How many members does Al Qaida have? 1000? 10000?

[maveric]

Could 10000 of them "fight us over here", and defeat us?

I Had a conversation with a nice but deluded fellow at work today. He's "scared" and fears that al qaida could come ashore here and bring the USA to its knees.
I told him that if 10000 al qaida members can defeat a nation of 300,000,000 then thats not saying much for the military or the citizens of our country.

Does anyone have a ballpark figure as to the size of our "enemy"?

[leftofthedial]

1. 10

[theoldman]

2. There are over one billion Muslims in the world.

lets assume that just one percent hate us. The size of our enemy is in the millions as long as we keep poking a stick in their eye.

[madokie]

3. muslins are our enemy???????

I'm non religion so I have no enemys

[maveric]

4. I dont mean Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in general. Card carrying al Qaida members.

[EFerrari]

5. It's more like Mary Kay than The Barbie Fan Club.

You can get a franchise!

[baldguy]

6. Al Qaida isn't what the bushies would have you believe.

It's not an organization, or a philosophy, or a movement. Al Qeada is a phone book.

Al Qeada was the CIAs database of people willing to help fund the insurgency against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late '70 & early '80s. It has certainly evolved beyond that, but the structure is essentially the same.

If you hold a phone book in your hand, you have about the same amount of control of the people listed in it as Osama does of the people in al Qeada.

[Karenina]

9. Bingo.

[karlrschneider]

7. It's between a dozen and a billion.

Nobody knows for sure.
:eyes:

[undeterred]

8. I wonder if they carry cards

like members of the ACLU :evilgrin:

[Ron Green]

10. It must be a large number, because there are hundreds of "number 2's"

[marmar]

11. Well, there are at least 1,000 Al-Qaeda No. 2's, according to the Pentagon....

'Cause they've killed or captured the Al-Qaeda No. 2 at least 1,000 times.

[blondeatlast]

12. Let W= W's poll numbers, P=Paris Hilton press time in hours per day, and Scary=al Qaeda.

If W>55% and P>3, then Scary <=1000.

If W<55% and P<1, then Scary => 1,000,000.