Is al Qaeda History?

Of course not!
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Who do you think is going to be needed to justify the next-generation drone or surveillance equipment in the “war on Terra™”?
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The MIC NEEDS an enema enemy!

It;s possible al Qaeda could have always been “history”; the US government and press just wouldn’t accept that judgment. bin Laden’s brand of radical Islam was never a giant force shaping events on the grounds in most of the Muslim world .Even the Islamists that gained support were never directly linked to Qaeda or bin Laden’s violent ideology. This wave of economically-based unrest has been building for some time. We were just too consumed with the “war on terror” to ever acknowledge it.
http://www.sunstateactivist.org

We HAVE to have a “face” to put on our enemies.
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Bin Laden fit that need perfectly. Otherwise, we’d have to get all worked up over a faceless “cause”.
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That’s REALLY hard to put into a marketing campaign.

Do you mean is the endless,baseless fearmongering going to still be credible?
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I thought Shane was hilarious this morning. I didn’t read past the jump. But this was classic:
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So for Al Qaeda — and perhaps no less for the American policies that have been built around the threat it poses — the democratic revolutions that have gripped the world’s attention present a crossroads. Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance?

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It has been irrelevant for at least the last 6 years.
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And good reporting by a committed journalistic community would have made that clear long ago. The question is not whether it will shrivel away. The question is whether the stenography will continue.

You know, afguy, choosing that cover to illustrate the post was, I think unintentionally, revealing.
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And you recall the face Stegel used to keep the flogging the Afghan war–the young woman whose nose had been cut off. On the US watch, mind you….

I guess we need a new enemy to fight and fear.

What do you think, China, North Korea, Mexico?

Whio the heck are we fighting then? If we want OBL go over to Pakistan and get him! Sovereingty? Pffffft.

Agreed, jay.
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A big gray silhouette with a question mark in the middle just doesn’t get the juices flowing.

More home grown, the GOP

Here’s to Somalia! Hip! Hip! Hooray?

Say it isn’t so.

You mean they might stop feeling me up — patting me down rather — when I fly? Just when we were building up for more kabuki.

Officially, it can’t be China. Although they ARE probably our next REAL enemy and SHOULD scare the teetotal h*ll out of us.
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Their ability to damage to us for the forseeable future will be measured in economic wounds, not damage from a direct military attack. Their fingerprints are all over our economic ‘nads and I think they’ll squeeze when the need arises and they’re sure they can ride out any economic damage.
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Our new “official” enemy has to be someone we can beat up on (at least on paper) but someone that will take a LOT of time (and military funding) to overcome. The more nebulous the benchmarks for “victory”, the better. That way, we can shift the goalposts without anyone really noticing.
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Remember, we’re talking about a “long-term” need…

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/what-would-they-not-do/

Whio = who
Unless a new definition of Ohio is needed ;)

No, it is popular fiction.

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/the-talented-mr-pearlman/

Is the Tea Party history?

al Qaeda isn’t important. They’ve never been important and their power was only that they were able to scare the bejeevies out of this entire country. They did their work rather well too considering that ten years later many on the right and a few on the left are still frightened that muslims are coming to get them.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying, 9/11 was never about al Qaeda killing people. Death wasn’t their goal. Their goal was to frighten the living. That is the definition of terrorism and until we can go about living without references to bin Laden or the big bad Muslims or Sharia Law, they’ve won. Why does that seem so hard for people to grasp?

al Qaeda and the MIC… a “marriage” made somewhere other than “heaven”…

Think of the shock this is going to cause.

Twenty to ninety years ago, we had communists.

Before that, there were anarchists.

For eleven years we have had Al Qada.

With no enemies, it looks like we will have no choice but to work on solving our domestic problems.

Somewhere GOP strategists are crying.

Is it OK to tip them if they do a really good job of groping? I’ve had lap dances that weren’t as satisfying.

It has been years since the United States has had good intelligence on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin laden… CIA director Leon Panetta said on Sunday.
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Not since “the early 2000s” have U.S. officials had “the last precise information about where he (bin Laden) might be located,”
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- link
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Al Qaeda’s likely been dead for about a decade.

Ah, if it were only true, that radical Islam could be disgarded by the Islamic hordes so easily.