wollensak said:
Bin Laden's sole purpose for 911 was to involve the US directly in the middle east. The Americans make easy targets and their occupation angers the arabs. Eventually the "terrorists" feel that
the pro-western governments of the Arab states will be overthrown by popular uprisings and the US, alienated from it's allies, will be forced to pull out.
Guerilla warfare is cheap and devastating to the enemy. It's how the Americans won in 1776 and Israel won control of Palestine.
One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.
The western world is hooked on cheap energy. In order to keep the Western economies humming, it's governments have constantly intervened in the middle east to keep the oil flowing.
This fight will go on for a long time.
Bin Laden’s purpose was to kill Americans, to paralyze them with fear and force them to re-think their position in the middle east and pull out. It was also to hurt their economy and destroy symbols of their power on the rest of the world. He went after symbols of power, WTC, Pentagon and the other target was probably either the white house or capital building.
911 was conceived at a time with Clinton in power. They knew they were dealing with a wimpy president more interested in self gratification than foreign policy. The figured Clinton would send a few “feel good” bombs to Afghanistan and go back to having his dick sucked.
Bin Laden didn’t count the response that they got, just as the Japanese didn’t expect the world of hurt they set themselves up for with Pearl Harbour.
It’s been 2 ½ years since 911 with no attacks on American soil since. My opinion as to why is that the central command of Al-Queada has been effectively crushed. I think that the majority of the higher ups have been killed, captured or are hiding in holes somewhere scattered throughout the mid east. Also, no nation on earth would dare play host to them anymore. If they do, the risk the same fate as the Taliban.
I believe that Bin Laden is probably dead. I don’t consider these scratchy audio tapes that he makes compelling evidence that he’s still alive regardless of what the CIA says. If he were alive, he would prove it unquestionably. He would show the world that he outsmarted the most powerful nation on earth with all their high tech means. He would make a video tape with reference to current events to prove that he’s alive. He hasn’t done that. It serves the US’s interest right now to pretend that he’s still alive because while he is still alive, they can continue to justify their occupation of Afghanistan.
We all know that Bin Laden was a clever man. I think it would’ve been very clever to get someone he trusts to kill him and dispose of the body in such a way that it never would be found. He probably did that when the US was getting close, probably in the Tora Bora area. That way, the US spends years searching for him, never finds him and never knows why. He would then do down in history as a legend as the guy who outsmarted the US. The worst thing for Bin Laden would be to get captured. I’m sure he would take measures to make sure that never happened.
We have only seen a few video tapes with no way to verify when they were made and a few poor quality audio tapes which would be easy to fake. This suggests to me that Bin Laden’s dead.
The remaining Al-Quaeda ops are scattered around the world, stirring up trouble. I’m sure many were in the Kashmir area causing trouble. Now many have moved to Iraq. Now that there is so much trouble in Iraq, there is now a cease fire in Kashmir. I suspect that’s because it was many of the same people who used to be in Kashmir who are now in Iraq.
BTW, wallensak, you’re right about Israel being terrorists themselves in British Palestine. They wanted to force the British out.
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