"Intel officials worry Iraq's al Qaeda to spread"

When you consider that Al-Qaeda wasn't even in Iraq before we invaded and their numbers there are constantly inflated by us for political purposes, then it's not very surprising that they're spreading to other places.

Heckuva Job, Neonuts!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowtech511/1932195037/

Al Qaeda never existed in Iraq until the U.S. blew the place apart, creating chaos and anti-American sympathy in other places.

Dictators like Saddam never permit secret organizations and they don't like competitors.

The truth is that we do not know for sure that there even is such an organization - the issues around this statement are too complex to go into here - although the mainstream press constantly begs the question, speaking of it with a certainty they cannot have.

What we know for sure is that American policy abroad is generating a lot of anger and hatred. When you get enough people angry with you, sooner or later some of them will attempt revenge.

That is, after all, exactly how America has behaved itself.

That's the genius of our commander-in-chief...how to fight "terrorism"? Throw gasoline on the fire.

"Intel officials worry Iraq's al Qaeda to spread"

Well, duh.

This administration has destroyed our country's economy with this war and accomplished nothing except to create more terrorists, raise the price of oil, make money for defense contractors and needlessly get American soldiers killed. I say to Bush "Have you no decency, sir?"

The conclusions reached are very similar to those of a retired Special Forces colonel in an article "What if there is no terrorist network?" which appeared in the Armed Forces Journal last August. Check this out at www.armedforcesjournal.com.

Interesting, I suppose I should be "scared" now. Maybe I should be so scared I vote for Bush for a 3rd term, haha. I tell you what, when you are afraid of terrorism, then the terrorists have already won....

Maybe the Swamp Censors should just call this thing: We only want Left Wing Loons to comment and we sure as hell don't want anyone criticizing our reporting.

But, I'll try this again:

As usual Frank James, distorts the facts to suit his own views. What McConnell said is no different than what has bene said for years. Since the early to mid 1990s, Al Qaeda has had a strong presence in Africa, from Somalia to the Sudan to Kenya (remembering the U.S. embassy bombings in 1998, folks??) to Morocco. Al Qaeda has had a presence in Indonesia (the Bali bombing of 2001, anyone?) to the bombings in Europe (Madrid, London, elsewhere). And, we know Al Qaeda has some presence in this country, or at least sympathizers. All of this existed LONG before 9/11 and LONG before we went into Iraq.
The complete and utter bias and distortion of news by so many LIBune reporters is beyond a joke, but shameful.

Waterboarding, secret prisons, people held for years without charges and no legal representation? Isn't that what we accused the USSR and other countries of? I am as much of a patriot as anyone else, and I love this country, but I would rather die in a terrorist attack than live in a country that is so duplicitous. Even our allies are beginning to hate us.

"What's in a name? Doesn't a rose by any other name smell as sweet?" Does a turd smell as bad? There have been different generals under different "flags" using similar methods against the Western World for centuries. These nuts are trying to pay us back for the Crusades! Not every problem in the world can be traced to the President or America.

No surprises here; GWB's actions over the last 7 years have advanced the causes of terrorists everywhere plus created Greater Iran.

Really. Our allies in Iraq are allies of Iran.

Nice job President Dimwit.

No surprises here; GWB's actions over the last 7 years have advanced the causes of terrorists everywhere plus created Greater Iran.

Really. Our allies in Iraq are allies of Iran.

Nice job President Dimwit.

"Seems like the nation's intelligence community is ever more concerned that a result of fighting al Qaeda in Iraq could lead to AQI metastasizing like a cancer beyond Iraq. "Over there" could become an ever bigger battle field."

The arrogance of the Bush administration and their subsequent ineptitude, has placed The United States in great peril. I hope the next administration finds more thoughtful ways of addressing the nations problems.

When we left the Iraq-like Vietnam without a "win", neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese followed us home.

"Maybe the Swamp Censors should just call this thing: We only want Left Wing Loons to comment and we sure as hell don't want anyone criticizing our reporting."

John D,
Give us a break for a change and stick to subjects you understand, like promoting propane as a coolant, or whatever it is you do.

C Morris, it's pretty clear when it comes to subjects YOU understand that it totals up to the amount of daylight Barrow, Alaska gets in December. In other words, about ZERO.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said: "We used it against three detainees because of the circumstances at the time..." Hayden said it hasn't been used in five years.

Does anyone REALLY believe this?

As long as a "Christian" army is in the middle of the Islamic Holy land, they will, as we would if they were here, do anything and everything in retaliation. Comparing Iraq to Vietnam is senseless, "God / Allah" was not a component to that war, to try to draw such comparison demonstrates total ignorance, much like GW Bush's total lack of understanding of the simple difference between Shia and Sunni. All while China licks its chops.

John D,
You always rise to the bait so predictably.
I'm just kidding ya, buddy!

C Morris, it's pretty clear when it comes to subjects YOU understand that it totals up to the amount of daylight Barrow, Alaska gets in December. In other words, about ZERO.

Posted by: John D | February 5, 2008 10:42 PM

John D, it's obvious that you are the be all, end all of ALL things. How dare C Morris disagree with your nutty A%S!!!

AQIs goal was to drag the U.S.A. into that sh%t-hole we know as Iraq. Mission accomplished. The bankrupting of America courtesy of the Bush administrations bungled fiasco. John I suppose the first trillion dollar budget is fiscal conservatism too???

“The truth is that we do not know for sure that there even is such an organization - the issues around this statement are too complex to go into here - although the mainstream press constantly begs the question, speaking of it with a certainty they cannot have.”

Now AlQaeda doesn’t exist. That’s pure genius from the left; even the looners that think Afghanistan is the ‘good war’ and Iraq is the ‘bad war’ aren’t that stupid.

“When we left the Iraq-like Vietnam without a "win", neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese followed us home.”

Another brilliant statement, the VC didn’t fly planes into buildings in the US before we went into Vietnam. I don't think their goal was to create a Buddist caliphate either.....

Simple minded people that think there is NO enemy anywhere or we are fighting the Vietnam war all over again, should keep their dumbass opinions to themselves.

"The bankrupting of America courtesy of the Bush administrations bungled fiasco"

Doesn't congress authorize spending according to the constitution?

And isn't the congress now controlled by the Dems?

"Simple minded people that think there is NO enemy anywhere or we are fighting the Vietnam war all over again, should keep their dumbass opinions to themselves."

Posted by: THINK before you write | February 6, 2008 2:03 PM

I don't think anyone is saying there is no Enemy. They just differ on how to combat them.

"The bankrupting of America courtesy of the Bush administrations bungled fiasco"

Doesn't congress authorize spending according to the constitution?

And isn't the congress now controlled by the Dems?

Posted by: Elect more Democrats, they get thing done. | February 6, 2008 2:08 PM

Sure doesn't get more simplistic than blaming congress for funding Cheney's and Bush's war. Look I'm not gonna cover old ground again but...

What the heck here goes.

Terrorist Strategy 101:

The first and biggest obstacle to your victory is that the vast majority of the people who sympathize with your issue are not violent extremists. They may agree with you in principle. They may even sound like violent extremists late at night over their beverage of choice. But when the hammer comes down, they won’t be there. They aren’t cowards, they aren’t collaborators, but (like Dick Cheney during the Vietnam War) they have other priorities. There are weeds in the garden and final exams coming up and deadlines at the office. Good luck with that car bombing. Call me next time, maybe things will have settled down by then.

Most people, most of the time, just want to get along. They’ll accept a little inconvenience, ignore a few insults, and smile at people they hate if it allows them to get on with their lives. Most people on both sides of your issue just wish the issue would go away. If you’re not careful, those apathetic majorities will get together and craft a compromise. And where’s your revolution then?

So your first goal as a violent extremist is not to kill your enemies, but to radicalize the apathetic majority on your side of the issue. If everyone becomes a violent extremist, then you (as one of the early violent extremists) are a leader of consequence. Conversely, if a reasonable compromise is worked out, you are a nuisance.

Question 2: In radicalizing your sympathizers, who is your best ally?
No points awarded for “the media” or “sympathetic foreign governments.” In radicalizing your apathetic sympathizers, you have no better ally than the violent extremists on the other side. Only they can convince your people that compromise is impossible. Only they can raise your countrymen’s level of fear and despair to the point that large numbers are willing to take up arms and follow your lead. A few blown-up apartment buildings and dead schoolchildren will get you more recruits than the best revolutionary tracts ever written.

Perversely, this means that you are the best ally of the extremists on the other side. That doesn’t mean you love or even talk to each other – they are, after all, vile and despicable demons. But at this stage in the process your interests align. Both of you want to invert the bell curve, to flatten out that big hump in the middle and drive people to the edges. That’s why extremists come in pairs: Caesar and Pompey, the Nazis and the Communists, Sharon and Arafat, Bush and Bin Laden. Each side needs a demonic opposite in order to galvanize its supporters.

Naive observers frequently decry the apparent counter-productivity of extremist attacks. Don’t the leaders of Hamas realize that every suicide bombing makes the Israelis that much more determined not to give the Palestinians a state? Don’t they understand that the Israeli government will strike back even harder, and inflict even more suffering on the Palestinian people? Of course they do; they’re not idiots. The Israeli response is exactly what they’re counting on. More airstrikes, more repression, more poverty – fewer opportunities for normal life to get in the way of the Great Struggle.

The cycle of violence may be vicious, but it is not pointless. Each round of strike-and-counterstrike makes the political center less tenable. The surviving radical leaders on each side energize their respective bases and cement their respective holds on power. The first round of the playoffs is always the two extremes against the center. Only after the center is vanquished will you meet your radical counterparts in the championship round.

Question 3: What is Bin Laden’s ultimate goal?

Read on...

http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/politics/TS101.html

Question 4: What is Bin Laden’s immediate goal?
If you’ve been paying attention, you should get this one right: His immediate goal is to radicalize the hundreds of millions of Muslims who sympathize with the vision of a restored Caliphate, but have better things to do with their lives than join the jihad. A particular problem for Bin Laden are all the Muslims who think that they can find an acceptable place for themselves in a world order dominated by the United States.

I won’t insult your intelligence by asking who his best allies are in reaching this goal: President Bush, obviously, and all of the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon who push for the most aggressive response to the terrorist threat. Also the Christian leaders like Franklin (son of Billy) Graham, who regularly denounce Islam in terms that look fabulous on Al Qaeda’s equivalent of the locker-room bulletin board. John Ashcroft – and anyone else who mistreats assimilating Arabs and so convinces them that they will never really be welcome in America – is also an ally.

It doesn’t matter how much they hate him or denounce his deeds; anyone who radicalizes Muslims is doing Bin Laden’s work for him. President Bush may as well have been reading from an Al Qaeda script when he referred to the War on Terror as a “crusade.” Muslims know their history and know exactly what a crusade is: Christians invade and steal your land. People who didn’t believe this when they heard it from Bin Laden have now heard it from the Crusader-in-Chief.

http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/politics/TS101.html

Il-logic Prisoner,

That has to be the dumbest thing I ever read. Saying that all terrorists use the same strategy is moronic.

AlQaieda worked/works with the following organizations:

Salafist Group for Call and Combat and the Armed Islamic Group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Egypt), The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Bayt al-Imam (Jordan), Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Kashmir), Asbat al Ansar, Hezbollah (Lebanon), Al-Badar, Al-Hadith, Harakat ul Jihad, Jaish Mohammed – JEM, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan, Laskar e-Toiba – LET, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (the Philippines), Abu Sayyaf Group (Malaysia, Philippines), Al-Ittihad Al Islamiya - AIAI (Somalia), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Army of Aden (Yemen)

Do you honestly believe that all AlQaieda cells or sympathizers throughout the world have the same goal?

“Most people just want to get along”

Thanks for the newsflash. You are a genius. So, you are saying that the majority of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world aren’t extremists. Thank Allah for that! I can see I’m dealing with someone with a keen analytical mind.

“Both of you want to invert the bell curve, to flatten out that big hump in the middle and drive people to the edges. That’s why extremists come in pairs: Caesar and Pompey, the Nazis and the Communists, Sharon and Arafat, Bush and Bin Laden. Each side needs a demonic opposite in order to galvanize its supporters.”

WTF Forrest, a bell curve is a normal distribution. Terrorist cells are not (and should not be thought of as) equal distributions of like-minded people throughout society. They are like cancer cells that are grouped together in localized areas or groups that need to be destroyed before they spread.

Saying that both sides of any struggle ‘want’ to flatten out the bell curve so the enemy can spread throughout society or the world is retarded. The object of the opponent, ANY opponent is still to win, not let its enemy become stronger.

In your brilliant ‘extremists come in pairs’ theory, where did/does the US fit in the whole Nazi – Communist thing? During WWII, were we extremists also? Were we the ‘demonic’ opposite to the Nazis? If not, why did we fight them? I guess according to you, Hitler was a great guy except for his wanting to kill all the Jews and take over the world thing.

And the Communists, I’m sure they would have been our BFF if we had just talked to them nicely. When they backed the invasion/overthrow of democratic countries, it was just a misunderstanding. They did it in response to the US and NATO countries attacking, oops......... help me out with that one professor.

Bin Laden represents AlQaeda, a terrorist group that slaughters innocent men, women, and children because they are the wrong religion, or cause the slaughter of innocents by hiding among them, using them as shields. You may be right in one thing, Bin Laden may believe the slaughter of innocent Arab lives (whether he causes it or not) helps his cause, but to say the US wants innocent Americans slaughtered to further it’s goals is vile and pathetic.

You equate Bush and Bin Laden. Nice. Too bad you had to equate the US to it’s enemies like AlQaeda, Nazi Germany or the Stalinist USSR to do it. It puts everything else you have to ‘teach’ me in the proper perspective.

Saying Bin Laden wants to radicalize the Muslims that want to see a restored caliphate is beyond retarded.

You fool, the Muslims that want a restored caliphate ARE the radicalized Muslims. Bin Laden’s stated goal is to convert or kill all infidels.

“President Bush may as well have been reading from an Al Qaeda script when he referred to the War on Terror as a “crusade.”

Bin Laden and other terrorists have been around long before Bush was in office.
How do you and the other America/Bush - sucks crowd explain that?

Muslims aren’t stupid, any Muslim that knows English (and there are millions and millions), knows the word crusade is used all the time not in reference to the Crusades of ancient history.

I guess when Bill Clinton said this; he was secretly saying he wanted to kill all Muslims:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/18/eveningnews/main1059950.shtml

Nice try, better luck next time.

Oh and BTW, what does this have to do with congress authorizing expenditures?

THINK before you write, you are a xenophobic retard! All Muslims are not radial or espousing jihad. Crawl back into the stone ages where you belong.

“THINK before you write, you are a xenophobic retard! All Muslims are not radial or espousing jihad. Crawl back into the stone ages where you belong.”

Dearest Carl,

I never said all Muslims were radial or radical. I did say LP was an idiot for saying most people want to get along, as if it was news that the majority of the 1.2 billion Muslims ARE NOT fundamentalists. (Caps added to help you understand)

I guess my sarcasm went over your head. I’ll try and make it simpler for you next time. Thanks anyway for playing.

You can go lay down next to your dish again, gooood boy.

“THINK before you write, you are a xenophobic retard! All Muslims are not radial or espousing jihad. Crawl back into the stone ages where you belong.”

Dearest Carl,

I never said all Muslims were radial or radical. I did say LP was an idiot for saying most people want to get along, as if it was news that the majority of the 1.2 billion Muslims ARE NOT fundamentalists. (Caps added to help you understand)

I guess my sarcasm went over your head. I’ll try and make it simpler for you next time. Thanks anyway for playing.

You can go lay down next to your dish again, gooood boy.

Is lesson time over ladies?

There is nothing a jag in the bag like you has to offer me ego boy. You may now return to staring in the mirror at the one you love.

You are truely a f%ck-up!!!

And a dumb one at that.

Is lesson time over ladies?

Posted by: THINK before you write | February 8, 2008 11:40 PM

I think you need to go back to school. THINK before you comment.

Too bad it takes 12 or more hours for posts to show up if at all.

You girls keep the insults coming, Don't bother trying to get any real facts.

You girls keep the insults coming, Don't bother trying to get any real facts.

Posted by: THINK before you write | February 10, 2008 9:31 AM

Blow me!!!

Are you getting all those witty retorts from another website you plagiarized but failed to understand?

Go back and reread what I wrote about terrorism and your brilliant ideas on how terrorists operate.

Then let's debate the facts.

Or is that idea too scary for you?

I would be happy to debate the facts if you weren't a tool. I think I'll take a pass. p.s. in a nutshell I don't agree with you. Fair enough??? News flash, next time I'll leave a URL.

You got your butt kicked and aren't man enough to admit it.

You're the part of the pathetic, short-bus wing of the Democratic party.

Adios loser.

Tool boy, take your meds like a good little freak. You present no ideas and look at posting on a blog as if it's the Super Bowl.

The Swamp is a place for comments, or opinions. Clearly your point of view is the only one you're interested in. So why even post. Enjoy the beating your decrepit republican party will recieve in November.

p.s. I grow weary of you.

I present ideas (and facts) you can't refute. I look at posting as an exchange of opinions based on facts.

You can't defend what you you wrote because it isn't even your own words or ideas.

You have no ideas, no facts, no opinions. All you can say is you don't agree with me but you can't say why.

For once in your life, try and have an original thought.

People can read what you wrote and my response. They can see you have nothing to back up the BS you post. They can then make up their own minds. Too bad they will realize what a fool you are.

And by the way, I'm not a Republican. Nice try again.

THINK my twisted little nemesis, I never claimed ownership of the Websites. I only used them as source material to bolster a widely held opinion. Opinions that I agree with. I would make the argument that you are in point of fact clueless. Your comments are VERY REDUNDANT, and show scant proof that you have even a cursory understanding of geopolitics, let alone the motives or tactics a radical Islamic extremist groups.

Please note as stated in the above Swamp post.

"Homegrown extremists, inspired by militant Islamic ideology but without operational direction from al Qaeda, are on an evolving course for danger inside the United States. Disrupted plotting last year, here at home, illustrates the nature of the threat inside the country.

In addition, our allies continue to uncover new extremist networks inside Europe for their version of the homeland threat, homegrown threat."

Given McConnell's testimony, if the plan was to tie down al Qaeda in Iraq, the nation's intelligence officials don't seem to think that has happened.

That is not a glowing endorsement of the administrations original strategy.

I know you have a fondness for originality, however research is the cornerstone of forming an opinion. I suggest you try it sometime. Hold onto your diaper freak boy because I'm going to kick you some knowledge.

Grade: D-

Despite everything accomplished over the past five years in the U.S.-led global "war on terror," the Council believes that we are losing ground in the campaign to contain violent Islamic extremism. The reason for that collective judgment is failure in the essential task of stemming the tide of radicalization in the Islamic world. That tide is fed by strong currents of humiliation, anger, and despair among Muslims, and it both replenishes terrorist ranks directly and serves as a wellspring of sympathy and support in which the terrorists operate freely.

"When people talk about the global war on terrorism they often focus on the most tangible aspects, such as fighting wars, hunting terrorists, gathering intelligence, and protecting our borders," said Lee Hamilton. "At its core, this conflict is fundamentally a war of ideas, however, and I don't think we're winning that war. I find that very frustrating, because American ideas and ideals are powerful and compelling, and they should work to our advantage. Unfortunately, we have not conveyed our ideas or shaped our ideals into policies in ways that have improved our relationship with the world's 1.3 billion Muslims."

Evidence of a growing radicalization in the Islamic world is substantive and quantifiable. Data points include the recent deadly riots by Muslims infuriated over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammad published in a Danish newspaper, and extended rioting and vandalism in France by disaffected Muslim youth. In Europe, intelligence officials report a significant rise in radicalized Muslims joining terrorist networks by the hundreds, and perhaps thousands, in order to wage jihad against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. In the most recent Pew global attitudes polls, approximately 15 percent of Muslims surveyed in Britain, France, and Spain believed suicide bombings and other forms of violence were at least sometimes justified in the defense of Islam.

The U.S. State Department also reported a sharp rise in terrorist attacks last year, passing the 10,000 mark for the first time. Those terrorist attacks were responsible for 14,500 fatalities worldwide, with 25,000 additional people wounded and maimed. The unusually high casualty rate was due in part to the ongoing conflict in Iraq, and to a dramatic increase of terrorists willing to "martyr" themselves in suicide attacks. In 2005 there were a record 360 suicide bombings, many in places where such radical tactics had rarely, if ever, been seen before, including Afghanistan and London.

Of equal concern is the growing number of self-starter cells of Islamist terrorists with no connection to al-Qaeda or other formal terrorist groups, other than a shared embrace of a radical ideology and a willingness to kill innocent civilians in pursuit of those beliefs. Such groups of homegrown terrorists played major roles in the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004 and the foiled July 2005 bombing plot in London, and recently were the target of police crackdowns in Canada, Australia, and Miami, Florida.

Council member Xavier Raufer noted the exalted status that Osama bin Laden has achieved among the Islamic diaspora of Europe. "In terms of French Muslims, the most radicalizing idea we confront is this mythology that has built up around bin Laden as a sort of Islamic Robin Hood," he said. "At a time of significant agitation and frustration in the Islamic community, bin Laden gives them a sense of empowerment. By urging Muslims everywhere to strike a blow against the West, he offers them a catharsis. This emergence of bin Laden as an iconic Islamic hero is very troubling."

The escape of top al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from Afghanistan in 2001, and their success in eluding capture or death ever since, have elevated them as symbolic firebrands for radical Islam. Though U.S. and coalition efforts to target al-Qaeda's leadership and deny it sanctuary in Afghanistan are positives, both top al-Qaeda leaders—through periodic releases of video- or audiotaped statements—remain chief propagandists for the radical cause and catalysts to terrorism.

"The communications from bin Laden and Zawahiri have become both more frequent and more sophisticated, and they are benefiting from this narrative that the top al-Qaeda leaders have survived the infidel's mightiest blows," said Brian Jenkins. In the past year, he noted, bin Laden has released five communications, and al-Zawahiri nine, and their messages are increasingly tailored for specific audiences. "We have to remember that this conflict is essentially a missionary enterprise for bin Laden and Zawahiri, and there is ample evidence that their flock is growing. There's no question that bin Laden's extremist ideology is more discussed today than at the time of the 9/11 attacks."

The backdrop for all that increased radicalization, and the growing pool of sympathizers, is a yawning gap in perception between the West and Muslim worlds. Bin Laden has skillfully exploited that break, and the very different views it represents, to further his fevered dreams of a "clash of civilizations."

"Years ago, when they actually had free elections in Pakistan, the extremists rarely ever garnered more than 5 percent of the vote," said Xavier Raufer. "Contrast that with today: From Pakistan to Algeria, we're seeing radical Salafist ideology steadily making inroads into the general Muslim population. You can see the gains even in the length of men's beards or the way women dress. That doesn't mean all of those people are terrorists, but they embrace the same puritanical brand of Islam. That ideology is the fertile earth in which Islamic terrorism is now growing."

Remarkably, in the same Pew poll mentioned earlier, majorities in countries considered key U.S. allies in the Muslim world (Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Indonesia) said that they did not even believe that groups of Arabs carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Sources of Radicalization

To understand why more and more Muslims are becoming radicalized, one can look to the original currents that fed into the violent Islamic extremism of the 1980s and '90s, culminating on September 11, 2001. Along with a majority of the 9/11 hijackers, Osama bin Laden is a Saudi who embraces the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam, puritanical in its strictures and extremely intolerant of nonbelievers.

The relationship between the Saudi royal family and Wahhabism is complex, and it touches on that nation's long religious traditions, need for domestic stability, status as the protector of Islam's most holy places, and competition with Shiite Iran in the realm of Islamic theology. The results of that complex relationship, however, are unambiguous. For many years, the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia allowed the country's vast oil wealth to be used in part to promote and export Wahhabism through the establishment of fundamentalist mosques and religious academies and schools called madrassas.

Nowhere did the export of fundamentalist and intolerant Wahhabi ideology find more welcome than in Pakistan. A poor country with a weak central government unable to provide adequate education to its own youth, Pakistan allowed the Wahhabi-inspired madrassas to fill its educational void. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency also had a thirty-year history of supporting Islamic militants as a way to wield influence in neighboring Afghanistan and operate in Kashmir (a disputed province where Pakistan and India have fought three wars and countless skirmishes).

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States colluded with the Saudis and the Pakistanis in helping a worldwide network of radical mosques funnel Islamic militants to Pakistan in order to wage holy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Following the defeat and eventual withdrawal of Soviet forces, Pakistan's ISI threw its support behind the fundamentalist Taliban as a way to stabilize a fractious Afghanistan.

From this combustible witches' brew of extremist Islamic ideology and violent conflict emerged Osama bin Laden and the Afghan mujihadeen that formed the core of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden recognized that the same worldwide network that funneled Islamic militants into Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union could be reversed to wage global jihad against Saudi Arabia. When bin Laden failed to gain any real traction in his battle against the Saudi Royal Family, al-Zawahiri likewise found little purchase in his attempts to overthrow the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and al-Qaeda made few advances in Yemen, the campaign against the "near enemy" needed to be rethought. With a collapse of the movement imminent, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri stepped back and strategized anew. This led to a shift in focus to the "far enemy," and the United States as a particular target. This new mission got results. All the while, the ebbs and flows in purpose and rhetoric were held together by a puritanical, uncompromising worldview.

Unresolved Causes of Extremism

That history remains relevant today. For all its accomplishments, the U.S.-led counterterrorism campaign has failed to adequately combat the underlying causes of Islamic extremism manifested in the 9/11 attacks. While Saudi Arabian security forces have energetically joined the fight against al-Qaeda after a series of terrorist attacks on the kingdom in 2003, there is insufficient evidence that the Saudi government has staunched the spread of virulent Wahhabi ideology.

Specifically, Freedom House found that the official Saudi textbooks: command Muslims to "hate" Christians and Jews, as well as non-Wahhabi Muslims; teach that "Jews and Christians are enemies of the [Muslim] believers" and that the clash between the two realms is perpetual; and assert that the spread of Islam through jihad is a religious duty.
Likewise, while Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has become a critical and trusted counterterrorism ally, and has survived two al-Qaeda-directed assassination attempts, the Council on Global Terrorism sees little evidence that the Pakistani government has successfully implemented promised educational and religious reforms in the country's many madrassas.

"I was recently in Pakistan, where nearly half of the children are out of school and a significant number of those children who are in school still attend jihadist madrassas," said Fernando Reinares. "In Saudi Arabia, the political elite have certainly been made aware of the problem of extremist ideology, but their textbooks continue to glorify death and martyrdom."

Those original sources of the current wave of Islamic radicalization, he points out, continue to spread to other nations and regions. "I was also recently in Mauritania and Mali in Africa, a region of the world where Salafist or Wahhabi ideology was largely alien just a few years ago," said Reinares. "Today those countries are seeing a large number of madrassas spring up that are outside the government's control and funded by Saudi and Pakistani capital. So while we continue to focus on police and intelligence work to target today's terrorists, the next generation is already being indoctrinated."

This indoctrination comes not only from the madrassa system that functions with such vibrancy throughout much of the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, but also through radical imams both in these regions and in the West. While most continue to preach from the pulpits of established mosques, many of these radicalizing imams create jerry-rigged prayer meetings to indoctrinate new recruits. This leaves them both unaccountable and better able to avoid capture.

In the case of two homegrown terrorist cells that were recently exposed in Australia, for instance, the common thread between them was a radical preacher who exerted influence over both groups and inspired them to radicalize quite quickly. Because such radical imams know that authorities are likely to monitor large mosques, they are increasingly operating out of prayer halls, social clubs, and private homes.

Though there is evidence of significant success in identifying and tracking the actions of some radical imams, many who served as primary facilitators in recruiting and indoctrinating Islamists to al-Qaeda and the jihadist cause in the 1980s and '90s, the problem of itinerant radical preachers persists. Partly this is a reflection of the understandable sensitivity in Western nations toward religious freedom. Yet it also speaks to the difficulty of monitoring radical behavior in a religion that has no formal clergy. In many, if not most, cases of homegrown terrorist cells, however, intelligence and law-enforcement experts say the presence of a radical imam was still the common trigger to radicalization and action. As the sermons are being moved from traditional venues into the kitchens of the believers, the problem becomes all the more difficult to counter as proselytizers leave conventional mosques to evade authorities.

New Triggers to Radicalism

A related unintended consequence of the struggle against violent Islamic extremism has been the increased use of prisons by al-Qaeda and other captured Islamists as focal points for recruitment and indoctrination. With their large populations of idle, violence-prone, and impressionable men, prisons have been targeted by al-Qaeda as potential hotbeds of radicalization. Council members note precedents in this trend: the ultraviolent Islamic terrorist organization GIA began in Algerian jails; José Padilla, an American suspected of planning to set off a dirty bomb on U.S. soil and currently facing terrorism charges, grew up in Chicago and was converted to Islam in prison.

"In France, the conversion of thousands of prisoners to radical Islam is in many ways worse than the problem we faced with radical mosques in the 1990s, because Islamic radicals literally have a captive audience of young, dangerous men already predisposed to illegal behavior," said Xavier Raufer. "We're now seeing the Islamic equivalent of prison gangs."
This dangerous mixture, so particular to the prison environment, creates a multipronged problem. Many prisons are heavily populated by inmates with backgrounds in drug smuggling and document forgery, capabilities authorities must worry about terrorists acquiring. A skilled document forger who was radicalized could open the doors for the freer movement of terrorists. The cycle of common criminals turning into radicals while imprisoned is spotlighted by recent research undertaken by Fernando Reinares, who showed that of around 200 people arrested on terrorism-related charges in Spain since 9/11, at least 20 percent were previously imprisoned for entirely unrelated offenses. The conversion of prisoners to radical Islam also threatens to hasten and facilitate potential marriages of convenience between criminal networks and terrorist organizations. In the case of the Madrid bombings of 2004, for instance, the Islamic terrorist cell acquired the actual plastic explosives from the brother of a small-time Spanish crook that one of the cell members met while incarcerated. Council members also note the danger posed by a large prison escape by jihadis held in Mauritania, as well as the release of thousands of former Islamic terrorists from Algerian prisons as part of a reconciliation process in that country.

"While the United States has successfully degraded the operational capabilities of 'al-Qaeda Central,' we've failed to recognize `jihadism' as a cycle that begins with communication and escalates through radicalization, recruitment, training, and then operations unto death," said Brian Jenkins. "Until we break the cycle at radicalization and recruitment, we will not be successful in this conflict. We can turn some of the people we have in custody around so they actively denounce jihadist recruitment in the same way the reformed gang member or ex-convict goes out to schools and neighborhoods to tell others that it's not the way to go. We can legitimately do that in our society—nothing prevents us from being more active in the areas of rehabilitation and reeducation."

A final trigger to radicalization and violence of growing concern is the Islamic jihadi Web site. After al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups lost their sanctuary in Afghanistan, counterterrorism experts began seeing a proliferation of such Web sites on the Internet. From just a handful at the turn of the century, intelligence experts are now tracking more than 5,000 Web sites today, and that number continues to climb. The radical Islamists are now so adept at using the Internet to recruit, indoctrinate, and communicate that intelligence experts talk about the emergence of a terrorist "sanctuary in cyberspace."

"The United States has focused its public diplomacy outreach on Arabic-language television and radio stations, which are important in terms of keeping Muslim moderates who get their news from traditional sources from becoming radicals," said Bruce Hoffman. "But increasingly the Internet is connecting young Islamists with violent inclinations to one another and giving them a sense of empowerment. Countering these jihadist Web sites in a way that keeps these Islamic radicals from actually reaching the tipping point to violence is critical. The truth is, if we don't reverse the tide of Islamic radicalization we won't have enough bullets to kill all the potential terrorists who might take up arms against us."

So in closing my little medically challenged misfit, I have refuted your rant for what it is. The rambling of a twisted, bile spewing grotesquerie.

It stares at you from your bathroom mirror. Goodbye.

Good riddance!!!

So, your response is to quote another website (without giving the original author proper credit) that fails to answer one single point I brought up before. Good move Forrest.

You still never answered the question on why you believe all terrorists/terrorist cells operate the same way or share the same beliefs. You can’t be dumb enough to believe that homegrown AlQaeda sympathizers want the US to implement Sharia Law, which would be the primary goal of a caliphate.

“Sharia has certain laws which are regarded as divinely ordained, concrete and timeless for all relevant situations... It also has certain laws which derived from principles established by Islamic lawyers and judges. Sharia is more of a system of how law ought to serve humanity, a consensus of the unified spirit.”

In the unattributed website you quoted, one of the main points is how “young, dangerous men already predisposed to illegal behavior” are being converted to Islam. Guys like Jose Padilla.

Are you prepared to tell me and the rest of the world that young, dangerous men like Padilla and other hardened criminals have the same goals and are fighting the Jihad for the same religious reasons as the Saudis and other Arabs that joined the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Do the ex-cons yearn for a Palestinian homeland led by Hamas (I bet they can’t stand Mahmood Abbas’s plan to rule the occupied territories under a Fatah/PLO flag)? Maybe they want Abu Sayyaf to set up a separate Islamic homeland on Mindanao? (That’s an island on the southern part of the Phillipines) How stupid are you?

“To understand why more and more Muslims are becoming radicalized, one can look to the original currents that fed into the violent Islamic extremism of the 1980s and '90s”

How did Presidents Reagan (80s) and Clinton (90s) cause murderers and rapists in US prisons to convert to Islam?

Here are more unanswered questions from before; I don’t think you’ll be able to answer them any better (re: not at all), but ‘what the heck.’

The brilliant bell curve theory you embrace as military science. (That was pure genius)

The whole Nazi/Communism comparison to the US you brought up.

The fact you couldn’t/can’t tell radicalized Muslims from non-radicalized Muslims.

And your inability to understand the meaning of the word ‘crusade”.

Finally you show how truly buffoonish you are with the following quote:

“Your comments are VERY REDUNDANT, and show scant proof that you have even a cursory understanding of geopolitics, let alone the motives or tactics a radical Islamic extremist groups.”

That comment was just ignorant enough to make me believe you actually had an original thought. A stupid thought, but at least it was original.

Next time though, try using a dictionary.

Geopolitics is the study of the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation.

And just to help you out. Here is the definition of another big word you might not know.

DEMOGRAPHICS are the physical characteristics of a population such as age, sex, marital status, family size, education, geographic location, and occupation.

You left out the most important cause of radical Islam.

RELIGION, YOU FOOL.

True Islamic fundamentalists (unlike criminals) are driven by RELIGION. Not geography, demography, economics, population, sex, marital status, family size, education, or occupation, and not the bell curve.

Terrorism 101 - You failed again, not even a nice try this time.

Forgot to include the URL.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/canada602/excerpt.html

"The rambling of a twisted, bile spewing grotesquerie."

Funny how you see facts as twisted.

And yet you are still unable to specifically refute a single fact in my previous posts.

Instead of real debate, you and your kind would shout down and try to silence anyone that disagrees with you.

I see how all your buddies have come running to your defense.

Even the left-wing Dems think you are silly and foolish.

Sad and pathetic.

"Forgot to include the URL."

The story of your life.

THINK, despite your venom, I agree with you on certain points. I began to address them one at a time, but your childish insults forced me to stop. While I do have an interest in geopolitics or "the study of the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation." (Yes I do know what it means. NOTE, "with respect to foreign policy.")

I have no interest in indulging an overly competetive man-child, in a never ending round of lessons.

Then again since you claim your not a republican, perhaps I'm wrong again and your a woman. Premenstrual no doubt.

"The fact you couldn’t/can’t tell radicalized Muslims from non-radicalized Muslims."

I believe that was the thrust of Terrorist Strategy 101: a quiz
http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/politics/TS101.html

The first goal of a violent extremist is to radicalize the apathetic majority, and win them over to your side of the issue.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE7DF1631F935A25750C0A9659C8B63

What part of that do you not understand???

"True Islamic fundamentalists (unlike criminals) are driven by RELIGION. Not geography, demography, economics, population, sex, marital status, family size, education, or occupation, and not the bell curve."

Here is where you go completely off the rails and shoot yourself in the foot. As usual!!!

While it is true that those factors may not speak to the likes of OBL. They certainly play a role in forming the people they hope to recruit. Don't bring up the Princeton Study because...

http://www.princeton.edu/~rpds/downloads/krueger_maleckova_education_poverty_political.pdf

I've already read it!!!

This may be of interest to you IF you have an open mind. I hold out little hope of that but...

"Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050829/klein

That would seem to bolster my arguement.

"It's not the first time that this kind of raw inequality has bred extremism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women, it's true, but more significant was Qutb's encounter with what he later described as America's "evil and fanatic racial discrimination." By coincidence, Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel. He witnessed an America blind to the thousands of Palestinians being made permanent refugees by the Zionist project. For Qutb, it wasn't politics, it was an assault on his identity: Clearly Americans believed that Arab lives were worth far less than those of European Jews. According to Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history at Georgetown University, this experience "left Qutb with a bitterness he was never able to shake."

Milestones. Read it.

Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Arabic: معالم في الطريق) or Milestones, first published in 1964, is a book by Egyptian Islamist author Sayyid Qutb in which he lays out a plan and makes a call to action to re-create the Muslim world on strictly Qur'anic grounds, casting off what Qutb calls Jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic ignorance that the world has lapsed to.

Ma'alim fi al-Tariq has been called "one of the most influential works in Arabic of the last half century". [1] It is probably Qutb's most famous and influential work and one of the most influential Islamist tracts written. It is also the most important ingredient making up the ideology of Qutbism. Commentators have both praised Milestones as a ground-breaking, inspirational work by a hero and a martyr,[2] and reviled it as a prime example of unreasoning entitlement, self-pity, paranoia, and hatred that has been a major influence on Islamist terrorism [3].

The title Ma'alim fi al-Tariq translates into English as "Milestones Along the Way" or "Milestones Along the Road." English translations of the book are usually entitled simply "Milestones;" the book is also sometimes referred to as "Signposts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'alim_fi_al-Tariq

"The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies--geographically and psychologically--were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones, it would be much more difficult for politicians to sign deportation orders sending Algerian asylum-seekers to torture, or to wage wars in which only the invaders' dead are counted. A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050829/klein

Class dismissed.

I didn't think it could happen, but you've proved yourself to be even dumber than I thought. You quote ideas that contradict each other and are too ignorant to see it.

“...despite your venom, I agree with you on certain points. I began to address them one at a time, but your childish insults forced me to stop...”

BS, You haven’t addressed anything. You haven’t been able to refute anything I’ve said. I go through your posts point by point. You don’t have the guts to do the same.

You said, “His (Osama’s) immediate goal is to radicalize the hundreds of millions of Muslims who sympathize with the vision of a restored Caliphate....”

Radical Muslims already sympathize with the vision of a restored caliphate. It’s you that fails to see they are already radicalized and the non-radicalized Muslims aren't interested in an Islamic caliphate.

“Here is where you go completely off the rails and shoot yourself in the foot. As usual!!!” “While it is true that those factors may not speak to the likes of OBL....”

If they don’t speak to Osama Bin Laden – THEY DON’T SPEAK TO ALL TERRORISTS. That means, Einstein, trying to put all terrorists or terrorist sympathizes in one narrow classification of how they act, or what their goals are is stupid. TERRORISM 101.

Islamic fundamentalists driven by religion want a society governed by Sharia law. CRIMINALS probably would not like living in a society where the religious police chop off the 'offending' body parts when CRIMES are committed.

"Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."

So now you believe US and British troops were/are murdering innocent Iraqi civilians. Or does ‘exterminated’ mean something different to you? And if US and UK troops aren’t murdering innocents, how can you hold that up as justification for terrorist acts?

There are many Muslims that DO NOT believe Americans and Coalition forces are not murdering innocent men, women, and children. Again you lump all Muslims and all terrorists together as if they all believe the same thing. That’s retarded.

“That would seem to bolster my arguement.”

I can’t answer that because I have no idea what you are trying to say. Since you can’t explain it in your own words, I seriously doubt you have any idea what you are talking about.

“Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women...”

What do you think of Qutb's work? Since you never say what YOU think, I assume you agree with what he says since you hold him up as an example.

Do you know what licentious means? Qutb was saying American women were whores for not following what HE believed. They violated how HE thought they should act according to Islamic/Sharia law. Is that the kind of person you hold up as a ‘hero and martyr’?

Saying that Americans, especially American women, are somehow to blame for Islamic extremism is unforgivable.

“Milestones. Read it.”

You recommend this work? Do you understand what it says?

“...he (Qutb) lays out a plan and makes a call to action to re-create the Muslim world on strictly Qur'anic grounds,”

The next quote, taken with the previous quotes shows what an intellectual powerhouse you are.

"The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies--geographically and psychologically--were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones.... A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism."

So, you want me to read a book by a guy that believes Americans are debauched and should be forced to live under Islamic law, and then you say the West isn’t multicultural/multiethnic enough.

How about the multi-cultural societies like the Taliban had, or like in Saudi Arabia? They treat outsiders/non-believers well, don’t you think?

'Values of equality and human rights'?

Do you consider women as being human? Do they deserve human rights? Under the multi-ethnic Islamic/Quranic societies you glorify, women can’t vote, go to school, can’t work...if they violate those ‘laws’ they are put to death.

The blame-America crowd are full of retards like you. You want America/Americans to change so the Islamic fundamentalists will like us. You are fools.

Class dismissed.

BS, You haven’t addressed anything. You haven’t been able to refute anything(REDUNDANT!!!)I’ve said. I go through your posts point by point. You don’t have the guts to do the same.

What does your analyst say about your mania??? You are one sick a%s, bed wetting mother f%#ker!!!

Address means to 'speak to'.

You can address a subject and agree or disagree with the original author.

Refute means to 'to prove someone wrong'.

See the difference? The two words aren't redundant.

English is a wonderful language. Try learning it.

"You are one sick a%s, bed wetting mother f%#ker!!!"

I'm glad to see The Swamp is maintaining its high standards. I guess they have cut people like you some slack due to your limited vocabulary and extremely limited intellect.

You win D-Bag.

Take yer meds!!!

"You win..."

Yaaaay!! POPTARTS!!!!!