I believe Putin ran the Belsan thing in Chechneya and basically runs al Queda

I am simply cross-posting a message I just put up on strategypage.com. The story behind the message is, there is a good guy named Sentinnel28a who slammed me pretty good and I lost track of the thread, but then found it and responded. You can see his thread in quotes, all broken up, inside my post. Hello everyone, especially badray and his buddy whose freeper name I forget. By the way, I am plain "stratego" on strategypage.com, but that was taken here so I added the "fr", free republic.

Glad I found this thread. Been meaning to reply to it but did not want to recently as I was in a "low energy" state due to work stress.

First, I want to thank you Sent and Bob, for taking the time to respond to my comment, while many would not bother due to the apparent "flakiness" of my stance.

"Conspiracy theory. While I wouldn't put it past Putin to "arrange" Beslan, I think it is more probable that the Chechens did this themselves."

This sounds hopeful to me. You seem to be saying there is a possibility that Putin set it up. Let me ask you specifically. Do the circumstances arouse supsicion in your mind. How could terrorists have broken through the cordon? Are the Spetnaz that incompetent? The only similar story I recall is Saudi Arabia (and we know how conflicted they are about terrorism.)

Remember, there was widespread suspicion in Russia that Putin set up previous Chechyen incidents. You caught those references in the press, didn't you? the only reason nothing like that dribbles out now may be Putin's tighter grip on the press.

"What terrorist group targets children? All of them. Hamas has seen no problem with targeting pizzerias, there were certainly children killed on the airliners on 9/11, and even Timothy McVeigh parked his rent-a-bomb next to the nursery in the Murrah building. By seizing children, the Chechens expected to get concessions--but to a fanatic, a Russian child is just going to grow up to become a Russian soldier. The Germans used the same excuse to execute partisans or those suspected of being such, children included."

Here, I confess limited knowlege. Bob's point on Palestinian's pointing rifles at infants and firing counts here along with yours. I still feel that so far, my point may hold. I'd be happy to get more details on the "pizzerias", in terms of their clientell. But even so, I feel that it was probably less a clera cut symbolic attack on "children" than a scool attack. And McVeigh seems to be a nearly lone actor, so he may be somewhat exceptional.

Of course, I realize that terrororists like to kill children and kill a lot of them and certainly never try to avoid it. That is not my point. My point is that the deliberate targeting of children is nonetheless a new level of sickening-ness, and it adds to my supsicions here.

"I think this is just plain fearmongering, and maybe even an unconscious desire to want to believe some world-spanning conspiracy is behind 9/11. No one wants to admit that some "ignorant camel-jockeys" like Osama pulled off the most successfully gruesome attack on American soil in our history. It has to be someone else more sophisticated, more like our traditional enemies--for some people, the Russians; for others, like Michael Moore, George W. Bush."

I can see why you might think those are my motives, but it comes from a different direction. An overview of my reasoning goes like this.

1) the Soviets created 20th century terrorism, for the most part, at least post-Algeria. I don't know if you agree with this or not. If you agree, this means that up to 1990-1, they held the reins. I figure, why let them go, if you are gues like Putin and his former KGB colleagues and you run the Russian gov't. What do you think Putin & friends spend all day doing, economic policy? I figure they work the stuff they were trained for and spend their working lives on.

2) For example, people assumed that Russian spying would tail off after the Cold War was over. But separate reports from Britain and the US indicate Russian spying now equals or exceeds Cold War levels. The spying is feeding their for-profit arms sales. In my opinion, it is also helping terrorists (you must admit, such information would be useful to terrorists in many cases.)

3) Arms sales are very important to Russia's economy.(Iran's Nuclear Option, AJ Venter, Casemate, 2005, p. 304) "In other words, Russia has become the largest exporter of convenional arms since 2001 (responsible for 36 percent of all global arms transfers in 2002.)" If asked, I can give you the footnote on this one.

Terrorism "stirs the pot" and improves the overall market for Russian arms sales.

4) Look at Russia's relationship to Iran. p. 207, same source. "There are those who believe that the Shabab-3---the same missle that was fired more than a thousand miles in early 2004---to be no more than aninterim measureand that teheran's focus will now be concentrated on the Shabab-4 with its longer range and larger payload capacity. Unlike its predecessor, the Shabab-4 is a product of exclusively Russian ballistic missle technology and, by all accounts, it's development is expected to be completed within two to three years."

I need not go into the details of Russian involvement with nuclear technology, as this tends to be well known right now. Venter develops the thesis that Russia's involvement with Iran is motivated by a desire for cash, and the money is big. But I think in this case, even the Russians must be considering the geopolitical side. One aspect of which is that they are providing the greatest overt supporters of terrorism on earth with the means to place nukes in the hands of terrorists. They are also providing the means for Iran to possibly deter a conventional US attack (via the combination of nukes and ICBMs, not too far off.) This doesn't prove Russian involvement with terrorism, but it disproves the idea that they "oppose" it.

"Finally, since AQ seems to be having its ass handed to them since October 2001, it doesn't say much for the FSS' competence."

You might mean the FSB here. If I am in error, please explain my mistake to me. I'm not saying Putin is going to worry about what happens to al Queda, nor do I believe he micromanages it. Even I will admit that would be overly dangerous for him. If he is exerting control, it is via occassional information exchanges, done by such methods as arresting the Egyptian terrorist who used to be oriented toward Egyptian targets but, since his release by the Russians, has become a top al Queda operative. (sorry, I can't remember the name.) If al Queda is not controlled by the Russians, why tolerate this guy who seems to be a Russian mole? I think he's acted as a messenger boy. Sure, its elaborate, but its SOP for spies when dealing in delicate situations.

And no argument, Putin is doing that. But he's KGB, man. He lives for this kind of stuff.

Putin is no friend of the US, but even he wouldn't go so far as sponsoring AQ or a 9/11 like attack. The stakes are too high, and include his own hide.

Final word to Bob. Cheer up. Goss, in charge of the CIA now, is supposed to be the best man for the job, accoding to a guy I met in DC over the weekend who knows numerous CIA people. (It was at CPAC, a public-accessible event. I am not a person with any "access.) Condi is kicking butt at state and will soon turn the direction of State around. And if George can just set it up so the Iraqi army can take over completely inside Iraq (except for the border) by 9/2008, Hillary will lose and we will have another Republican President. George Allen for president.

In addition, while the Wahibi thing has indeed been around a very long time, as you say (Saudi Arabia was, in effect, founded when a not particularly important shiek named Saud got together with a cleric named Wahibi, that's pretty inherent in the Saudi system), it has not been virulently and violently anti-American until the breakup of the Soviet Union.

In addition, the Soviets did indeed hijack many aspects of Muslim fundamentalism. Here is a cut and paste from a Front Page (David Horowitz's web page. I think some of the posters here remember him from when he co-edited Ramparts). The statement is by Ion Pacepa. He wsa the head of the Romanian KGB until he defected in 1978.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15952

"I believe that the most important thing in a war is to know your enemy. Today’s terrorism is a 21st century variation of the old anti-Semitism, that weapon of the emotions wielded by so many tyrants over the centuries.
History always repeats itself, and if you can live two lives, you have an even greater chance of seeing that repetition with your own eyes. During the last six years of my other life, as a Romanian intelligence general, the main task of the Soviet bloc espionage community was to transform Yasser Arafat’s war against Israel and its main supporter, the United States, into an armed doctrine of the whole Islamic world. America was our main enemy, and a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on it than could a mere one million. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. Our task was to convert its historical hatred of the Jews into a new hatred of the United States, by portraying this land of freedom as an “imperial Zionist country” financed by Jewish money and run by a rapacious “Council of the Elders of Zion,” the Kremlin’s epithet for the US Congress.
According to KGB theorists, the Islamic world was a petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hate. Islamic cultures had a taste for nationalism, jingoism and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against America would flow naturally from their religious fervor. We had only to keep repeating, over and over, that the United States was a “Zionist country” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidel’s occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our dogma that American imperialism wanted to transform the rest of the world into a Jewish fiefdom.
Before I left Romania for good, in 1978, the Soviet bloc intelligence community flooded the Islamic world with Arabic translations of an old Russian, forged, anti-Semitic tract entitled Protocols of the Elders of Zion, along with “documentary” materials, also in Arabic, “proving” that the United States was a Zionist country governed by Jewish money, whose aim was to extend its domination over the rest of the world. We also infiltrated the Islamic world with thousands of Soviet bloc Islamic citizens recruited as intelligence agents and tasked to implant there a rabid, demented hatred for American Zionism. They were to portray everybody and everything in America as being subordinated to Jewish interests: the leaders, the government, the political parties, the most prominent personalities—and even American history. Most of these agents were religious servants, engineers, medical doctors or teachers, and they had excellent credibility.
Although we now live in an age of technology, we still do not have an instrument that can scientifically measure the results of a sustained influence operation. Nevertheless, it is safe to presume that over the course of the further twenty-plus years—until the Soviet Union buckled—the combination between spreading hundreds of thousands of Protocols within the Islamic world and portraying the United States there as a criminal Zionist instrument should have left some trace. The hijacked airplane was launched into the world of contemporary terrorism by the KGB and its puppet Yasser Arafat, and it is significant that this became the weapon of choice for September 11, 2001.
The United States won the Cold War on the 9th of November in 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed and the downtrodden people kept hostage inside the Soviet bloc woke up to claim freedom as their own God-given right. We in the West succeeded, because we united the free world against evil, and because we ensured that our side was armed with overwhelming military potential.
We can conquer terrorism if we can make the people of the Islamic world realize that democracy, not anti-Semitism, will give them a better life. Re-civilizing Iraq will be crucial toward that...

...My generation is still grateful to America’s leaders of the World War II era who, instead of containing Hitler, destroyed his regime and rebuilt Western Europe—and Japan—with strong democracies. This American determination changed the face of the world and brought about an unprecedented period of peace. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi stated during a 2003 visit to Washington: “Every time I see the U.S. flag, I don’t see the flag only as representative of a country, but I see it as a symbol of democracy and of freedom.”
Now America is also in a position to help the Islamic world normalize its society. In order to do that, we should get rid of the Hitlers of the Arab and Islamic world, and help their downtrodden slaves see the light of democracy—Arafat’s death can only move this process forward. Our recent elections overwhelmingly showed that Americans are ready. Let’s forget “sensitive” wars—like the one in Vietnam, where we lost over 50,000 soldiers and a good part of America’s international prestige. Let’s return to the traditions of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our enemies. Let’s try to make Iraq into a kind of Germany of the Islamic world."

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