I'm reposting this from another board as it's quite relavent to what's going on. If you think this is just some CT bullshit, consider the source, the BBC hasn't exactly been known for their spread of Alex Jones' type CT. The production company, producer and director are well known in the news industry and are very reputable.
This documentary, The Power of Nightmares Part 3: The Shadows in the Cave, aired on the BBC, documents how the image of an Al-Qeada was fabricated, and how the war against them in Afghanistan, and subsequently against the supposed worldwide terror network in the US and elsewhere was based on a fantasy, fueled by imagination, panic, and (as the documentary argues) an ideology based on seeing things in terms of an epic battle between good and evil.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2081592330319789254#For the Bezerk Fury's of the board who won't watch the video because they refuse to believe that everything they've been fueling their hatred with is outright lies, here are some cliff notes that summarize the video:
- Bin Laden was involved with a larger group (Islamic Jihad) whose goal had nothing to do with attacking America, but islamic political goals in their own countries. Many in the group even disagreed with Bin Laden's agenda of involving the west. In exchange for supporting I.J. Bin Laden was allowed to visit their camps to search for volunteers.
- Bin Laden had no formal organization to speak of until the Americans invented one for. In videos sent to western media, men were hired for the day in order to produce a display of power.
- Jan 2001: 4 men put on trial for bombings in east Africa. Prosecutors wanted to prosecute Bin Laden as well. Based on US law, Bin Laden could be tried for the crime that he wasnt linked directly to if evidence for an organization that Bin Laden was the head of was shown & those other people were also linked to it.
- "Evidence" for such an organization was provided by an ex-associate of Bin Laden's names Jamal al Fadal (sp?), who was a Sudanese militant.
- Information from al Fadal was used by the FBI to paint a picture that would allow for maximum prosecution, under US law.
- In reality, Bin Laden was merely the focal point for a smattering of militants who were attracted to his ideas involving the west. Small groups were involved in making their own plans. Bin Laden provided them with resources, although he was not their commander. No ordered organization/hierarchy of which Bin Laden was the head exists.
- No evidence that Bin Laden used the name Al Qaeda to refer to this group until after 9/11 & until after he had realized that this was the name given to his "organization".
- al Fadal had actually stolen money from Bin Laden, and was on the run from him. In exchange for his testimony, the US gave him Wit. Protection and 6 figures.
- Many lawyers at the trial believed that al Fadal had exaggerated/lied in order to give prosecutors the image of an organization that they needed.
- Bin Laden was not behind for the 9/11 attack. The person behind it was a man named Khalid Sheik Mohammed who, like many other small, separate groups, came to Bin Laden for funding.
- Hijackers portrayed as small part of a vast international network called................ Al Qaeda
- One of the themes of the videos, the view of the neoconservative movement of America as a force of good in a hostile and evil world, and their goals to spread democracy around the world by using force, is brought back up. Talks about how people who subscribed to this ideology, like Rumsfield, were appointed into positions of power after Bush was elected in 2000. Initially, their view was not appreciated.
A clip of Bush's 2000 campaign speech, advocating non-interventionism is shown... followed by a post-9/11 clip of him talking about networks of terror, etc. After 9/1, these people's views & ideology was validated in their eyes.
- Their whole war on terror was fueled by the ideals and view of an epic battle between good and evil, just as was the case 20 years ago, with their agenda against the so-called network of terror springing from the Soviet Union. Their approach to Bin Laden was essentially a repeat of their approach to the S.U. (The previous videos talk about how the popularly presented image of the Soviet Union was based on lies)
- Taliban fighters in Afghanistan believed to be Al-Qaeda by Americans. In actuality, they were fighters from the camps of the Islamic Jihad, whose goal was the islamification of muslim countries.
Northern Alliance troops fighting alongside the US fueled this belief, as they were paid for every supposed Al Qaeda that they captured.
- As the taliban was annihilated, they were replaced by ever growing fantasies about the size and reach of Al Qeada
- Northern Alliance tells US that they have found Bin Laden's HQ in the mountains of Tora Bora. The media portrays vast, high tech bunkers hidden in these mountains as the HQ of Al Quaeda. Northern Alliance has been paid more than 1 million dollars for their help & information.
After bombing the mountains, Northern Alliance troops head into the mountains to capture Al Qaeda prisoners, but find nothing but a few small caves with a few remnants of supplies. No big bunkers.
- Northern Alliance captures some people that they claim are A.Q., although there is no evidence of this. As they were getting paid for turning over supposed A.Q., some believed that they were simply kidnapping anyone who looked like an Arab, in order to get more money from US.
- US troops head into mountains to search caves for A.Q. They find nothing.
- British troops get involved, and they believe they can succeed in finding AQ where others have failed.
- British Brig. General, Robert Lane, interviewed saying that they havent captured or killed any AQ in Afghanistan.
- No A.Q. was found, because it didnt exist. The group that was responsible for 9/11 was a small group of individuals associated with Bin Laden. This small group was long scattered or killed.
- What remained after the invasion was not any sort of organization, but an idea, an idea that became prevalent among other people.
- US gov. now turns attention to hunting down A.Q. in America. A clip of a law enforcement officer saying "we dont know what a terrorist looks like, what kind of car they drive, so it's just basically anyone, anything out here" is shown.
- Thousands are arrested. Bush & US gov say they have uncovered terrorist sleeper cells across the country. Yet very little, if any evidence than any of the arrested were terrorists, or connected to terrorist. Most evidence is extremely flimsy or bizarre.
- One example of such a case is 4 men arrested, who were thought to be an AQ sleeper cell, based on the accusation from a Mr. Himimssa. Mr. H was an international con man, with 12 aliases, and wanted for fraud across the US.
The FBI offers to reduce Mr. H's fraud charges if he testifies against the 4 men. Further "evidence" is a tape found in the 4 men's house. The tape looks to be a trip recording some teenagers trip to disneyland.
A reporter for the Detroit News being interviewed describes how a government expert who looked into this tape said that these tapes are meant to appear benign, when it fact it's real purpose is to "case out" disneyland, and that the mere fact that it seems to be a benign tourist tape is evidence that it is not just a tourist tape.
The reporter summarizes the government expert as saying that because the video which was panning all over the place stopped briefly on a trash can, that this was a sign that it was a terrorist video, and that other terrorist would know what this signal meant -- that the trashcan was connected to a bomb.
- Government is convinced that the video is full of hidden messages. A brief clip where the scene outside the hotel room is being filmed is shown. The scene is looking out the window, down at the highway/ground/a tree. This was said to be a hidden message, showing a tree where a sniper could hide to shoot at cars on the highway.
- Another portion of the film, where the camera is on it's side & accidentally left on, is recording a person walking down a normal sidewalk. This is said to be counting steps to show terrorists where to place a bomb.
- These 4 men were said to be planning to attack a US military base. Evidence for this was a dayplanner found with doodlings on a page, which was said to be plans of the attack.
(I know I said I wouldnt comment, but I was seriously lol'ing IRL at this point. It's like a scene out of the movie idiocracy. You have to watch the video to see the doodlings for yourself, which start at around 31:00. But it's pretty ridiculous.....
- Later, the doodlings were found to be the drawings of an insane person who believed that he was the minister of defense for the middle east.
- Nevertheless, 2 of the 4 men were still found guilty. The con man, Mr. H, even told 2 of his prison cell mates that he had made the whole story up to get his charges reduced.
- The charges against the 2 men were finally overturned by a judge. But this was still claimed by Bush to be one of the first successes against AQ in America. (Everyone makes mistakes, right? That video, and the testimony of a know con man, with known motivation to lie was compelling evidence. Anyone could have been fooled)
- Another case appeared on the surface to be more substantial. 6 men had gone to an islamic training camp, and spent a few weeks learning islamic revolutionary theory. 2 of them met bin laden. They then returned home, in the US. The FBI found out and monitored them constantly for a almost a year. There was no suspicious behavior.
Then, one of them went out of the country sent an email to the others saying that he was going away to get married, and that he wouldnt be seeing them for awhile. The CIA said that this was a coded message, and that they were going to launch an attack against the US navy. They said the word wedding was a code word, and that the phrase that he wouldnt be seeing them for awhile was a code for a suicide attack.
The reality..... he was actually getting married.
- This was announced as another success. Soon, it became clear that there was no evidence of terrorism, other than this email... which the CIA somehow pulled out of their ass that it was a coded message.
- Other than the camp, which some of them even tried to get out of early, there was not a single shred of evidence of terrorist activity. This charges of terrorism was quietly dropped because of this. They were instead charged for having simply gone to the camp.
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- Another case involved a group of students who supported the liberation of Cashmere. They were found paintballing in the woods. They were convicted of training to attack America.
- Some African Americans from Oregon tried to go to Afghanistan to support the Taliban (which had nothing to do with terrorism against the US), but got lost in China. They were said to be part of this A.Q. network as well.
- The government started out with the conclusion, and filled in the answers to the questions leading to those conclusions. The government wanted to find AQ, which result in paranoia, panic, and a witchhunt.
- Of the 664 people arrested under the terrorism act since 9/11, none have been convicted of being AQ. Only 3 have been convicted of having associations with any Islamic groups, none of which included being involved with terrorism. Most of the people who were convicted of terrorism were actually involved with groups like the IRA. (It's a hidden clue, because they were looking for AQ, and found Irish, which means that the IRA is in league with AQ)
- London police arrested a man who they said was running a training network for terrorists. In reality, he was teaching a defense course for bodyguards. His only client was a security guard who wanted to learn self defense against shoplifters.
- Another supposed terror cell who was supposed to have been plotting to attack Edinburgh (sp?) had the charges against them quietly dropped, when the nature of the evidence was found: A map which was left in their home by an Australian, who had circled the sites on the map that he wanted to visit.
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- Director of international center for security analysis at Kings College is interviewed, and says "there was no network", that "inventing it" is probably too strong a term, but that we projected it & our own worst fears, and that what was see was merely a fantasy.
- Potentially dangerous fanatic groups are not new. What is new is the way that the US and UK have created the fantasy of a powerful, organized international terrorist group that can strike anywhere, at any time.
- Nobody questioned this fantasy, because it was serving the agenda of so many.
- For the press and 'terror experts', the fact that it seemed so much like fiction made it irresistable to their audience.
- For Islamic groups, they realized that by feeding this fantasy, they could become a powerful organization, if only in people's imaginations.
- A captured associate of Bin Laden, told the US of plots of A.Q, that were based on what he thought were alarm the US. These stories were based on scenes taken out of hollywood movies that he thought would be terrifying scenarios to the US. One of his stories was based on the movie Godzilla, which had just recently come out.
- This captured associate told the US about the AQs terrifying new weapon, the "dirty bomb", which was designed to spread radiation throughout the city. The press ate this up, which only fueled the fantasy of A.Q.
In reality, what was being talked about was a conventional bomb that would spread radioactive material upon detonation. Numerous analysis of such a weapon have concluded that it would not kill anybody, and that the long term effects would be negligible if the area was cleaned properly. Tests by mutiple militaries, including the US Army, have found such a weapon design to be ineffective.
- As more and more groups, including subscribers of the neoconservative ideals in the US government, realized the power that fueling this fantasy gave them, the larger the fantasy grew.
- After the fictional A.Q. had been uncovered, it was then claimed that there were links between Saddam and the fictional A.Q.
- The fantasies surrounding terrorism affected politics, as politicians started increasing their apparent usefulness by painting hypothetical terrorist scenarios in the future, to which the of course are the solution. This war on terror driven largely by fantasies gave rise to the politics of fear, based on imagined future threats.
- Politicians like Tony Blair pushed the idea that with this new supposed worldwide terror network, the new role of the politician was to proactively work to counteract possible imagined threats. Once the "what ifs" (pretty much what the official justification for most of the war on terror has been), there is no limit.
New policies based on acting against people who "might" commit a crime, even if there was no evidence for it.
- Clip of US Attorney General explaining the shift to what he called the "paradigm of prevention": intercepting imagined threats, even if there is no evidence of such a threat.
(And of course, the US government needs the good ol Patriot Act and HGT bill to provide the necessary tools to do so. The old approach of acting based on evidence.... for which the right tools already existed..... was old news.
- Under this new paradigm, instead of holding people accountable based on what you can prove they did in the past, you act against them based on what you think they might do in the future. (And obviously, this requires new laws to make it legal...... Any idiot can see that the recent bills such as the PA and HGT are not based on acting on evidence, but on allowing the government to act against people based on speculation. And then you have people like nutsy54 who think that this is not an invasion of the principles of freedom)
Under this new approach, all the processes for distinguising the innocent from teh guilty are negated. How do you prove that you wouldnt have commited the crime that you were accused of possibly committing in the future.
- (This loss of rights -- the new paradigm of prevention -- is the whole pile of BS that is claimed to be necessary to secure us against this fictional enemy. And even if it werent fictional, you'd have to be a moron to think that the way to increase security is to arrest people when there is no evidence of any planned crime)
- A vicious cycle is the product: The worst is imagined, about an organization for which there is no evidence. This fantasy is not questioned, because the very basis of the precautionary paradigm, is to imagine the worst without any supporting evidence. Instead of policy being based on evidence, those with the darkest imaginations become the most influential.
- A person being interviewed (an "intelligence specialist", whatever that is, for the New York Times), says that you'll hear about intelligence meetings, where almost always, the person with the most dire predictions and the strongest sense of needing to take action will be the one to "carry the day" at these meetings.
The paradigm now is to lean to the most dire predictions, rather than being skeptical until solid evidence is produced.
- As heinous as terrorist acts are, they do not threaten the life of a nation, as is typically portrayed.
