Simple poll question: Does Al-Qaeda exist?

[cali]

not do they pose a threat or is the CIA creating most/all of the tapes released, just do they exist.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. Al-Qaeda is Arabic for CIA

IMHO

[cali]

3. so i take it you voted no.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. ding, ding, ding... tell 'em what he's won

Johnny...

[Bolo Boffin]

9. Expand your horizons: read the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower

Osama and Al-Qaeda have never received CIA funding, not even during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. Bin Laden comes home to roost His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/

By Michael Moran
MSNBC

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998
snip

BIN LADEN’S BEGINNINGS

As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.

As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.

What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.

[Bolo Boffin]

19. Nope, Osama's group was a sidebar to the real action.

Read The Looming Tower and learn the truth. You are interested in the truth, right?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

21. I'll see if I can get a copy of it from my library. Meanwhile, why should the writer

for MSNBC be making shit up? BTW..the article was written in 1998.

[Bolo Boffin]

22. Misinformation abounds.

It was well known the CIA had supported the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Osama was generally thought to be a part of that. But digging down into it, he wasn't. His group wasn't Afghan natives. It was filled with young Arab men from other countries hot to whack on Soviet heads. It was really more like McHale's Mujaheddin.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

25. with or without Tim Conway

and Wally Cox?

[Hestia]

2. I personally have never believed Al-Qaeda has existed- I think it's made up

bullshit to keep the M-I-C rolling in the dough. I don't believe bin laden exists either. I think he is a composite of some people for the same reason - M-I-C. Tin foil hat? Maybe? But after the last 8 years, I don't believe much of anything that is the "real story" anymore.

[cali]

4. OK.

Everything I've read, leads me to believe that Al-Qaeda does indeed exist. Bin-Laden certainly does.

[goforit]

33. LOL!!!!

[goforit]

34. Well you're right. Al Qaeda has paved way for Bush and given him all that

he and his friends ever wanted: profits from oil, profits from drugs , world power and a depopulated Earth.
And how fun it has been for him to get away with bloody murder here and abroad!!

[FSogol]

6. There are small, but well funded quasi-connected terrorist groups

around the world. To simplify things and to give the freepers an enemy, these groups are called Al Qaeda.

[gollygee]

7. I think they exist but they aren't as organized as suggested

I think Al-Quaeda is kind of like the Michigan Militia. They can do a lot of damage on the occasions where they are able to get together, but they're really just a bunch of disorganized separate groups of dangerous psychos.

But yes I think they exist.

[ima_sinnic]

13. exactrly -- I think of them as like Earth First -- with no HQ and no one "leader"

or organized central body.

[PVnRT]

15. I think that's the most accurate description

I also think there are a lot of independent groups calling themselves Al-Qaeda just gain some street cred.

[stevenleser]

27. Decentralization is the whole point of modern terrorist organizations.

the ELF is a prime example.

[Bolo Boffin]

8. The No. 2 guy in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, just called Obama a house Negro

So, yes, I do believe in Al-Qaeda, and I also believe that the numbskull will be speaking out of the other side of his mouth when he's in U.S. custody under Obama.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/11/al-qaida_no_2_insults_obama_in.php

New rules, bitch!

[Sebastian Doyle]

48. Yeah, but you also believe that a washed up magician "proved" the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald

by shooting a goddamned watermelon.

[Bucky]

50. Um, sorry, but we already got the #2 guy in al-Qaeda. Several times over, in fact.

Don't you watch the news?

[sweetpotato]

10. Yes, originally created and trained by CIA

at least that's my opinion. Don't know whether they are still under the CIA or if they have gone "rogue."

[ipfilter]

11. I've always thought they were the Neo-Con's boogie man.

[Zynx]

12. To me, this is like denying the existance of the Federal Reserve.

[cali]

14. rather odd to me too.

Where do those denying Al-Qaeda exists get their info?

[harun]

17. If you think it exists, define it?

I am not saying it doesn't but what is your definition of it.

[cali]

18. I pretty much agree with post #7

I also tend to believe that bushco has manipulated information about Al-Qaeda for their own purposes.

[harun]

23. I agree. If defined as a highly trained, organized world wide group

I say no way. If a few people here and there who get something going once in a blue moon I can agree that probably exists.

[stevenleser]

26. How many different kinds of cancer can you completely define?

How they work, exactly what they do, etc?

If you cannot define one, does that mean it does not exist? People were calling things 'Cancer' long before we understood exactly what it was and how it worked, but we knew it was killing people.

I know Al Qaeda exists. I know it has been doing things like the attack on the Stark, attacks on embassies and the 9/11 attacks.

I have written articles surmising its ultimate goals and its intermediate goals, but am I sure? Can I define those goals with absolute certainty? No.

Saying that someone has to define something before you accept that it exists is failed logic.

[harun]

29. I didn't say they had to define it for me to accept it exists

Learn how to fucking read.

I was making the point one needs to say if they are talking about what B*sh is trying to sell Al-Qaeda as or what we feel the reality of Al-Qaeda really is.

[Art_from_Ark]

54. To me, this is like denying the existence of witches

[dorkulon]

20. They do now. /nt

[ContinentalOp]

30. Exactly what I was going to post. They certainly do exist because we created the idea.

Osama Bin Laden existed. A bunch of disconnected terrorist groups existed. But we lumped them all together and gave them the name Al Qaeda. At least that's the version of history I took away from watching Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares which was pretty convincing.

[wildbilln864]

24. Al Qaeda means "the base"....

as I understand it's arabic maybe. It was first used to categorize those who were working with the CIA in the Russia/Afghan war. Tim Osment was Osama's CIA name.

[goforit]

35. Tim Osment????

Tell me more.

[wildbilln864]

39. I'm sorry but I mis-typed it..

It should read: Tim Osman.

[Art_from_Ark]

55. Was he supposed to be one of the "Osman" brothers?

Was someone watching "Donny and Marie" when they thought of that name?

[Posteritatis]

28. Yes, but hardly as defined

It's about as organized as "the militia movement" in the nineties - bunch of vaguely similar groups under a vaguely similar theme. Occasionally they'll become more monolithic than the militia movement when there's periods of centralized coordination, which led them to get lucky (or just good) a few times in the last several years, but I'm pretty confident they've been completely disrupted since then. That's why we're seeing groups calling themselves "al-Qaeda of (region)" right now; they're banking off the notoriety of when they got something done, and aren't just chapters of a coherent centralized body right now.

So yeah. It's a bit different from the DHS description of them, which seems to describe them as more overreaching and coordinated than Wal-Mart.

[ContinentalOp]

31. Good description. It's like any street gang. There are people calling themselves "crips"

and "bloods" in probably every city in America but I don't think they all report in to a central office. :P

[Posteritatis]

32. Not just America; I was in a faux-bloods neighborhood in backwater Ontario last year (nt)

[JackRiddler]

36. Well if it doesn't we the taxpayers need to complain to the CIA for wasting the investment.

[Iggo]

37. How could there be a #2...

...of something that doesn't exist?

It bottles the mind.

[darkism]

38. Only on DU could this kind of poll actually be close.

The people who voted no are likely the same conspiracy nuts who shamed the whole board by suggesting that the 2004 tsunami was the result of some secret "earthquake weapon" test.

[wildbilln864]

40. us conspiracy nuts shamed the whole board!?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

44. Yes Indeed.

The remarks of the highly insane, irrational and delusional amongst us during that time were quoted in many different places and served to some as a representation to the whole rather than just a representation of the handful of irrational lunatics that we have here. It was kind of guilty by association, since many of the places that quoted the information didn't include that by overwhelming majority, DU is not nearly as insane as those speaking the stupidity. So yes, it shamed the whole board.

[wildbilln864]

45. I think the whole board got over it. nt

[LeftishBrit]

41. Yes.

I'm not quite clear whether what's being argued is that they never existed and 9-11 and other attacks were perpetrated by others; or that they did exist and don't any more. But they certainly still exist. Just ask anyone from Pakistan, or anywhere else where they have a big presence.

That's not saying that all the stories and rumours about them are correct; but they exist.

[wildbilln864]

42. Just ask anyone from Pakistan!?

Sure, I'll ask my Pakistani neighbors about it. We all have Pakistani neighbors, right. :eyes:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

43. There Ya Have It! 32% Of Poll Respondents Are Irrational Non-Objective Tin Foil Hatters!

How can someone answer no and expect their opinions to be taken seriously by 99.9% of all people they come in contact with? Takes all sorts of a misguided and narrow mindset to truly believe the answer is no.

[anonymous171]

46. Wow. This poll sure is disheartening.

[Occam Bandage]

47. 32% of DUers demonstrate exactly why Obama does not and should not ask our opinion on appointments.

[Dark]

52. You think that's bad? Check out the 9/11 forum sometime.

nt

[Junkdrawer]

49. "Creating Terror": The History of al Qaeda....

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed was born in London, England in November 1978. He is of Bangladeshi origin. He is a political analyst and human rights activist, specialising in Western foreign policy and its impact on human rights. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD), an independent, interdisciplinary, non-profit think tank based in Brighton, UK. The IPRD conducts research and analysis of local and global society for the promotion of human rights, justice and peace. IPRD briefings and reports are distributed to political representatives, NGOs, various media, research libraries and members of the general public in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe and Canada.

http://nafeez.mediamonitors.net/background.html

Nafeez did an hour long presentation titled "Creating Terror" where he examined the history of 'al Qaeda'. Here's a link to the MP3 of that speech:

http://www.radio4all.net/pub/files/[e-mail]/2704-1-20070720-creating_terror_part1edited.mp3

[Hannah Bell]

51. al qaeda = emmanuel goldstein, inc.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

53. Yes, in a goofy sense, but not really.

Any halfwit Islamic extremist can call himself "Al Qaeda" and justify Darth chewing away more of the Constitution. Most of these self identified "al Qaeda" nitwits would be hard pressed to stick up a McDonald"s successfully. bin Laden is long dead. A 6'6" Arab with a beard to his waist, trailing a dialysis machine is about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on an angel-food cake. If he were alive, someone would have collected the bounty by now.