[Jack78]

Originally Posted by Bull****

Pape is very clear and is very wrong. Try reading his words directly and again let us all know how this applies to Algeria. Algeria Algeria Algeria Algeria....focus - I know you can do this dufus.

Exactly what part of this statement from those actually responsible for the bombs do you not understand? Operations against the US, it's allies, its economic interests ...

According to Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, a spokesman for al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were carried out by three suicide bombers in trucks packed with explosives.“We won’t rest until every inch of Islamic land is liberated from foreign forces,”the spokesman said in a recording of the phone call played on Al-Jazeera.

Along with guerrilla warfare, cyber-war and ideological indoctrination, one of the pillars of Al-Qaeda's operational objectives in its war against the West is striking at targets of high economic value, the so-called "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan" first made public by Osama bin Laden in December 2004.
"One of the main causes for our enemies' gaining hegemony over our country," bin Laden reasoned, "is their stealing of our oil; therefore [Islamic fighters] should make every effort ... to stop the greatest theft in history of the natural resources of both present and future generations, which is being carried out through collaboration between foreigners and [local] agents." Note the tarring of local regimes along with "foreigners."

Why Yemen and why Algeria? Aside from the fact that they are good targets of opportunity and there are in these countries indigenous elements sympathetic to or directly aligned with Al-Qaeda, they offer a twofold return on a rather modest investment. The first, of course, is the undermining of Western economic interests;

Originally Posted by Interview w/ Pape

Al Qaeda is a prime example of the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. My book is the first to collect the complete set of every al Qaeda suicide attacker from 1995 to early 2004 -- that is, the seventy-one individuals who actually killed themselves to carry out attacks for Osama. Of those seventy-one, we have the names and nationalities of sixty-seven. Over two-thirds come directly from Sunni Muslim countries where the United States has stationed combat forces since 1990. One-third do not; one-third are more transnational in nature, but even among the one-third that are transnational, we see that the motive of causing the United States and the West in general to leave the Arabian Peninsula is a powerful factor. The London bombers are a good case in this regard, because obviously they were from Britain.

Let me make four points about the London bombers. First, the al Qaeda group that claimed responsibility for the London attacks just two hours after they occurred and with specific operational details not yet in the press, said the London attacks were to punish Britain for British military operations in Iraq. Second, Hussein Osmar (he's the would-be July 21 bomber that we have in Rome), said in his interrogation, and I'm quoting: "This was not about religion, this was about Iraq. We watched films of Western military operations in Iraq." Third, Mohammed Khan -- Mohammed Khan is the ringleader of the July 7 attacks, the guy from Leeds. Well, al Qaeda released his martyr video in September. In that video Khan says with an eerily English accent, that one of the attacks was to punish Britain for British military operations on Muslim lands.

And finally, the British government itself. In 2004, the British home office conducted a four-volume survey of the attitudes of the 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. They found that between 8 percent and 13 percent of British Muslims wanted more suicide attacks against the United States and the West, and they further found the number one reason for that: Iraq. Iraq.

So, I'm not trying to say al Qaeda has no transnational support, but it's crucial to see that if Osama were no longer able to recruit suicide terrorists based on the anger generated by American and Western forces on the Arabian Peninsula, the remaining transnational network would pose a far smaller threat and may well simply collapse.

You are an incredibly ignorant fool, bulljacket.