'terror expert' at Cato puts together what I and others have blogged for years

[yurbud]

Here's the expert's story:

http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Briefing/2007/07/20/expert_alqaida_cant_conquer_iraq/3090/


Here's what I posted on my blog a couple of days ago:

THE INSURGENCY IS NOT AL QAEDA

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq/">Israelis and Saudis separately studied our interrogations of foreign fighters captured in Iraq and found that most had no prior connection to al Qaeda and were motivated by our invasion, not religious fundamentalism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900890_pf.html">The military admits they inflated al Qaeda and Zarqawi's role in the insurgency for propaganda purposes in both Iraq and the US.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/248.php?nid=&id=&pnt=248&lb=brme">The Iraqis don't like al Qaeda. The Bushies use this to make the leap to say that they don't like all the insurgency. The reality is Iraqis recognize al Qaeda is responsible for attacks on civilians and are trying to inflame sectarian violence, and sectarian violence is one of our excuses for staying.

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/07/facts-missing-from-iraq-debate-updated.html

I made the same observation this guy did back during the 'killing Zarqawi' stunt:
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/06/3-things-about-killing-zarqawi.html

If this 'expert' is joining the reality based community, god bless him. But the media should come up with a new term for someone with a lot of degrees who says something laymen who follow the news figured out a couple of years ago, and that conscientious experts and reporters said before the war even started. Maybe they should call them experts on the DC consensus or corporate 'house experts' like they used to call the slaves who waited on the master instead of picking cotton.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Yep--the Iraqis don't want AQ either. If you're a recently destabilized

country made up of tribal factions, all of whom are seeking power and advantage, why would you want violent foreign fighters to gain the upper hand? They have no stake in that country, it is not their homeland. Even 94% of Sunnis, according the the UPI article, don't have a favorable view of AQ, and AQ is largely Sunni-affiliated, from what I understand. I will have to check out UPI more often--they seem to have some excellent and insightful articles in there. Noticed that there was one about my Senator (Hagel) in the sidebar about a Cato speech he made--another good read. Thanks!

[MrPrax]

2. Kicked

Recommend -- great links.

From his Greg Palast link:

"...O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to “OIF” — Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn’t sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq’s OIF.

“It’s about oil,” Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA’s top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam’s former oil minister to finalize the plans for “liberating” Iraq’s oil industry. In London, Bush’s emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq’s crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq’s oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq’s oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn’t matter. The key thing is what’s inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will “enhance its relationship with OPEC.”

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude..."

Greg Palast

Link found via: Professor SmartAss

Don't like CATO, but even these days ideologically bent folks like that have no problem seeing the light, which makes it all the more peculiar that 'moderates' never seem to see through it.

[soothsayer]

3. I'm pretty sure al qaeda was--and is--- a CIA invention. now maybe they actually

RECRUIT woulld-be terrorists to get them in sting operations, or maybe they created it and it sort of took on a rudimentary life of its own, but I mostly don't believe it's real.

[aquart]

4. Certainly not the monster threat they present to us.

And they sure as hell got most of their training from us.

But I continue to believe it's racist to insist that the brown guys can't plot and plan well enough to cause us misery and grief. It's racist to deny their capacity for independent thought and action.

But were the zealots duped into being tools of this administration's usurpation of power? I suspect they were. The Bush administration had all the necessary information to stop them. Didn't.

[TwilightGardener]

5. I have to disagree--I think it's a real threat.

A monster that we helped create with our own past policies and actions in Afghanistan and the ME, and overused as propaganda to keep our war efforts going, but real nonetheless. I hate to go down the road of giving people the impression that Democrats don't take the AQ/terror threat seriously. Believe me, if Pakistan ends up destabilized, and AQ or an equally militant Islamic terror faction manages to take control of its nukes, we're going to believe they exist. Scary.

[yurbud]

10. if you read some history on false flag terror and even our terrorist problems, it's easy to divert

channel, or catch these groups.

Even the ITALIANS, when the Red Brigade was about to kidnap someone that wasn't politically useful to them swooped in, arrested the leadership, then used their provocateurs in the group to redirect their efforts toward kidnapping and killing the prime minister, which they did.

[TwilightGardener]

11. I don't know if our inability to contain AQ is out of incompetence

or if it was deliberate--the paranoid part of me thinks it was deliberate to leave the "head on the snake", because taking out Osama too soon would not have been useful to Chimpy's Middle East efforts. Now that the American public has grown impatient, suddenly there's a renewed interest in AQ and in getting Bin Laden. But it's also entirely conceivable to me that the hatred of us by radical Muslims is real and dangerous, despite any manipulations by ChimpCo of the terror threat and of the "war on terror" itself. I simply disagree with the comment that AQ is wholly a CIA invention, and thus not a genuine threat.

[yurbud]

12. before the first WTC bombing in '93, FBI had an informant in bombers group...

he started recording his handlers when they wanted him to give the bombers real explosives (he thought it might be better to give them fake stuff himself).


Likewise, two of the 9/11 bombers lives with an FBI informant.

Some were on a terror watch list, but got expedited visas from Saudi Arabia.

and Sen. Bob Graham said the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 found that two of the hijackers were backed by the Saudi government.

We were on those guys like white on rice.

[TwilightGardener]

14. But are they still in any way under our control or manipulation, or are they

the Frankenstein that broke out of the lab? I'm not too surprised by the FBI/Saudi connections to the terrorists, I kind of suspected that--what I want to know is, just how much of AQ's activities and power are influenced directly by us, and how much of it is their genuine stated goal to wipe us out? Combo of both, perhaps?

[yurbud]

22. see this documentary on what we did in Europe with terror groups until 1991:

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/07/bbc-video-on-false-flag-terror-intel.html

You should always ask yourself whose interests are served by the action in question.

[Karenina]

25. Who is this "They" you speak of?

Westerners INSIST on believing THEIR structures are the "norm." Arab culture does NOT follow your "top down" rules. You cannot grasp the dynamics until you confront this.

[TwilightGardener]

34. Al Qaeda. There were previous comments (above) linking AQ to the US Government.

[Vincardog]

17. The CIA paid OBL millions to help him build the resistance to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan

While he was at it he kept getting requests by people who wanted to help.

He entered those names into a table on his PC.
That is how the database "AL Quaida" was born.

It was conceived bought and paid for by the CIA.
Why do you think we will never see OBL in a court of law?

[AntiFascist]

26. Ah ha, this makes sense! ...

I always considered OBL to be a double-agent, not so much with the CIA but possibly with Saudi intelligence. His purpose may be to recruit the worst enemies of the ruling royalty, only to have them blow themselves up or captured if they get too close to the House of Saud. There are long lists of al Qaeda operatives captured in SA. The purpose of 9-11 may have been to get the US involved in attacking these enemies of the ruling elite all across the Middle East.

Bush Senior created the Shadow Government by splitting off parts of the CIA and privatizing them as a way of working around Congress in order to setup SA intelligence and its air force. Talk about "Islamo-fascism"...

[kimmerspixelated]

19. Wasn't Bin Laden a CIA operative?

If truly so, most sheeple would be aghast, would they not,regarding the fact that basically OBL is/was on the payroll of the the BUSHITS!OBL...connect the dots...(US)=9/11 attack!!!

[SpiralHawk]

6. Bingo - this is a phony republicon oil & power CRUSADE

And it is making America hordes of enemies around the world, and a hell of a lot unsafer.

But the chickenhawk republicons are reaping Massive War Profits, and could give a shit less about Iraq, or America, or our sons and daughters in uniform suffering and dying for republicon greed.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Trailing-edge theorists?

Drag riders in the sky?

[annabanana]

21. Both good and descriptive possibilities. . . n/t

[Uncle Joe]

8. How about "the prodigal experts?"

This seems to have a spiritual feel about it and many of the people duped by the deceptions, may be able to relate to it.

[yurbud]

9. CORRECTION: this guy has been right on Iraq all along

I went to CATO page to check his track record, and by the time I looked it up, the editing period on this post had expired.

I didn't mean to piss on our side, I just picked the wrong scapegoat for the "late to reality" party.

[CGowen]

13. Just after 911 "Ansar al-Islam" pops up in Iraq-Kurdistan, some even suggest flown into the region

...........

Since September 2001, Ansar al-Islam has grown in size, incorporating Al Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan in the wake of the US bombings. (Christian Science Monitor, 15 March 2002) Revealed by Seymour Hersh, "an unknown number" of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters "were flown to safety" in a US sponsored airlift organised by Pakistan's Military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). These Mujahideen fighters were apparently evacuated to Kashmir, where they joined Al Qaeda and ISI supported Islamic terrorist groups. While there is no firm evidence, one suspects that some of the Mujahideen fighters may also have fled from Afghanistan to other countries (eg. Northern Iraq), with the tacit approval of the Pentagon.

Northern Iraq -which falls in "the no fly zone"-- is virtually a US protectorate. US military and intelligence observers stationed in the Kurdish region have turned a blind eye to the influx of Al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan, as well as to the various acts of terrorism committed in the Kurdish region. According to one report «Al Qaida affiliates coordinating the movement of people, money and supplies for Ansar al-Islam have been operating freely in the capital." (Midland Independent, 6 February 2003). In all likelihood, Ansar al-Islam, which is also integrated by Afghan-Arabs, is supported through the same covert US intelligence channels as other Al Qaeda related organisations in Central Asia and the Middle East.

.........

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO302B.html

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. Yet if you listened to the Republicans at this past week's all-night session

in the Senate, including people like McCain and Hatch, everything, I mean everything was Al Qaeda. I don't think I even heard the Republicans mention the insurgents in Iraq once. It was as though the Iraqis continued to want to shower our troops with flowers and candies, but Al Qaeda is preventing it.

[TwilightGardener]

16. The word "insurgent" fails to scare the American people. Kinda

reminds us of our OWN "insurgency" in 1776--natives who want the occupiers out. Not enough of a loaded, enemy-conjuring word.

[yurbud]

23. to them, everyone to the left of Ann Coulter is al Qaeda

[Warren Stupidity]

18. I made the same observation the week we strolled into Baghdad

that the latest sport among young Iraqi men would soon be blowing up our soldiers. It was so damn obvious, only a compromised Bullshit Media System determined to fill the void with total blather could have missed it.

[annabanana]

20. I like "house experts".. Kind of like pets.

They reside in the Beltway, attend cocktail parties (I mean what the hell are those these days?). Some belong to highly placed network executives and they are regularly lent to the administration for feeding and petting.

[EFerrari]

24. What about Yesperts?

:mad:

[yurbud]

27. reminds me of Yes Men except the "Yesperts" aren't being funny on purpose.

[EFerrari]

30. Nothing they do is funny, agree. n/t

[yurbud]

32. best example is Amy Goodman talking about MSM coverage of WTO protesters

They have a correspondent on the street saying there's a bunch of crazy kids and he can't figure out why they are protesting, but instead of asking one of them what they are upset about, the newscast goes back to the studio to talk to the usual 'experts' who also claim they don't know what the kids want--when they could have just as cheaply, if not more so, talked to the protesters themselves.

[EFerrari]

36. I think every morning they get maps detailing where the can o worms

are that they have to avoid or lose their jobs.

And then, there's the al Jazeera reporter, Sami al Hajj being held at Gitmo for no reason at all.

It's not a war on terror, it's an info war.

[yurbud]

37. there's a reason he's there, the same reason they bombed al Jazeera in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Bush

wanted to bomb them in Qatar--intimidation.

[EFerrari]

38. CPAN aired this amazingly self-congratulatory AP segment

last night. The panel did have some actual old time journalists on it -- with great stories from Viet Nam, the Civil Rights movement, the first steroids bust and so on.

But the punchline for the segment was, The AP is still doing excellent work!

I feel so much better now!

[althecat]

29. Thats a great term.. and I shall definitely use it...

.. the IEA for example has been full of yesperts for decades.

[EFerrari]

31. It's yours. Go forth and kick yespert @ss, Al. n/t

[althecat]

28. Recovered Reality Syndrome

We should really have a forum for people suffering from that too.

[yurbud]

33. 'My name is Tom Friedman, and I've just returned to reality...'

[althecat]

35. ... & pigs will fly.