Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (137076)	6/19/2004 5:45:09 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Planting the seeds of terror smh.com.au <<...The reports claim funding for al-Qaeda has fallen away since September 11, particularly after the group launched attacks in Saudi Arabia. But freed of the multimillion-dollar payments it was making to the Taliban in Afghanistan, it can still pull together the cash it needs. And the reports present it as a significantly altered organisation: "After al-Qaeda lost Afghanistan after 9/11, it fundamentally changed. The organisation is far more decentralised. Bin Laden's seclusion forced operational commanders and cell leaders to assume greater authority; they are now making the command decisions previously made by him." Without saying President George Bush got it wrong by going after Saddam and imposing the distraction and resource drain of Iraq on the war on terror, the reports conclude by canvassing al-Qaeda's ongoing interest in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks that will cause ever higher casualties before ending with this warning. It states: "Regardless of the tactics, al-Qaeda is actively striving to attack the US and inflict mass casualties." These are the most independent and comprehensive accounts of al-Qaeda and the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks. Earlier accounts have been squeezed through highly politicised filters - either the Pentagon bunker where the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's neo-conservative cronies were harvesting intelligence to get the answers they wanted; or at the White House, where the Bush staff were looking for after-the-fact justification for the invasion of Iraq. The key conclusions of the reports released this week have reverberated around the world in the past 48 hours - there was no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda and there was no Prague meeting. This new flood of information came from a most unlikely source - a commission of inquiry appointed by the Bush White House. The 10-man national commission on terrorist attacks on the US has always been described as "bi-partisan" but when he appointed it, Bush can reasonably have been expected to be following a golden rule of politics - that you don't appoint an inquiry unless you know the outcome...>>

To: Rascal who wrote (137076)	6/19/2004 6:42:41 PM
From: quehubo	Respond to of 281500

Geez I though AQ was always in SA. We the American people, have made a bargain with the tyrants leading SA, while they made a similar deal with radicals. Mr Johnson took the gamble, he should have been earning a healthy hazardous duty pay and he paid the ultimate price. I am much more sympathetic to the young adults in the military who get paid peanuts and end up maimed and/or dead. You do realize that one of the big goals of liberating Iraq was to motivate the Saudi's to change? I think things have improved quite a bit, but no doubt they will need continuous motivations to force the hard decisions.