attacks," Asymmetric Warfare; Future National Security Implications...

by C. L. Staten, CEO and Sr. Analyst
Emergency Response & Research Institute (ERRI)
ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT-ERRI Risk Assessment Services
Monday, July 10, 2000 Vol. 6, No. 192

"Only civil virtue can bring peace to an empire; only martial virtue
can quell disorder in the land. The expert in using the military has
three basic strategies that he applies: the best strategy is to attack
the enemies reliance on acuteness of mind; the second is to attack the
enemies claim that he is waging a just war; and the the last is to
attack the enemies battle positions." -- Sun-Tzu, The Art of Warfare
(1)

Has anyone noticed that the only thing that spread more rapidly than
the so-called "Love Bug Virus" was the proliferation of commentary
about it. In fact, the talk dominated many forums for several days
after the virus was first discovered. Given this level of interest
that was demonstrated and the estimated BILLIONS of dollars of damage
that was been done by this virus...one has to wonder what the
intelligence and defense community of the United States is doing about
taking a pro-active stance to protect our vital infrastructures??

Although costly to corporate America, it would appear that we as a
country, have again "dodged the bullet" of major damage to our
military and intelligence C4I networks. That may be due to the fact
that most of the known attacks so far have targeted commercial,
business or other internet-related organizations. But, the attacks
that have taken place so far beg a question that must be asked at this
juncture: What is going to happen when a concerted effort is
undertaken by experts to use denial of service attacks (2), in concert
with viruses, root-cracking, and other computer-based infrastructure
attacks to attack the defense/intelligence establishment of our
country and her security alliances throughout the world??

We see each of these recent sets of attacks as a potential "test of
effectiveness" trial. As previously discussed by this author and a
number of our other esteemed colleagues (Wilson and Fuller, Denning,
Forno, Schwartau, Toffler, etc.)(3)(4)(5)(6) one has to wonder when we
are going to take these examples of 4th Generation/Asymmetric warfare
seriously enough to make them a formal and more integral part of our
future defense preparedness and planning. Each wave of these attacks
continues to demonstrate a new and more evolved capability on the part
of our adversaries.

Given a natural evolution of these tactics and the stated intent of
some our transnational enemies, We must suggest that serious
consideration be given at the highest levels of the U.S. and allied
governments to the possibility that these tactics may be COMBINED with
the use of a series of conventional terrorist attacks -- or worse yet
-- unconventional weapons (WMD's), to cause a vastly disproportionate
effect on the both the economy of the USA and the overall psyche' of
the world.(3) In light of these circumstances, it would appear that we
may be quickly coming to a critical juncture in the way we respond to
these threats and ultimately defend our country.

CONTINUED...

http://seclists.org/lists/isn/2000/Jul/0068.html

Should've listened.

[Just Me]

15. And their bullying foreign policy is fertilizer.

Social justice means nothing to the BushCo/neoCON regime; but, it means everything to a solid two billion people.

These war-mongering corporacrats are endangering our lives on top of destabilizing the world. If they remain in power for much longer, I seriously fear the future.

[Junkdrawer]

10. I think Bin Laden is the Saudi Pied Piper...

His main job was and still is to get as many opponents to the Royal Family out of Saudi Arabia and fighting someone else - anyone else.

As a side effect of this, the Saudi Government, through Bin Laden, has an endless supply of radicals who really do want to kill as many Westerners as they can. Indeed, if Bin Laden doesn't attack the West from time-to-time, his usefulness to the Royal Family dries up.

So an attack can now be done by radical Islamists at a time, location, and method chosen by the West's largest single investor - the Saudi Government.

We are through the looking glass.

[Octafish]

12. Most interesting analogy, Junkdrawer.

The guy is building up Legions of followers, thanks to the illegal war in Iraq. And we are through the looking glass. The responsibility lies in those same places populated by the friends of the Saudi petro-trillions -- the House of Bush. And that is why, whoever is responsible for terrorism -- the major powers, the little Org, the wee nutjob in between -- the world's most-monied class benefits.

Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden

by  Peter L. Bergen

Osama's World

A Review by Adrienne Miller

"The airwaves quickly filled with blathering bloviators, who called this an attack on 'the American way of life,' " writes Peter L. Bergen in the afterward of his intelligent and witty (who would have thought?) exploration of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In such a spirit, I'm going to do everyone a favor and not make any 9/11-summing-up statements, and just tell you that Bergen has a wonderful ear for the absurd and a great sense of humor, is a marvelous storyteller and a companionable escort on this journey into bin Laden's world.

In 1997, Bergen, a journalist for CNN, nabbed the Evil One's first television interview in the English-speaking world, an encounter from which "we were not going to find out, Barbara Walters-style, what kind of tree bin Laden thought he was." (The questions, naturally, had to be submitted to bin Laden's people beforehand, and the ones about his personal life were, naturally, removed.) During the interview, bin Laden delicately sips his tea, coughs demurely (tough winter), and reveals the now-familiar claim that his network was involved in the 1993 slaughter of American troops in Somalia. Bergen goes on to explain how Al Qaeda is structured (like a holding company), the reasons for bin Laden's hold on the Muslim world ("bin Laden is perhaps better understood as the Pied Piper of jihad"), and bin Laden's non-madman rationale ("he's not some 'AY-rab' who woke up one morning in a bad mood, his turban all in a twist"). The book is at its most engaging when Bergen is on the subject of the absurdities he has encountered on his travels, such as his translator's hundred-year-old belt (which held both his dagger and his pager) and his experience chewing qat in Yemen. "No wonder," Bergen writes of his qat-induced bonhomie, "every Yemeni male from the prime minister on down is an ardent advocate of the 'chew.'"

CONTINUED...

http://www.powells.com/review/2001_11_21.html

For the record: I consider Osama a criminal of the first rank. If he is charged, tried and found guilty, then he should punished accordingly. And that is what separates civilized nations from barbarian -- The Law.

[Junkdrawer]

14. I ask myself: "1. What is the Saudi Government's biggest problem?"

and "2. Why did they want to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?"

and I keep coming back to

"1. Radicals who would do to them what the Ayatollah Khomeini did to the Shah of Iran." and

"2. To give said radicals a target other than the Royal Family."

[Octafish]

16. Saudis lord over their population through Wahhabism.

The branch of Islam is most harsh in its teachings and conservative in its interpretation of the Koran. The Saudis used their petrobillions to bribe the Wahhabi leadership. It's just like Pat Rolexson and Jerry Foulmouth over here.



Guess who pays them?

The Bush-Saudi Connection

By Michelle Mairesse

Ancestral Voices

EXCERPT...

Throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin Laden’s father.

At the same time, the United States trained and armed troops in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The United States and Saudi Arabia spent about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan, recruiting, supplying, and training nearly 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among the recruits were Osama bin Laden and his followers. (2)

With C.I.A. funding, Osama bin Laden imported engineers and equipment from his father’s Saudi construction company to build tunnels for guerrilla training centers and hospitals, and for arms dumps near the Pakistan border. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the C.I.A. and the Pakistani intelligence agency sponsored the Taliban organization, a government composed of the fanatic Wahhabi Islamic sect, the same sect that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. Although followers of the Wahhabi sect do not refer to themselves as Wahhabis, the label is useful because it applies to a single Muslim group with a set of beliefs peculiar to them alone: Wahhabis maintain that Shi'ites and Sufis are not Muslims, and that Muslims should not visit shrines or celebrate Mohammed’s birthday. (3)

The Saudi sheiks have been Wahhabis since they intermarried with the family of a puritanical Muslim scholar, Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, in 1774. Supported first by Britain and later by the United States, the Saudis captured the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, easily gaining control of the entire Arabian peninsula.

Wherever they ruled, the Wahhabis imposed their medieval code on their hapless subjects, making public spectacles of stoning adulterers to death and maiming thieves, destroying decorated mosques and cemeteries, prohibiting music, sequestering women, and promoting war on infidels. The Saudi sheiks have lavished funds on anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorists-in-training while indoctrinating other Muslims through its worldwide network of religious schools, mosques, newspapers, and presses.

CONTINUED...

[Just Me]

11. The greedy corporacrats used them; then, threw them away,...

,...and stabbed them in the backs. They were empowered as gadgets until their utility became worthless to the corporacrats.

I imagine there is a quite a complicated game being played among all of them. I even gander that the corporacrats must be incredibly paranoid because they don't really know their enemy no matter how much energy they expend and spin to create them (plus, they refuse to acknowledge that they have huge responsibility as an enemy to international stability and national security).

What a friggin' mess! How long will it take to clean it up? :shrug:

Well, we have to take them down before we can even begin to clean up their mess.

[Octafish]

17. They were used by people who believe other humans are mere things.

And they, in turn were used.

Stinger missiles

By Christopher Kremmer

Heat-seeking, supersonic shoulder-fired "stinger" missiles and launchers were doled out generously by the CIA to inflict a humiliating blow on the Soviet Union.

From 1986 to 1989, the CIA distributed more than a thousand of these surface-to-air missiles to the Afghan mujihadeen, who used some of them to bring down 270 Soviet aircraft. The U.S. is still looking for the Stinger missiles, fearing they may be in the hands of Islamic extremists, like Osama bin Laden, or hostile foreign governments.

In a covert buy-back scheme, funded by the U.S. Congress, the CIA has offered up to $US175,000 apiece, five times their original cost, to get the missiles back. The scheme initially provoked a flood of responses from Afghan warlords and shady Pakistani middlemen.  Hundreds of Stingers are believed to be still unaccounted for.

SNIP...

The lion's share of missiles went to mujihadeen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who became Afghanistan's U.S.-backed Prime Minister.  He is now exiled in Iran.

China, Iran and North Korea are among the countries rumored to possess Stingers bought from Afghan commanders. 

Source: The Age, April 15, 1999. 

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/issue43.htm

Mujahedeen:  The CIA's Heroin Heroes

CIA-supported mujahedeen engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society.  The CIA's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a major heroin refiner.  CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan/Pakistan border.  They provided up to half of the heroin used annually in the U.S. and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe.  U.S. officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation.  In 1993, an official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.

Source: William Blum, "A Brief History of CIA Involvement in the Drug Trade," 1997.

serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/blum1.html

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/issue43.htm

The only ones who profit from wars are the ones who invested in same.

[Karenina]

18. We haven't even got

a clear picture yet of the EXTENT of the mess. :SIGH: