Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Rebels free hundreds of al qaeda fighters (CNN actually reported)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUeNBy3FjRM

Gaddafi claimed all the protesters were al Qaeda as did Mubarak. The guy could not actually answer if the rebels even knew who these people were, how many there were or what kind of al Qaeda they were. None of them had ever seen trial.

I can bet some genuinely were al Qaeda but I can also bet plenty weren't.

Reply 2

CombineHarvester

According to these dictators any opposition to the regime are terrorists and therefore Al Qaeda (probably the most misused term in the past decade). Ali Abdullah Saleh did the same thing, as did Mubarak as will any dictator in that region whose regime is threatened and they need to justify killing/torturing people. It even works in Western countries, Gitmo, waterboarding, illegal detention, extraordinary rendition etc. Just say they're Al Qaeda and you've got a blank cheque.

Reply 3

mbranson

Um the video didn't feature gaddafi in it saying they were al qaeda, the dudes on the video were saying that, as CNN is a western media source there only gonna say there al qaeda if its pretty certain as the story goes against the message there trying to get out... rebels good gaddafi bad.
I think US has terrorism laws or lack of laws that see people be detained, secretly tortued (waterboard, stress position etc) too, that prison forgot the name now and any of the other secret us prisons around the world, many of them don't see trial for ages too....but yeah doesn't mean you can just ignore claims that they may be al qaeda because this is overused.

Reply 4

chrislpp

Well firstly Al Qaeda doesn't exist in the way the Western media would have you believe, and there is little evidence to suggest it exists at all. But I guess with the openness of Guantanamo Bay, we'll never know what or what isn't going on in the middle east. In the 10 years since 9/11 the USA has little to claim in the war on terrorism apart from 2 invasions targeting, primarily, groups and governments that turned out to have little to do with the notion of ''Al Qaeda''. Ok they may have actually killed Osama Bin Laden, but it's not like anything has changed has it? Every isolated incident that is dealt with such as the shoe bombers is nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and unless I am mistaken there have been more people killed from falling over on the street than from'Al Qaeda' plots against our beloved freedoms!

So I'm extremely sceptical.

(edited 12 years ago)