Posted on 05/02/2010 6:23:55 AM PDT by sbMKE
It was the sixth day of the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II and began with dry legal wrangling about when the U.S. war on al Qaeda began.
But the day ended with a 26-minute, stomach-wrenching cavalcade of archival mayhem — from a grisly panorama of charred corpses in the 1998 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, to black-masked al Qaeda trainees learning to slit a throat.
Also included were audible moaning and wails of ‘’Oh my God’’ as the trade center was shown toppling from several angles on Sept. 11, 2001.
The video itself was controversial. The Pentagon paid counter-terror consultant Evan Kohlmann to produce it and supplied him with some of the images he spliced into it. The tab was $45,000 and broke down like this — $20,000 for the seven-part, 90-minute film and $25,000 for his testimony, including preparation.
Prosecutors will not have to pay Kohlmann to play it at future trials, said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a war court spokeswoman.
When the Columbine school shootings happened you had someone -- I think from the SPLC -- going on and on and on about how the shooters had to be neo-Nazis since the killings happened on Hitler's birthday.
That didn't turn out to be quite right and the "expert" didn't have any real evidence for it, but his reputation, such as it was, probably didn't suffer from getting things wrong.
In this case, Coleman's biggest mistake was thinking that Islamicist terrorists are always going to be part of a well-trained, well-organized, well-financed groups.
Nowadays there are enough freelancers and amateur enthusiasts that you can expect a wide variety of expertise among al Qaeda supporters.
Well, according to the BBC, and About.com we’re both wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1670089.stm on Al Qaeda
http://middleeast.about.com/od/afghanistan/ss/me080914a_2.htm on Taliban
and speaking of accuracy, in my post that should have been 1990, not 1991.
It says in the article you cited that the AQ was formed in 1989 not 1990 or 1991.
“Al-Qaeda, meaning “the base”, was created in 1989 as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden and his colleagues began looking for new jihads.”
Who organized the madrassas during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to indoctrinate the jihadi youth to fight against the Soviets? The CIA.
What does ‘talib’ mean? Student. What are madrassas full of? Students of the jihad.
The madrassas indoctrinate the yoots for global jihad and then AQ hires them to do the deed.
And the Taliban was formed to pacify and disarm Afghani warlords. Also in the article I cited.
The Central Intelligence Agency using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasahs were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia: “[I]t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools, from which the germs of the Taliban emerged.”(Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), “RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.”, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG),
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7718
The upside of being a broadcast media expert or a “futurist” of any scope is that no one looks back to assess your past predictions or analysis.
It’s like predicting “could be” $5/gallon gas prices. It’s good for a headline but just idle smalltalk in the end.
btr 186
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.