Al Queda in trouble

[Shotgun]

Interesting article...

Bin Laden Tape: Honesty and Gloom
Jan 07, 2003
Summary

The release of a new tape by Osama bin Laden is always an important event. The most recent one is particularly important because of the tone it takes. It is far from resigned, but it is a gloomy analysis of al Qaeda's situation, focusing on the failure of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to resist the United States. Al Qaeda has a great deal to be gloomy about. Events were very much moving in its favor since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But December was a terrible month for al Qaeda: The United States began to gain control over the insurrection, and the diplomatic situation in the region began to shift in the U.S. favor. Al Qaeda has a problem and is searching for a solution.

http://www.stratfor.com/corporate/index.neo?page=basicsample

 

[WildBill]

Whether that is a true assessment or not, let us look at what they did accomplish over the last year:

1. Many flights cancelled for "undisclosed" reasons.
2. Specialists sent out willy-nilly looking for a dirty bomb because they found some sketches of one in a cave in Afghanistan!!!
3. Changes in passport rules that might kill off billions of dollars in tourism if not derailed from rich industrialized nations.
4. Changes in visa rules which have cost a number of American airlines passengers due to requiring a $100 visa just to walk through an airport.
5. We don't even want to know how much money it has cost, but we all can imagine how much we are spending on this for a handful of good captures.
6. Creation of some vague "threat alert" which prompts wild predictions or mentions of a number of potential targets whether backed by real evidence or not.

I mean I am not here to side with terrorists or anything, but people misread the whole situation. A terrorist has been defined now as someone that commits an act of terror, but in earlier times terrorists really just wanted to scare people with random acts. This organization has made just enough attacks to continue to scare people worldwide and force upon the US untold costs in terms of lost commerce and a nation of many unsettled people that avoid travel and some used to be normal activities out of fear of terrorism. I would have to say that is far from an organization in trouble and we should all ask ourselves maybe we are in some ways our own worst enemies when it comes to dealing with an organization that has acted against Americans on American soil once in their history.

 

[D2bets]

It's really hard to even know whether Al Qaeda is in trouble because we simply can't say that we've identified all their cells or that we've captured their top people. The only way to doom Al Qaeda is to capture their lweaders, identify all cells and create an atmosphere where new people don't want to join. Unfortunately I don't think we've really accomplished any of the above. And the Iraq insurgency doesn't seem to be slowing.