October 10, 2007
Al-Qaeda: Sort of Like the Energizer Bunny


For those of you slipping back into normalcy, no longer particularly bothered by “al-Qaeda” or the interminable GWOT, along comes another White House report on national security. “We also must never lose sight of al-Qaeda’s persistent desire for weapons of mass destruction, as the group continues to try to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material,” the neocons claim, hardly coincidentally at the same time they have “called anew on the Democratic-led Congress to expand the power of US intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists ‘while protecting the civil liberties of Americans,” that last part added as an obligatory calmative, as anybody even halfway acquainted with the Bill of Rights understands full well that eavesdropping, especially in high-tech NSA vacuum cleaner fashion, is a full court press against the Constitution.

“During a testy media conference call, White House homeland security advisor Fran Townsend rebuffed suggestions that the Iraq war had served only to revive al-Qaeda in the years since the September 11 attacks of 2001,” reports the Herald Sun. “Every time I walk into the press briefing room we go through this, and what I will say to you is there should be no question that there were like-minded Islamic extremists inside Iraq and throughout the region,” she said. “And certainly that there is extremism inside Iraq and throughout the region is not a result of the war in Iraq, it is a fundamental front in the continuing war on terror.”

Of course, this extremism was kept in check by Saddam Hussein, but all of that had to be chucked in favor of “democracy,” a messy process as Donald Rumsfeld was obliged to remind us, and Saddam, or somebody who looked a lot like Saddam, was sent to the gallows, and now “al-Qaeda” is back in spades, or so we are expected to believe, and of course forever in search of suitcase nukes and the like, easily purchased from down-and-out Russian scientists who keep them stockpiled in closets for rainy days.

None of this works, not very well, because people are sick and tired of hearing about “al-Qaeda,” the putative terrorist organization akin to the boy who cried wolf, forever barking but never biting because the wolf has no teeth, heck it is not a stretch to say the wolf does not exist, except in the fervid but all too prosaic imagination of think-tank neocons and the like. In fact, the neocons cannot prove “al-Qaeda” exists at all—and thus my habitual insertion of quotation marks—even though, many moons ago, we were promised a full report and damning evidence, never of course to arrive or even intended to arrive.

On the other hand, in Iraq the phony baloney terrorist group certainly has a presence, although not of the sort we are told. “Leading Iraqi Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari has urged Iraqis not to join U.S. forces in fighting Al-Qaeda, arguing that by doing so they are siding with the occupier,” reports the Tehran Times. “U.S. military commander Colonel Robert Menti estimates that around 50,000 Iraqis across the country have joined 150 different initiatives aimed at fighting Al-Qaeda… Initiatives range from powerful tribal chiefs banding together to hunt down extremists to local programs in which volunteers with orange sashes and armed with AK-47s tip off police about suspicious activity or round up suspects.” In other words, the U.S. has managed to cobble together a loose coalition against a phantom force, as even the military admits the presence of “al-Qaeda” in-country is niggling. In fact, it is a Pentagon orchestrated black op, as the “al-Qaeda in Iraq” we are daily presented with is far too ludicrous and Brothers Grimm villain-like (with video game intense violence thrown in for good measure) to be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, we are expected to believe the Israeli-intelligence connected SITE Institute “hacked into an Al-Qaeda server and was monitoring it for a year for information on suicide bombers and spy codes,” as apparently the “al-Qaeda” IT guys are stumbling buffoons. “When the server turned up a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, SITE told two members of the Bush administration so that they could prepare for the release,” writes Nick Farrell for the Inquirer. “Although they told them on the condition that their hack remained secret, within an hour the site had been visited by 16 Intelligence Agencies and two telly channels,” obviously catching the “al-Qaeda” geeks by surprise, as usual.

If you believe any of this, I have a bridge for sale.

More likely, the server is owned by Mossad, the CIA, MI-6, or some amalgamation, that is if it existed at all. We are expected to believe SITE, run by the daughter of an executed Israeli spy, is miffed about the betrayal when in fact it was set-up that way, the “al-Qaeda” server doubling as a grab bag for the corporate media, never shy when it comes to propagating thickheaded neocon lies, designed to provide pretext for the “clash of civilizations,” that it to say providing an excuse for a “civilization” with no shortage of weapons of mass destruction to invade small defenseless countries, kill thousands people—in the case of Iraq, well over a million—and wreck their stuff, like water treatment plants and hospitals.

Once again, on the loose serial murderers, politely called “neoconservatives,” are playing the masses, although the masses, by and large, are not paying too much attention, what with Britney losing her kids to K-Fed, etc. Of course, this lack of attention is dangerous indeed, as it may precipitate another “catastrophic catalyzing event… like a new Pearl Harbor,” if only to rally the masses that are, by nature, clueless but most surely allergic to back-to-back two minute hate sessions and much prefer to be left alone to Dance with the Stars and fancy an Extreme Makeover of their own.