The Al Qaeda Myth
Tom Porteous
April 12, 2006



Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist and author who was formerly with the BBC and the British Foreign Office.
We now know that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the London bombings in July 2005. This is the conclusion of the British government's official inquiry report leaked to the British press on April 9.

We now also know that the U.S. military is deliberately misleading Iraqis, Americans and the rest of the world about the extent of Al Qaeda's involvement in the Iraqi insurgency. This was reported in The Washington Post on April 10, on the basis of internal military documents seen by that newspaper.

What do these revelations tell us about the arguments of President George W. Bush([search]) and Prime Minister Blair that in Al Qaeda the "Free World" faces a threat comparable to that of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, a world-wide terrorist network which seeks to build a radical Islamist empire over half the world?

That they are threadbare, to say the least. But also that they are cynical, misleading and self serving.

The London bombings, it turns out, were the work of four alienated British Muslims, with no links to "international terrorist networks", who had learned how to make bombs by trawling the Internet. They had been radicalized and motivated, according to the report, by British foreign policies in the Muslim world—a view Tony Blair has consistently sought to undermine and discredit.

The role of the alleged "Al Qaeda mastermind in Iraq([search])," Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, we are now told, was cynically misrepresented and exaggerated by the U.S. military's propaganda units in an effort to discredit and divide the Iraqi insurgency and to provide a retrospective justification for the Iraq war by suggesting a link between Iraq and 9/11.

Wherever in the world Al Qaeda crops up, its appearance has often been uncannily convenient for the local authorities—dictators, warlords, occupation forces and elected governments alike. And often the precise nature of the Al Qaeda connection turns out, on close examination, to be tenuous or non-existent. But by that time the message has gone out and sunk in: "Al Qaeda was here".

It's almost certain that as the United States ratchets up the pressure on Iran in the coming months the non-issue of Tehran 's "links" with Al Qaeda will come to the fore. In fact the groundwork is already being laid. Blair, no less, said ominously in a speech last month that although "the conventional view is that Iran is hostile to Al Qaeda: we know from our own history of conflict that, under the pressure of battle, alliances shift and change." So as the confrontation with Iran builds, watch out for leaked reports from anonymous security officials about dastardly Iranian-Al Qaeda conspiracies.

Stripped of exaggeration, romanticism, demonization and myth making, the picture of Al Qaeda which has emerged from the trial in the United States of Zacarias Moussaoui is of a fractious organisation that has been a magnet for bewildered martyrdom-seeking fantasists. At least this has a ring of truth to it.

This is not to say that Al Qaeda is not dangerous. It is a serious security challenge. It may even one day be a strategic threat, especially if it gets hold of some WMD. But it is not the threat Bush and Blair tell us it is.

The recent revelations of the non-existent role of Al Qaeda in the London bombings and of the Pentagon's deliberate exaggeration of Al Qaeda's role in Iraq reinforce the argument that in their response to the threat of Al Qaeda (the so called "war on terror," or "Long War"), the United States and its allies are making strategic errors of monumental proportions.

First, this war, as it is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not principally fighting "Al Qaeda" but is creating and fighting new enemies: people who don't like being invaded, occupied and kicked around by foreigners and who are prepared to stand up and resist. These people may eventually become terrorists. But it will have been U.S. policies that created them. If Iran is next on the Pentagon's list, the same thing will happen there. To the extent that Israel is seen by the United States as pursuing its own war on terror in the Palestinian territories it occupies, it is happening in Gaza and the West Bank too.

Second, the Long War is a distraction from the real issues which need to be addressed as a matter of urgency in order to reduce conflict, violence and injustice in the region and thus to reduce the radicalization of a generation of angry and alienated Muslim youth at home and in the diasporas. These include: ending the Israeli occupation of occupied Palestinian territories through negotiation; pursuing peaceful nuclear reduction throughout the region; and engaging seriously with political Islam. Talk of "democratization" without engaging with political Islam is nonsense.

Third, on the grounds that it is fighting a "just war," the United States and its allies have justified using levels of violence, coercion and repression—including torture, collective punishment and the killing of large numbers of civilians—which are not only of questionable tactical efficacy, but have led to a collapse of U.S. prestige in a part of the world where it has long been seen as a necessary protector, stabilizer and arbiter.

The fact that there was no operational link between the London bombers and Al Qaeda shows that its real danger lies in its ability to inspire terrorist attacks. In this it has no better allies and collaborators at present than the United States and Britain under their current leaders.

Copyright © 2006 Tom Porteous / Agence Global
See also:
 http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/12/the_al_qaeda_myth.php

Like the bombings two weeks ago, the more we learn, the more suspicious this becomes, and the more the story shifts. Who profits?

Bombs As Plants?
Notes on Yesterday's "Incidents"

Since none of yesterday's devices exploded, despite their detonators being triggered, and the LIAR Blair says that this stroke of luck will provide investigators with forensic evidence which will help to identify the culprits, does it not stand to reason that these were possibly intended as plants? It seems that care went into ensuring that nobody was hurt, but that this "orgy of evidence" was left for investigators.

The devices used on 7/7 contained military explosives, but much work has gone into flushing that fact down the Memory Hole, as seen in the "Egyptian Chemist" fable. The police used explosives in the apartment of one of the people being blamed for 7/7, thus contaminating the scene, then tarped the area off entirely.

No CCTV footage caught the bombers in the act, and we're supposed to believe what a pack of LIARS say, again without any independently-verifiable evidence, as was the case with "911".

It feels as if today's devices were left behind by someone eager to frame a certain target, and point investigators in a specific direction, possibly towards one of the PNAC target countries.

I'm not saying that I know this for a fact, it simply fits a certain pattern and tactic which HAS been employed in the past.

If it turns out that these devices point to Iran, Syria, etc., I simply would hope that people will THINK about today, before they rush to believe what a pack of proven LIARS wants them to think, based solely upon this "evidence".

Especially if those LIARS attempt to use this as an excuse to wage another war that they've already got planned and at the ready.

"Ignore the Downing Street Minutes and the LIES which created an illegal war of aggression for profit, Karl Rove/Dick Cheney's TREASONOUS leaking of a covert CIA operative, Israeli spies discovered in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and AIPAC's involvement, and increasing calls for IMPEACHMENT, investigation, and prosecution. Look over THERE!! and keep your eyes on 'ze terrorists'. Can't see them? Trust us, they're everywhere ..."


Experts hail 'forensic goldmine'

As the search for evidence continues after Thursday's London blasts, experts feel the unexploded devices will provide a wealth of clues.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4705939.stm

I saw Tube man shot - eyewitness

"He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24.

"As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox.

"He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand.

"He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706913.stm

Why would the police shoot an unarmed man, AFTER they had apprehended him? Perhaps he saw something he shouldn't have?


Staging an Attack to Fix the Coverup of Another
By Impatient
This latest “attack” is supposed to correct some faults in the first without causing further mayhem.

What has given them the most trouble with the first attack? Their choice of patsies.

They assumed that a loose Muslim connection would be enough to persuade everyone that these lads from Leeds were suicide bombers. But rather than clinch it for the planners, it backfired and the most common and reasonable question that everyone has about the suicide bomber fiction was invoked: How could young men who were not religious fanatics, who were educated, decent fellows, with loving families, and bright futures – how could they kill themselves and others?

Another unforeseen problem was the effusive praise coming from Efraim Halevi that described the London bombings as “near-perfect”. Too many people could not get a picture in their minds of four young men with rucksacks able to so perfectly execute simultaneous bombings. It caused doubts that have not been quelled. Too many people saw the hand of the Mossad and its affiliates in the earlier bombing because the four “bombers with rucksacks” did not evoke the necessary sophisticated timing, operational capacity, and scope.

The latest “attack” is supposed to reaffirm that young men with rucksacks are perfectly capable of a simultaneous triggering of devices, a demonstrable fearlessness in the face of death, and a disregard for the lives of others, even women with babies.

Because all four bombs malfunctioned this time round, it tells us that the bombers are not the Mossad or any other intelligence agency because 100% malfunction is very unprofessional, it may mean that their first bombing was just good luck, not expertise.

While the rucksacks in the first bombing have not turned up, this new bombing tells us once again that four young men carried bomb-laden packs aboard the trains and [would have] died when they detonated.

The investigation has not proceeded methodically. The whole question of how the bombing was done and who did it was effectively squelched when they began looking for the needle in the haystack – the CCTV films. Without knowledge of the type of bombs, their power, placement, and detonation, there could be absolutely no reason to begin looking at CCTV tapes. They could not know what to look for without the certainty that the bombs were carried on, and not placed beforehand.

It is significant that of all the thousands of hours of CCTV tape they have examined, the only tape they seem to have of the young men from Leeds does not come from London at all! In the pictures we have seen the lads are in Luton, 25 minutes away. Unless they can show us the “bombers” going their separate ways and boarding three or four different trains I will not believe that the young men ever made it to London. Seeing them together at Luton means nothing if they cannot be placed getting on the trains at exactly the right time to take them the right distance from King’s Cross before they explode.

In the case of the 7/7 bombings, going straightaway to the video tapes was very premature and irrational. It can only mean that they knew what they would find because they had planted the "evidence". It makes no sense to begin looking at thousands of hours of video tape from as far away as Luton without any idea of what you are looking for. What could it be? Rucksacks, packages, briefcases, baby strollers, gym bags? Suspicous looking people of a certain race? And remember that the first story was that at least 24 people had been involved.

What would be the motivation to look at the tapes from Luton? Did they also look at tapes from video cameras at the airports and bus stations? It would seem to be just as reasonable to look at those tapes as looking at Luton. And why is the Luton tape the only tape?

Luton is interesting because an office of ICTS (the Israeli security firm) is about a mile from a Thameslink station. ICTS is actually located in the Luton and Dunstable NHS Hospital. It seems a little odd for this firm that handles security for the Stansted airport would be located at the Hospital.

Just like the problem with 9/11 and Madrid - there were no hijackers and no bombers to film. They tried to get around that on 7/7 by getting some patsies to photograph. They did not leave it to chance, for those picked had to be disposed of as though they had been killed in the blasts.