Al Qaeda a myth says Russian

[Dr_Evil]

Duh! No! Never!

Is that a duh, No, never, i never thought of that

or

Duh, no, never! had i mentioned that my argument would have fallen apart!

 

[Raisin D'etre]

Naaah! I would never have thought of that!

And did it ever occur to you that the reason the pipeline happens to run alongside american bases is that the pipeline was designed to run through strategicly safe areas (that could be defended and are hard to be attacked) , hence why the yanks chose to sight their bases there?

Did it ever occur to you that you just proved what I set out to show i.e. that the invasion of Afghanistan was about securing America's access to the oil hence the need to establish military bases that would ensure its safe passage out of the region?

I reiterate - Invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with OBL and terrorism, it was about securing the region for American interests and increasing America's access to the region's oil.

 

[invisibleplanet]

CyberRose, "there's no way we will ever know..." there's definitely a way we can know.

there is already PLENTY of EVIDENCE to suggest that Bin Laden was CIA funded, as well as using his own Saudi Money. Most of this evidence was compiled BEFORE 2001, so it's worth temporarily disregarding the last 4 years worth of news reports and smokescreens.
For example: from a search for Robert Baer (whose name I discovered from a german site) I see that Baer was a case officer for the Directorate of Operations for the CIA from 1976 - 1997, mainly serving in the ME (source)

Baer:I think the public’s confidence is still high. This is all very confusing for the public. Who is Bin Laden? What is Qaeda? Do people have membership cards? Do they swear oaths? Do they get a monthly magazine? It’s all very confusing for Americans who don’t follow the Middle East and there is this Arab underground that we’re not plugged into.

Trento: Does the public put together the fact that the US was using some of these senior assets, Al Qaeda assets back in the day. Does the public get that is there a connection there?

Baer: No. The way the public is seeing this, even from the journalists I get, is that bin Laden just sprung from a shell, like Venus on the half shell from the sea.

Trento: 2. Because the CIA had done business with bin Laden and others that later came together as Al Qaeda, should we be suspicious of the CIA's motive in the terrorism war?

Baer: I think that’s going too far. It stopped collecting intelligence in the 80s, that’s what it did, because it was easier not to collect it.

Trento: In other words, you can be in business with the bad guys, the trick is, after you’re done using them don’t ignore them, pay attention. Remember where you’ve been…

Baer: The rule is if you’re going into any of these dirty wars, you always have at least one or two sources for the group that you’re running. So, if you’re going to be running bin Laden, whether it’s indirectly or directly, you got to know what the guy’s up to. That’s just a rule of intelligence. If you’re going to hand out stingers in Afghanistan, you want to know who’s going to get them. And if they decide to sell them, you want to know to whom they’re selling them. We never knew that. And, we have a whole generation of agency officers that ran the place based on logistics -- that were logistics officers.

Trento: And so, the idea, this illusion that the agency really had insight into the Islamic movements because we had done the support against the Soviets was kind of a myth. But, the agency sort of dined out on that myth in Congress and other places. We know how these folks work; we had this great victory. Do you think they sort of created this situation?

Baer: Well, that’s why they spent so much time on the movies: just generating a myth. The other hand is in a story is that the agency’s very good when it has a mandate and tries. I’m talking about the Soviet Union. I mean -- we had their shorts through the 90s.

Trento: Right, by the 90s we did.

Baer: In terms of counter-espionage -- we were great. We could run circles around the FBI; we ran circles around defense. We created all the advance counter-Soviet equipment -- that was all thanks to the CIA. So, it’s unfair to say the group is just incompetent. But, it was incompetent when it came to Islamic fundamentalism, or it became a problem.

Trento: Is there a cultural problem inside the agency regarding Islam in general?

Baer: Well everybody’s white middle class and goes to Midwestern schools. If you’re an Arabist -- you go to Arabia for two years and then you go to an assignment and you say this is goddamn awful sitting in Yemen or whatever. And my wife doesn’t like it, my kids don’t like it and I’m not getting promoted because the guy back at headquarters is getting promoted. So, I’m going to headquarters or I’m going to Europe at least where I can live well. And all of a sudden you are recycling Arabists through the Middle East. And figures look great for the Hill because they’re training twenty people a year.

Trento: Yea, it becomes the numbers game. It’s like what Shackle used to do in Vietnam. “Give me reports, give me reports.” The fact that they’re true or not don’t matter.

Baer: Yea, how many reports you send in. Just don’t get the State Department mad at you. But, this is the important part of the story: the CIA does its job; it does a fantastic job. I’m talking about the Soviet Union not about predicting the fall -- that was an analytical problem.

Trento: Well, that also got politicized. That wasn’t your fault.

Baer: The DO caught all the Russian spies because they were doing their job.

Trento: 3. President Bush has stated flatly that Saddam has connections to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence community has failed to back him on either assertion. Did the President overreach, or are the intelligence organs being too cautious? Tenet’s sort of walked the fine line on all of this.

Baer: Well, he was opposed to it a few weeks ago, but now he’s all lined up, if you can go by the TV.

Trento: Most of the people I’ve talked to think it’s unlikely that Saddam would be trusted by Al Qaeda. So, why do they believe this?

Baer: Well, if you look at the NY Times today, that camp that they’ve identified…

Trento: It’s under Kurdish control…

Baer: Yea, it’s under the group that we pay for. So, that means we’re paying for the camp. Well, that’s not a good sign. It’s become a goddamn circus and now Bush is praying and the mastermind is going in and out of Kuwait and Qatar, our two allies. That is not a good sign. After 9.11 the guy we know did it goes to Qatar to hide?!?

Trento: 4. Numerous articles have said that Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding Al Qaeda through various Islamic charities and front groups. Should the intelligence community have known this before 9.11 and should the administration have acted upon it?

Baer: That’s a red herring. Yea, the intelligence community should have known. Look, the Saudi Ministry of Interior stiffed Louis Freeh on Khobar bombings. It was much wider -- more people were involved in this. We had no way to find out how they stiffed us because we didn’t have any sources because Saudi Arabia was our ally and it was a protected country. If we got caught spying on Saudi Arabia, Fred Dutton would ring the CIA a new asshole. He would say, what do you mean you fucking cowboys going out and recruiting our best ally, our friend? People live off of Saudi Arabia in this town. University of Arkansas was funded by Saudi Arabia as soon as Clinton got elected. Everybody looks at Saudi Arabia as some sort of clandestine tax. Saudi Arabia…keeps the Kennedy Center funded.

Trento: So we simply look the other way when things they have done have resulted in the deaths of Americans?

Baer: Yea. And, this is what we’re doing on Iraq, we’re looking the other way on our Gulf friends who are supporting these people – paying for them. They’re not cooperating in the investigation. I mean, everyday in the newspaper you see it.

Trento: 5. Many supporters of the CIA claimed that President Clinton handicapped the Agency with too much government oversight and political correctness in its recruiting. Did our failure to penetrate Al Qaeda and find out what bin Laden was planning have anything to do with restraints on the CIA?

Baer: Of course it did. The fact that the agency sent an analyst in ’97 to Riyadh. Analysts are smart guys, but you need the human intelligence to figure out what’s going on.

Trento: Was that deliberate so there wouldn’t be any spying in Riyadh?

Baer: That’s too complicated. The fact is there wasn’t any pressure to find out what the Saudis were doing.

Trento: Is there pressure now?

Baer: No. It’s all publicity.

Trento: 6. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 months and the country is not secure. Are you confident that the intelligence the government is getting about the status of the war on terrorism is reliable?

Baer: In Afghanistan? No. I think they simply turned over money to the tribes to go kill Taliban. That’s how everybody got away.

Trento: In other words they tried to buy it on the cheap?

Baer: Well, not on the cheap…

Trento: I mean with no loss of American life.

Baer: Yea, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. They had to get in, they had to move fast; they needed to close it down. We had no choice.

Trento: But, we should have gone in with them?

Baer: Yea, but that’s going to take for years because we weren’t collecting on Afghanistan.

Trento: 7. The CIA's current leadership has issued numerous and often dire but vague warnings about the continued threat of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Is the leadership trying to cover itself with these warnings?

Baer: I think it’s noise and they’re covering themselves. What’s the public going to do about it? Just panic. It’s good for raising budgets – tax budgets. The irony is these guys attacked the United States with 19 box cutters – and we’re building B-2 bombers?

And I seriously suggest that you google the EUROPEAN search engines for writers such as Labaviere and note that in the German, Al Qaeda is spelt: "AL KAIDA"

 

[CyberRose]

Naaah! I would never have thought of that! Did it ever occur to you that you just proved what I set out to show i.e. that the invasion of Afghanistan was about securing America's access to the oil hence the need to establish military bases that would ensure its safe passage out of the region?

I reiterate - Invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with OBL and terrorism, it was about securing the region for American interests and increasing America's access to the region's oil.

Did Clinton fire cruise missiles at Afghanistan in 1998 because of oil?

 

[Dr_Evil]

Naaah! I would never have thought of that! Did it ever occur to you that you just proved what I set out to show i.e. that the invasion of Afghanistan was about securing America's access to the oil hence the need to establish military bases that would ensure its safe passage out of the region?

I reiterate - Invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with OBL and terrorism, it was about securing the region for American interests and increasing America's access to the region's oil.

No, it never proved it at all!

All my point was trying to ask you if you had considered the reason for the bases being near the pipeline was becuase the pipeline was designed to go through strategically safe and defendable locations. Hence why the yanks chose to be near the pipeline (beacuse the surrounding area was strategically secure!)

Not the other way about!

 

[Raisin D'etre]

And the difference is? Think logically about what you just wrote and you will see that your point actually confirms what I was saying, whichever way you choose to look at it!

 

[CyberRose]

And the difference is? Think logically about what you just wrote and you will see that your point actually confirms what I was saying, whichever way you choose to look at it!

No what he said is that that particular area may be of stratigic importance, and anything requiring security would be positioned in that area. They would be mutually exclusive...

 

[invisibleplanet]

Did Clinton fire cruise missiles at Afghanistan in 1998 because of oil?

What do you think ?
In 1998, the PENTAGON under the Clinton Administration targeted both cruise missiles and air-strikes against both Sudan and Afghanistan.
The Sudan bombing was justified as being 'chemical weapons manufacturers for Bin Laden. Sudan's Govt. were very angry at the US strikes in their country, insisting at the time that the area targeted had only legitimate commericial industrial manufacturing. The site later turned out to be a medicine factory. Although the reports from the USA stated they used sea-launched cruise missiles, both the Sudan and Afghanistan attacks relied extensively on aircraft which were involved in a number of bombing passes over the sites to be destroyed.

The Afghanistan bombings were intended (according to the Pentagon through Clinton) to destroy Bin Laden's "terrorist infrastructure" - which, if anyone has been paying attention, were the same camps which had, throughout the late 70s and all of the 80s, been CIA-funded training camps, set up to train Islamic feyadeen & muhajadeen to fight the USA's mortal enemy', the 'Communists'. These CIA-funded training camps had been set up with the aid of Osama Bin Laden. At the time of these strikes, the Soviets had long gone from Afghanistan, and the totalitarian Taleban were in power.

Our target was terror. Our mission was clear," President Clinton said last night in a television address to the nation after America hit training bases in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan with sea-launched missiles. The offensive had been mounted to "counter an immediate threat". He said military intelligence indicated that a "gathering of key terrorist leaders" was planned yesterday at the site in Afghanistan.

Acting on information that he said pinpointed "one of the most active terrorist bases in the world" and a plant that made agents for chemical weapons, Mr Clinton said he ordered the attacks not only in response to the embassy bombings but also to pre-empt more planned terrorist attacks on Americans. In defiant tones, he said: "The United States wants peace, not conflict. We want to lift lives around the world, not take them.
source: telegraph.co.uk

 

[ViolentPanda]

It didnt did it? The fact that Afghanistan was his base and where he held his terrorist training camps. The fact that he was financing the tyranical taliban in their conquest for religous purity and persecution?

You rarely bother to look further than the surface, do you?
Q: Why was ObL in Afghanistan?
A: Because the US government had put pressure on the Sudanese govt to expel him (the same Sudanese govt that had offered to hand ObL over to the US).

Q: Did "al Qaida" only have training camps in Afghanistan?
A: No, they had them throughout about 70% of the "Muslim world".

Q: Did ObL make a significant contribution to the funding of the Taliban?
A: No, in fact, given the Taliban's access to monies from opium sales, they actually contributed money to ObL's cause.

You are right about rumsfeld setting up propoganda for an attack on iraq but that does not detract from the fact that Bin Laden was to blame and the fact that he was (along with a good propotion of his organisation) in Afghanistan.

Which has what precisely to do with attacking Iraq?
Sorry, but you appear to be writing with reference to illogic rather than logic here.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Leonid Shebarshin ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service accuses the US of using terrorism as cover for attacking oil-rich Muslim states.l domination.

“The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions.”​

Source

It is not only the US who are using this as a cover but Tony Blair and New Labour have used the threat of AQ to impose the new anti-terror laws which will enable them to detain without trial AQ terror suspects. Interestingly, those that were being detained in Belmarsh until recently were considered to be the "spiritual leaders" of AQ. They were not terror suspects but being held because of their spiritual beliefs. Why isnt this being discussed openly in the UK and two and two being put together. Blair is using the fear of terrorism based on the AQ and some dodgy extapolations of the numbers of AQ sympathisers in the UK to impose some very draconian laws that undermine our democracy.

Another article in the same newspaper:

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/23/georgiawarns_.shtml

 

[invisibleplanet]

Another article in the same newspaper:

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/23/georgiawarns_.shtml

sorry, JC2, but that's totally off-topic and to discuss that would derail this thread at a crucial point.

please make a new thread if you wish to discuss that. i'm sure someone will want to.

getting back to the thread:

It didnt did it? The fact that Afghanistan was his base and where he held his terrorist training camps. The fact that he was financing the tyranical taliban in their conquest for religous purity and persecution?

You rarely bother to look further than the surface, do you?
Q: Why was ObL in Afghanistan?
A: Because the US government had put pressure on the Sudanese govt to expel him (the same Sudanese govt that had offered to hand ObL over to the US).

IP adds, Sudan made this offer in 1996!

Q: Did "al Qaida" only have training camps in Afghanistan?
A: No, they had them throughout about 70% of the "Muslim world".

Q: Did ObL make a significant contribution to the funding of the Taliban?
A: No, in fact, given the Taliban's access to monies from opium sales, they actually contributed money to ObL's cause.

You are right about rumsfeld setting up propoganda for an attack on iraq but that does not detract from the fact that Bin Laden was to blame and the fact that he was (along with a good propotion of his organisation) in Afghanistan.

Which has what precisely to do with attacking Iraq?
Sorry, but you appear to be writing with reference to illogic rather than logic here.

WARNUNG: the Middle East forum is the forum where you'll be least likely to get away with anecdotes and shallow rhetoric, wouldn't you say so, ME regulars ?

 

[Raisin D'etre]

No what he said is that that particular area may be of stratigic importance, and anything requiring security would be positioned in that area. They would be mutually exclusive...

OK.. let me do this your way!

Of course the area is of strategic importance - why? Two reasons: the first being the proposed pipeline and second - bases in the area extend and deepen their military footprint in SW Asia.

So, the Americans invade Afghanistan and build their bases following the route of the proposed pipeline to ensure that the area is secure and thereby increasing US access to the oil.

911 and Osama were used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan but the underlying reasons were to secure the region for US interests in the area.

 

[CyberRose]

OK.. let me do this your way!

Of course the area is of strategic importance - why? Two reasons: the first being the proposed pipeline and second - bases in the area extend and deepen their military footprint in SW Asia.

So, the Americans invade Afghanistan and build their bases following the route of the proposed pipeline to ensure that the area is secure and thereby increasing US access to the oil.

911 and Osama were used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan but the underlying reasons were to secure the region for US interests in the area.

Ok "strategic importance" was the wrong phrase. I cant think of the right phrase but that area could be 'easy' to defend against therefore, any activity/operations that require good defences (like military bases/oil pipelines) would be built in that area.

 

[invisibleplanet]

911 and Osama were used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan but the underlying reasons were to secure the region for US interests in the area.

That's correct, Raisin D'etre.

Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001.These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless, poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special Forces began October 19.

It is not an accident that these revelations have appeared overseas, rather than in the US. The ruling classes in these countries have their own economic and political interests to look after, which do not coincide, and in some cases directly clash, with the drive by the American ruling elite to seize control of oil-rich territory in Central Asia.

The American media has conducted a systematic cover-up of the real economic and strategic interests that underlie the war against Afghanistan, in order to sustain the pretense that the war emerged overnight, full-blown, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.
<snip>
The official American myth is that “everything changed” on the day four airliners were hijacked and nearly 5,000 people murdered. The US military intervention in Afghanistan, by this account, was hastily improvised in less than a month. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a television interview November 18, actually claimed that only three weeks went into planning the military onslaught.

This is only one of countless lies emanating from the Pentagon and White House about the war against Afghanistan. The truth is that the US intervention was planned in detail and carefully prepared long before the terrorist attacks provided the pretext for setting it in motion. If history had skipped over September 11, and the events of that day had never happened, it is very likely that the United States would have gone to war in Afghanistan anyway, and on much the same schedule.(cached source)

 

[invisibleplanet]

Timeline of Competition between Unocal and Bridas for the Afghanistan Pipeline

Timeline of competition between Unocal and Bridas: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:...pecials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm+unocal&hl=en

Latest Unocal story:

The settlement will go towards improving villagers' standard of living
US oil giant Unocal has agreed to compensate Burmese villagers over alleged abuses committed during the construction of a gas pipeline.
It was accused of allowing Burmese troops guarding the project to rape, murder and enslave villagers.

The legal action was brought under a law allowing foreigners to sue US companies for abuses overseas.

Unocal, which reached an out-of court settlement, strongly denied any part in any human rights abuses.
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4371995.stm

The outside governments that have offered political and material support to Afghanistan’s warring factions over many years have an opportunity and responsibility to hold them to account to international norms of behaviour, particularly the minimum standards set out in international humanitarian law. Economic actors, such as the US oil company, Unocal, Saudi Arabian company Delta Oil and Argentinian oil company Bridas who are reportedly competing to build a $2billion natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan from Central Asia should also use any leverage they have on the Taleban and other groups to command respect for human rights. Amnesty International is appealing to the international community to ensure that concern for the human rights of all Afghans is not put second to other political and economic strategic interests

Unocal and the Afghanistan pipeline, Part One of a two-part series Players on a rigged grand chessboard:March 2002

 

[enrieb]

IIRC in The power of nightmares, it stated that Osama Bin Ladan did not use the term Al Quieda untill after 9/11
The US coined the term after the embassy bombings

As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is 1984, the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual.

Granted, we're a long way from resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but some of the similarities are starting to get a bit eerie.

Permanent War

In 1984, the state remained perpetually at war against a vague and ever-changing enemy. The war took place largely in the abstract, but it served as a convenient vehicle to fuel hatred, nurture fear and justify the regime's autocratic practices.

Bush's war against terrorism has become almost as amorphous. Although we are told the president's resolve is steady and the mission clear, we seem to know less and less about the enemy we are fighting. What began as a war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda quickly morphed into a war against Afghanistan, followed by dire warnings about an "Axis of Evil," the targeting of terrorists in some 50 to 60 countries, and now the beginnings of a major campaign against Iraq. Exactly what will constitute success in this war remains unclear, but the one thing the Bush administration has made certain is that the war will continue "indefinitely."

 

[fela fan]

deleted coz misunderstood.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

sorry, JC2, but that's totally off-topic and to discuss that would derail this thread at a crucial point.

please make a new thread if you wish to discuss that. i'm sure someone will want to.

getting back to the thread:

IP adds, Sudan made this offer in 1996!


WARNUNG: the Middle East forum is the forum where you'll be least likely to get away with anecdotes and shallow rhetoric, wouldn't you say so, ME regulars ?

It's about the source of the original report.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

“The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions.”​

On the first point, the Wolfowitz doctrine which had been crafted under Bush the elder, stipulated that the military budget be increased to $100bn to enable the US to wage war preemptively anywhere it liked and at any time. Thus getting rid of the budget surplus and killing the peace dividend in favour of the US military machine. America needed enemies and Wolfowitz, as the intellectual guru of the neocons was going to create them. Wolfowitz believed that the US should be able to use military force with or without allies to prevent the emergence of any future rivals and to secure access to future reserves of precious resources, like oil. Anybody who stood in the way of those resources became part of GW Bush's "axis of evil". Iraq, Iran, Korea.

The thinking was that to bring this about there would have to be a future catalyzing and castastrophic attempt - a new Pearl Harbour - Project for a New American Century.

911 was that event.

The hijacking of the four planes and the collapse of the WTC and Pentagon hit were used to advance the idea of a global conspiracy out to attack the US which must be confronted. A decision was taken by the US admin to take the attacks and turn it into a fully fledged battle between good and evil. It became "You are either with us or against us".

Bush then used the memory of 911 to make the Wolfowitz doctrine official policy. Within hours of the attack, the 19 hijackers were identified as being Al Qaeda terrorists. Suddenly AQ were the no 1 enemy.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

It's about the source of the original report.

The source is not interesting, Sherbashin's conclusions are.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The source is not interesting, Sherbashin's conclusions are.

What conclusions?

I didn't see any conclusions.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

What conclusions?

I didn't see any conclusions.

No surprises there JC2, rather challenged in the reading department arent you?

“The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions.”

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Two assumptions. No conclusions.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

Pah...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Also, you say that the Russian says that al Qaida doesn't exist.

What he actually says is that he got together with some people from the Rand Corporation [not the US govt], who agreed that al Q was 'a notion'.

So what?

 

[Raisin D'etre]

Indeed, so what!

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Indeed, so what!

So what, is that your thread title is misleading.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

Thread title misleading? Pah...

 

[bigfish]

It's about the source of the original report.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Jazzz]

It's so funny, people can so readily agree that the state lies to them as a matter of routine, yet still trust them.