LONGECITY

http://www.thefirstp...ks-mccain,51083

Al-Qaeda supporters have said they are hoping John McCain becomes the next US President, as the "impetuous" Republican candidate would be more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a message posted on the password-protected al-Hesbah website this week, Al-Qaeda supporters said McCain had "pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier". He was the best choice for President, if Al-Qaeda wanted to exhaust the U.S both militarily and economically: "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

The message also suggests that the best way to usher in a McCain presidency would be to carry out a pre-election terror attack.

"If Al Qaeda carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Maryland, monitors the Web site and translated the message.
Edited by Iam Empathy, 23 October 2008 - 01:26 AM.

The Endorsement From Hell
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 25, 2008
John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.

“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”

That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.

Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.

In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia.

Today, Somalia is the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.

Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.

Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.

“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.

“There’s a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Professor Menkhaus said. “Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis.”

Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.

“The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we’re in today.”

The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America’s own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.

The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.

http://www.nytimes.c...kristof.html?em

I think it was niner that mentioned something in one of my earlier threads when I pointed out how the Obama campaign has received a lot of money from Iran and Hamas terrorists. He said something in the likes of it being reverse psychology. Of course, I don't think anyone was to find out about that money


This could very well be reverse psychology also.
Edited by luv2increase, 28 October 2008 - 07:31 PM.

I think it was niner that mentioned something in one of my earlier threads when I pointed out how the Obama campaign has received a lot of money from Iran and Hamas terrorists. He said something in the likes of it being reverse psychology. Of course, I don't think anyone was to find out about that money


This could very well be reverse psychology also.

"Reverse psychology". How pat.

Another recipient of an honorary degree from the Phoenix University of Pop Psychology.

"Reverse psychology". How pat.

Another recipient of an honorary degree from the Phoenix University of Pop Psychology.

What are you saying? Do you not believe in such a thing as "reverse psychology"? Have you never heard of it? Google it if you don't know what it means. Also, you don't need a degree from the Phoenix University to know what it is either, silly rabbit.

"Reverse psychology". How pat.

Another recipient of an honorary degree from the Phoenix University of Pop Psychology.

What are you saying? Do you not believe in such a thing as "reverse psychology"? Have you never heard of it? Google it if you don't know what it means. Also, you don't need a degree from the Phoenix University to know what it is either, silly rabbit.

Whoooooa...that one flew right over your head. Can't help you with the egg that bird left on your face.

---------

I think you, luv2increase, are a Democratic agent parading all of the very worst that the Republican party is usually called on. You are the ANTI-Al-Qaeda agent...making the case against McCain by presenting him in your most despicable, hypocritical, and egregious manner. How dare you work against Al Qaeda! It's almost patriotic......almost......
Edited by REGIMEN, 30 October 2008 - 08:28 PM.

"Reverse psychology". How pat.

Another recipient of an honorary degree from the Phoenix University of Pop Psychology.

What are you saying? Do you not believe in such a thing as "reverse psychology"? Have you never heard of it? Google it if you don't know what it means. Also, you don't need a degree from the Phoenix University to know what it is either, silly rabbit.

Whoooooa...that one flew right over your head. Can't help you with the egg that bird left on your face.

---------

I think you, luv2increase, are a Democratic agent parading all of the very worst that the Republican party is usually called on. You are the ANTI-Al-Qaeda agent...making the case against McCain by presenting him in your most despicable, hypocritical, and egregious manner. How dare you work against Al Qaeda! It's almost patriotic......almost......

So, you are a conspiracy theorist now?

http://www.thefirstp...ks-mccain,51083

Al-Qaeda supporters have said they are hoping John McCain becomes the next US President, as the "impetuous" Republican candidate would be more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a message posted on the password-protected al-Hesbah website this week, Al-Qaeda supporters said McCain had "pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier". He was the best choice for President, if Al-Qaeda wanted to exhaust the U.S both militarily and economically: "Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

The message also suggests that the best way to usher in a McCain presidency would be to carry out a pre-election terror attack.

"If Al Qaeda carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Maryland, monitors the Web site and translated the message.

I think what we all must keep in mind is that Bush and BinLaden families go back many decades...they are thick as thieves. They are in fact like family.
That has to color everything concerning this issue. I live at what was considered ground zero. BinLaden's sister lived around the corner from me at the time. The very day that we were attacked and all planes were grounded, President Bush got her on a private plane and out of the country.
That's fact.
Of course they would support McCain. They want to continue the hostility...it more profitable, for AlQuaeda and the Oil industry that McCaine supports.

Why Al Qaeda is Supporting McCain

http://www.consortiu...ml#When:08:45PM

The Logic of al-Qaeda's McCain Choice

By Ivan Eland
October 28, 2008

Editor’s Note: One of the harsh truths since 9/11 is that George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with al-Qaeda, both sides benefiting from their excessive reliance on violence.

Now, al-Qaeda strategists are discussing how they might keep that symbiosis going by helping to elect neocon John McCain, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland notes in this guest essay:

In the battle for endorsements in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama snared a strong nod from former Secretary of State Colin Powell – and John McCain received an equally strong recommendation from al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda? Yes, you heard right, al-Qaeda!

This endorsement indicates what has long been known: al-Qaeda is fairly sophisticated politically. And this doesn’t mean McCain is the more accomplished candidate — in fact, apparently the group believes he is the more gullible of the two men.

Quite bluntly, al-Qaeda says it wants McCain to win essentially because it thinks he is most likely to continue Bush’s macho bull-in-the-China-shop ”war on terror.” There has been a lot of bull in the China shop, and al-Qaeda wants to make sure it continues.

According to al-Hesbah Web site, which has close ties to the group, “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.” The Web site was confident that McCain would continue the “failing march of his predecessor.”

The site argued that a terrorist attack could push the election into McCain’s column, and thus lead to an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world in an attempt take revenge on al-Qaeda.

The Web site already brags about having lured the Bush administration and the U.S. into a trap that has “exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy” and expects that to accelerate if the even more hawkish McCain gets elected.

Most terrorism analysts would agree that al-Qaeda has successfully duped the Bush administration. Whether McCain, if elected, would fall into a similar trap is unknowable before the election.

Sometimes politicians turn 180 degrees from their campaign rhetoric after being elected — after all, during the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush promised to give us a “more humble foreign policy” compared to the Clinton years of profligate small-scale military interventions in the developing world.

During the 2008 campaign, McCain has been a bigger hawk than even the President on Iraq, but I suppose it is at least possible that he could wise up after taking office.

Both Bush and McCain have macho tendencies and that’s what al-Qaeda brutally exploits. It is standard practice for weak actors, such as terrorist groups and guerillas, to bait the stronger party by attacking and then hope for excessive retaliation.

Such overreaction makes it easier for such groups to garner more money and recruits for their causes and also to overextend the giant.

Instead of trying to go after al-Qaeda’s leadership using intelligence, law enforcement and surgical Special Forces strikes in the shadows, Bush launched a high-profile invasion and occupation of the Muslim land of Afghanistan — the very thing that drives radical Islamists to morph into terrorists.

He then compounded the error by unnecessarily blundering into a second invasion and occupation of a Muslim land — Iraq — that had nothing at all to do with neutralizing the 9/11 attackers. Al-Qaeda is betting that McCain is an even bigger stumbling cowboy than Bush.

But al-Qaeda also may have lost sight of its original objective. Originally, the major goal of its attacks against the United States was to get “infidels” off Islamic lands.

Now al-Qaeda seems to hope to provoke the United States into invading and occupying ever more Muslim lands — in order to exhaust the U.S. beyond being mired in its two existing quagmires and to drum up even more recruits and money for its cause. As with most maturing organizations, organizational survival and expansion become goals in themselves.

The Obama campaign, seemingly much more sophisticated than McCain’s effort, must be smirking as it holds its tongue about the endorsement of its rival by what is probably the most famous terrorist group in history, especially after McCain has ham-handedly attacked Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, a washed-up domestic terrorist turned community activist, who hasn’t committed terrorism in decades.

But the Obama campaign probably just wants to let al-Qaeda’s endorsement speak for itself. Ironically, in spite of getting an endorsement from the most heinous terrorist group in world history, McCain will probably try to continue to beat Obama over the head with Bill Ayers rap — much like the draft-evading Bush questioned the war heroism of John Kerry during the 2004 campaign.

If Bush fell into al-Qaeda’s trap from the Fight, however, Obama, if elected, could very well fall into it from the Left. Muscular liberals often think that their foreign policy is very different from Bush’s neo-conservative fare, but it often gets us to the same place — in al-Qaeda’s crosshairs.

Such liberals tend to use military power for “humanitarian” reasons. Even when such interventions don’t have ulterior motives — which, as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti, they almost always do — they often make somebody very mad.

For example, in the Muslim land of Somalia during the Clinton administration, bin Laden helped Somalis with the attack that killed 18 American troops and caused the U.S. to withdraw its forces from that country. Also, Obama has talked about getting more involved in the Muslim-inhabited region of Darfur in Sudan.

With talk of terrorist strikes this close to the election, it is possible that al-Qaeda could be once again trying to influence the outcome. In late October 2004, bin Laden released a video tape several days before the U.S. presidential election that warned of an attack, which John Kerry’s campaign believed tipped the electoral balance against them.

According to Richard Clarke, the chief counter-terrorism advisor in the Clinton and Bush White Houses, U.S. intelligence analysts believe that that is exactly what bin Laden wanted to do.

Similarly, in March 2004, al-Qaeda bombed a Spanish train in a likely attempt to throw the election against then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who had been one of the few major U.S allies sending troops to help out in Iraq. It worked, Aznar lost, and Spanish troops were withdrawn from Iraq.

Let’s hope that the rhetoric on al-Qaeda’s Web site is just bluster, as in October 2004, rather than turning into an attack, as it did in Spain in March 2004. We want a fair election with no outside interference from evildoers.

Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.