War issues in next election

[Spy_007]

Since the election is coming soon and one of the
issues will be the conduct of the war in Iraq,
I thought it would be a good time to review the
war as it has transpired, in hopes that voters
will have more understanding of the different
characters position on the war.

Introduction

To understand the war in Iraq and Afghanistan
you first have to understand Al Qaeda and what
their strategy is. After that then you have
a chance at getting some sense out of the war.
Hardly anyone does understand what the strategy
of Al Qaeda is. Bush has only given out about
two sentences as to what the strategy is. He
has also not given out any explanation of what
our counter strategy is. For this reason he
has left the door open to anyone criticizing
the war to do so without him in any way countering
the criticism. As you get to understand the
war, and just exactly what we have done, it
finally becomes apparent, that the US has handled
this pretty well. It is not something though
that can be understood with 5 minute explanations.
Perhaps that is one reason Bush has never even
tried to explain it.

Although not given coverage, facts were available
to most people as to what has transpired but
you really had to look for these facts or they
would be missed. I followed all the facts along
as it unfolded from the beginning. One important
thing in doing this was to subscribe to Stratfor,
a private intelligence service that gave a
lot of information not available in the everyday
press. Also along the way there were quite
a few documentaries on TV, on Al Qaeda, Bin
Laden, etc. and these were on things like the
Discovery Channel, History Channel, Learning
Channel. In these documentaries it was pretty
well laid out what Al Qaeda was up to and just
how they expected to carry it off. The channels
like Fox and CNN and network news were pretty
much useless. I served for a short time as
an intelligence officer in the Air Force and
it was this experience that got me interested
in these things and why I kept up with this
as it unfolded.

On top of nobody really knowing what was the
basic strategy of Al Qaeda, you had politicians
who also did not have a clue trying to armchair
quarter back the situation. Guys like Howard
Dean and John Kerry came out with a bunch of
stuff that was of their own invention and had
no basis in fact, because it served their political
purpose to bash Bush, and propell their careers
by doing so. In time with these two bashing
the war effort, almost the entire democratic
party followed along, because afterall Bush
was not countering any of the propoganda put
out by the democrat leaders. The single biggest
clue that these democrat politicians had no
clue of the situation was the idiotic things
they proposed, and they did not ever brief
the public on what was Al Qaeda's strategy
either. I suspect they did not do this because
they, in fact, did not know the strategy. Had
they known the strategy they would not have
carried on the critcism that they did.

In short here is a very basic synopsis of what
has transpired.

(1) Al Qaeda came up with a plan to dominate
the world. The first part of this plan was
to bring together all Muslim nations under
one leadership, and after this was done, then
the rest of the world was their next target.


(2) The US has countered them very effectively
by supporting Muslim elements that oppose
Al Qaeda. This has been a brillant strategy
and has never even been voiced by Bush to
the public. True, many twists and turns have
gone on along the way.

The above is a very simple 2 step overview
of the situation and requires a ton of back
up material to fully understand it.

The backup material explaining will follow.

[Matt W]

Cutting & pasting without sourcing is generally considered spam. I suggest you take this material elswhere.

[Spy_007]

Chapter one

So what was Al Qaeda's plan, and who were these
people?

Al Qaeda is a new name that the Mujahadeen
gave themselves in Afghanistan. The leaderhsip
of Al Qaeda are the same ones that led the
Mujahadeen. Al Qaeda means "the base" and refers
to "the base" of the new coming world that
will be dominated by Muslims. To understand
how Al Qaeda came up with such grandiose plans
you have to understand why they came up with
the plans.

Al Qaeda became inspired as a result of the
war in Afghanistan against Russia, who invaded
to keep the puppet government in control there.
The guerrilla fighters against Russia were
the Mujahadeen. These guerrillas fought the
Russians for 10 years and finally Russia gave
up and left. During this 10 year struggle,
many Muslims from around the world came to
Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahadeen. They
got a lot of support from the CIA and from
Saudi Arabia, with the 2 sources each providing
half the finances to them. They also believed
that God was on their side and that it was
a holy mission from God to win the war. It
is important to remember this fact that they
fought for 10 years against great odds and
refused to give up, even though the Russians
pretty well slaughtered them most of the time.
The only thing that saved them was the fact
that the US gave them stinger missles finally
and this fact allowed them to counter the threat
from the Soviet helicopters. If they had not
had the missiles they would have had no chance
against a superior equiped force. To the credit
of the Mujahadeen though they refused to give
up, ever.

It was this fight against Russia that set up
the thinking for the present war against America.
With this victory against Russia, Al Qaeda
believed that with God's help they could defeat
the world, because after all, with God's help
they defeated one of the super powers. Even
further than running Russia out of Afghanistan
they believed they were the ones responsible
for the later collapse of Russia, when the
Russian economy imploded. They knew they could
not just attack America and win, but they thought
that if they could bait America into an attack
against them in Afghanistan, that they could
fight a very prolonged guerrilla war against
the US for many years, just as they did against
the Russians. During this long drawn out war
they could also overcome their Muslim enemies.

They saw the leaders of the Muslim world as
heretics and puppets of the USA. Governments
like in Saudi Arabia were just puppets of the
US and these governments should be replaced
with jihadist governments. So over time they
would fight a long fight against the US and
they would recruit Muslims from these other
countries to come to the aid of Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. As time would go on Muslim unity
would come about to expell the Christian crusaders
from Afghanistan and Muslims would also get
rid of their heretic governments who had been
puppets of the west. This all made perfect
sense to them since they had a working model
of this strategy with Russia. They figured
to take however many years required, whether
10 years as against the Russians or 20 years,
no matter the cost eventually they would prevail,
the US would leave Afghanistan and Al Qaeda
would at that point be at their most powerful.
With this peak in power they would then take
any measures to replace Muslim governments
who did not line up with them.

At one time the Muslim world was united under
one single control. It stretched from Atlantic
to Pacific. It was under one ruler, the Caliph.
This came about at the peak of Muslim military
expansion in the world. This one united Muslim
world was called the Caliphate. Al Qaeda wanted
to once again bring back the Caliphate.

So to summarize, Al Qaeda strategy was the
following:
(1) Bring the Muslim Caliphate back
together.
(2) To do this Al Qaeda had to provoke
an attack into the Muslim world.
(3) With the invasion of the Muslim world Al Qaeda
would fight a prolonged guerrilla war.
(4) Over time Muslims around the world would unify
under Al Qaeda in this struggle.
(5) With Muslim unity achieved all the Muslim
countries could come together in the re
established Caliphate.

The thing to remember here is that Al Qaeda
is figuring on a very long war and is counting
on achieving Muslim unity as a product of this
war. Anything the US does must be able to handle
a very long guerrilla effort that could go
even 20 years. Also everything the US does
must take into account stopping Muslim unity.
If the Muslims were to somehow unite, under
a jihadist leader it would be massive trouble.
Presently only a very small percent of Muslims
agree with this jihadist goal and actually
most Muslims do not like Al Qaeda.

[Spy_007]

As noted in my first post , I received much of
my material from Stratfor, which is a private
intelligence company. I cannot give access to
source data here, because Stratfor does not
allow public access. However they and some
of their analysts have made some of the information
public in articles and books, Like "America's
Secret War". These are copyrighted and therefore
cannot be quoted. This requires me to give my
synopsis of the material in my words. Of course
when this happens, I might get the meaning wrong,
so I can't say it is the meaning of the authors. It
has to be my understanding of the meaning.

Also along the way there were quite
a few documentaries on TV, on Al Qaeda, Bin
Laden, etc. and these were on things like the
Discovery Channel, History Channel, Learning
Channel. I made a lot of notes on these, and
again, it is my understanding of the situation.

If you cannot live with my understanding of this
material and my posting it, just delete me from
your roles and this thread also.

I belong to a veterans group, and these are
exerpts from material I sent them as this situation
unrolled. My response from the veterans group,
was about 97% positive. Again, if posting is not
allowed by veterans like myself, who also served
as an Intelligence officer, and may have deeper
understanding of these matters, then just delete this
stuff, and I will not bother you any more.

[Jack]

I, too, am a veteran who served in intelligence (ASA 1975-1980). I learned to follow guidelines and respect rules. One of the rules in posting material is to credit the source. Otherwise the material lacks credibility.
My closing this thread has nothing to do with your credentials. It has everything to do with crediting sources and not plagiarizing other people's writing.