One has degenerated to shrill whining proving that irony is not dead, the other spams links from WingNutDaily. This is truly pathetic.

I read somewhere that Al Qaeda was a name given by the CIA to spies it sent into either Russia or Afghanistan in the 1980's. If it's true it seems like a strange coincidence. I also saw a man who had been released from Guantanamo Bay saying that when he was tortured they only wanted him to confess to one thing - that he was a member of Al Qaeda -which he was not and never had been. Other inmates told him the same thing. It seems obvious why the US doesn't want to release the people still held in Guantanamo Bay: it's well known that they are mostly'low value' people who have, nevertheless, been tortured to make them confess to things that aren't true and who all have damming tales to tell. Strangely it seems that the top Taliban were released from Guantanamo long ago. Something about all of this just doesn't smell right and Glenn Greenwald is the only one to pick up on it. The mainstream media just plays along and never asks the questions most people want them to ask. It all just seems to be some geo-political game. I've believed for some time that the official line on all of this is a sham and that the truth is being buried deeper and deeper by the very people who should be trying to get at the truth.

I can not believe how the Press is allowing the military, the Bush Administartion, and their supporters to use it to spew lies, again. But then again, since these Liers have been in office the Press has done their bidding. By Bush's own words, we are not and I repeat are not fighting Al Qaida in Iraq but since the majority of Americans want to disengage ourselves from their civil war, now everyone we fighting is Al Qaida. Give me a break.

There were lots of whites opposed to apartheid who defended their homes farms and ranches from attack. I guess if someone bursts into your house, with a machine gun you can read international law to them. And blog about it. But on the frontier you're kind of left to your own devices.

It seems a videotape showing Hillary being intimately involved in an illegal campaign contribution has surfaced. Hmmmm. Perjury, campaign finance violations, it could be a few years in the pokey for Hillary. Bill will have to find a sympathetic ear for the duration. Darn.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55320

Countries should simply surrender territory to whomever wants to take it by force. I'll have to remember that. Thanks.

- RealName

No, South Africa's racist and totalitarian white regime should have given the country to its own citizens. It was their country; the country was that of the African, Coloured, and Indian majority just as much as it was of the whites who controlled the army and police. It was, after all the colonialist-minded whites who had "take[n] it by force."

Of course Mugabe was the result of the Rhodesian colonialists. Had it become decades earlier a multi-racial democracy with a decent program of land reform, a guerrilla movement wouldn't have arisen, and the situation would be better for everyone concerned. Everyone. Just like all of South Africa would have been better off with a democratic, de-colonized state from the 1950's on. In fact, all of Southern Africa would have been better off.

I know you wish that somehow, someday, more people than the stinking little basement meetings of ultra-right wing and merc nerd cranks will look back at the fascist Southern African regimes of the 1950s or 1960s as heroic crusaders for democracy, as devoted protectors against Stalinism, but they won't.

And everyone now understands that every person, group, or idea that somehow seemed different from what US foreign policy leaders, or South African racist regime leaders, wanted, was "Communist." Communist this, Communist that. If they wanted independence, they were Communist. If they wanted to do something with national resources that US or South African leaders didn't, it was Communist. Communists under the bed, Communists in the attic, everywhere a Communist.

Just like every skirmish in Iraq might now be called "Al Qaida."

But, of course, in the end, I'm just throwing your own game back at you. You have noticed, right?

The small body of Foreign terrorists operating in Iraq (those referred to as Al Qaida) are, as Juan Cole notes, actually intependant salafists. with no connection to Bin Laden. In other words they are Hanbal followers of Wahhab; probabaly mostly either the hobby of some eccentric Prince of the Saud Royal family or Jordanian jailbirds, like Zarqawi. These free-lance murderers crop up in every unstable situation. It's laughable to think they are connected to Bin Laden or Zawhiri. So even the 'Al Qaida' in Iraq has nothing to do with Al Qaida or international terrorism.

I've also noticed that suddenly we've gotten amazingly better at finding Al Qaeda in Iraq.

There might be something else looming that I've picked up from the 2nd tier radio gasbags: ALL the insurgent groups in the entire Middle East are a serious threat to America.

BS by any other name is still BS! Bush's new bobble-head General is just another one who parrots the Imposter's lies. Of course the corporate press falls in line. Stenographers! They parrot the Imposter's lies.

What worries me most about Bush's latest "wordsmithing" and "spin" on "Al Qaeda" is how they'll be easily absorbed in to the minds of millions of average Americans -- the clueless who are out shopping and not taking time to educate themselves about Iraq and this corrupt, incompetent administration.

The Democrats really need to dial it up and spell out the situation to the American public. Maybe they should appoint a few spokespersons to appear regularly in the media.

Either way, the Dems need to be more aggressive and proactive. But I must say Rahm Emmanuel called Cheney's bluff with his budget amendment.