FYI everybody. Last night I caught an hour of a much longer recording of Washington DC conference on various aspects of Al Qaida. The conference seemed to have most of the heavy hitters in the area of terrorist research and investigative reporting. The panel I saw was on recruitment (which most panelists agreed was not something Al Qaida does: e.g. Marc Sageman said it's was more like they accepted 15-20 percent of their applicants, much like Ivy League schools) and it was very good. Given the frequency with which C-Span reruns things, there's a good chance (I'm hoping) of seeing it again. Unfortunately for some reason I can't get the C-Span website up right now, otherwise I'd post a link to their schedule.
Im not sure how I should take this - I guess I could say thankyou for the opportunity to enroll on the Training scheme of Al-Qaida....
Reading the title I thought C-Span cammeras had been placed in a cave in Afghanistan somewhere and were taping a meeting.
Did they also talk about the recruiting methods of the elders of zion? or Did they tell something about how's the illuminati plan going? Are angels males or females? Now seriously... did they started questioning what is Al Qaida? Did they show evidences that such a superpowerful worldwide network exists? Tell me they didn't do like rumsfeld who described in depth a sci-fi hi-tech bunker in Tora Bora (saying there were many of them there) with images. Thing that reality check showed it doesn't really exist.
I'd recommend you watch it before passing judgement. Skepticism like yours was a starting point, so of course they constantly questioned the nature of Al Qaida. The general consensus was that Al Qaida as an organization was old news and only acheived the limited influence it had to begin with because it temporarily controlled training camps in Afghanistan (Sageman, again, said that Al Qaida was dead, a product of having overreached on 9/11, and that rather than running things Bin Laden was in the position of having to refute or accept claims made by independent, localized groups of having done something as a part of or on behalf of Al Qaida). "Al Qaida the social movement" was another story, however. Note that this paragraph does little justice to a complex debate.
Yeah, I thought about calling the thread AL QAIDA! ALL NUDE ALL THE TIME! but figured what I had was sensationalistic enough.
Looks like they're airing the forum on Al Qaida's media strategy at 11:34 eastern time. http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/fullschedule.csp?timeid=211968789820
I don't believe C-Span would be interested in the regular Al Qaeda News Conferences... generally these are held in a tent, everyone recounts the 10,000 virgin prayers and their latest jihadi adventures, before the boss Osama speaks! Then the conferences typically disolve into bickering about HK rifle cost and ever-increasing ammunition expense.
For someone so pro the war, you seem to know more than Bush about what Al-Quaeda are up to!! Maybe Georgey Porgy will get you a job, even with your views you'd probably do a better job!!