Robert Scheer writes in the LA Times, Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?
To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.
“The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear,” a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians.
Wouldn't that be something?
You know, these are good questions:
… consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:
• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?
• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?
• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about “dirty bombs” when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?
• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on “Meet the Press” in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?
'Trust but verify' — and there hasn't been much public verification, has there?
Fascinating. I’m going to have to see if we Americans will have the opportunity to see this film. I highly doubt it, but boy would that be something if it were true! Thanks for the post.
The series is available on some of The Internets, if one is willing to delve into the shadowy world of p2p.
The series may be found at this site.
The quality if the video is pretty crappy, unfortunately.
Part III can be found at http://dc.indymedia.org/media/all/display/21750/index.php, where the quality is a little better.
I think it can also be found via BitTorrent.