Thoughts on the nature of the GWOT

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

The above link is to a Robert Scheer story from the January 11, 2004 edition of the LA Times and reproduced at CommonDreams.org, a "progressive" website. It was sent to me by an acquaintance and my comments to him are reproduced below. The material in quotes is from the referenced article, my comments follow:

"Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?"
Yes, it is conceivable. It is even highly likely. Al Qaeda means, roughly, The Base. It appears to be less an operational entity than a support mechanism. It provides a theoretical religious and political justification for terror, it propagandizes, it facilitates contacts. All of this aids recruitment and building support for operational elements. This is part of the reason why Bush & Co. have made the very sound decision to concern themselves less with putting UBL's scalp on their lance and more with playing Whack-a-Mole in Iraq.

"• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?"
At the risk of sounding like Big Bill, it depends on what the definition of "hard" is. If UBL were not one of the big cheeses of the Islamofascist movement, his every word would not be blared from the rooftops by Al Jazeera, Al Manar, and other Islamic media outlets. Ditto for the frequent positive references to Sheikh Usama, his fatwas and other public statements by other Islamofascists and their apologists. Have we captured a nifty little organizational chart with UBL in a box at the top and lots of solid and dotted lines connecting other boxes with names like Jemaat Islamiyah and Muhammad Atta? No, we have not; and we never will. It is a huge error, in my view, to regard Al Qaeda as a government, corporation, political party or other such organization with UBL as its president, CEO, or chairman. The administration's statements tend to do this, but I think at least as much by bad choice of analogy and the need to keep it simple to tell the story to the masses as to deceive anyone including themselves.

"• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?"
This question reminds me of something said several years ago by a police detective who specialized in occult ritual crimes. He said knowledge of various occult belief systems was exceedingly helpful in investigating and solving such crimes, but that every effort should be made to keep the occult connection out of the prosecution in court because it really was not a part of the legal definition of the crime and would only confuse the issue of personal guilt of the defendant. Terrorism cases are sort of like that, so are espionage cases and even organized crime cases; but in addition you want to reveal as little as possible in court about your knowledge of the enemy while still getting a conviction. Sometimes, prosecutors forego a case entirely because pressing forward would do more harm (by revelation of sources and methods and/or the extent of the government's knowledge) than good (by punishing an individual defendant).

"• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?"
Because a whole generation has grown up with a pathological fear of all things nuclear (How many people have heard of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? How many of those can articulate any significant differences between the two incidents?) and virtually no real knowledge of the subject - this includes journalists. Radiation = Ratings. QED

"• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?"
As Rick said to Maj. Strasser when asked why he came to Casablanca, he said he came for the waters. "But," Maj. Strasser objected, "Casablanca is in the desert." To which Rick replied, "I was mis-informed." I suspect Rummy, like Rick, was mis-informed.

"Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks."
Curiously, that last clause is in fact the least clearly true. Lev Nazrozov, writing at NewsMax.com on February 4, 2002, has made out a rather persuasive case that UBL had no direct connection to 9/11. Navrozov's article "Who Is Osama bin Laden, and Does He Have Anything to Do With the Sept. 11 Attack?" can be found in the commentary archives of NewsMax.

"But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda."
That's one possibility. Another might be that the GWOT was cooked up by the neocons (who are neither new nor conservative, but really old leftists) as a red herring to distract attention from the continuing efforts of international communism, led by Russia and China and including numerous client states, to achieve world domination. Or maybe its just a smokescreen to get the US positioned between Israel and the only country in the region able to seriously challenge it - Iran. This game is too easy. Can't we just say that different folks reach different conclusions from the same facts?
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I would like to see the documentary in question. I have read other reports about it besides this one, and it seems to tackle an important and complex topic in a serious way. Sometimes another point of view, even one you don't find persuasive, helps to clarify your thinking about things.