>>Life is still weirder than art.
>
>As Hardy said, "While much is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened " ( finish Headhunter Jazz yet <s>? )

As a friend of mine would say "life is stranger than shi*" (and no, I didn't, waiting for the mood and to return from my excursion into Anna Karenina - trying to read it in Russian this time; at least you know your competition now).

>I don't think Al Qaeda is or was a fiction - except in the sense of it being an "organization" with "membership" and "the number 2 man" or whatever. The culture in which it exists doesn't really think that way. Very much like the western notion of a "nation" or "nationalism" which to a true Moslem is just not relevant.

That's what I meant. All these groups now have a common name. They are sort of united by a legal fiat by their enemy. Can't complain that irony is lacking.

>There is a lot of truth in your observations here. The relations with Saudi Arabia are probably very key here. Think you'd enjoy Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil The game the Saudi's play - especially in paying protection money to those who hate them most and investing heavily in those whose interestes they most harm is very very weird and I think historically pretty unique.

They truly are in a paradoxical situation, the great protectors of Islam walking through the rose garden holding hands with the great satan (while at another level they have the other hand deep in each other's pockets). Tightrope walk.

>>But then, who was the chief of Irguna at the time? Menachem Begin, who was later the 6th prime minister of Israel. Don't tell me he strictly forbade using the terrorist techniques of his youth.
>
>You're quite right, of course, about Begin. But ruthless as he was, I think that by the time he became PM he was more focused on the targeted killing of enemies. ( perhaps a subtle distinction, but I think an important one )

If you have the uniforms and the state, you're a defender, if you don't, you're a terrorist.

>>That's what I'd do if that was my job - I'd pay a dozen guys to create websites, write books, push crazy theories, and then I'd wait for years to publish evidence to disprove them, always taking care to leave a hole or two so people could come up with their own. You only have to seed them, they'll water and fertilize on their own. Oh, yeah, and I'd take care that anyone who pokes a real hole in my official story gets branded as conspiracy theorists, his proof disparaged as junk science etc etc. The truth is dead, either way.
>
>Now this is good stuff and I think shows an understanding of the layers of the onion. <s> It is certainly one view of the elephant.

It's really hard to sift through so much chaff to get to an occasional grain of wheat, when the amateur churned chaff gets so mingled with professional product ;).

>>So we can only follow the money, that doesn't lie. Who made a fortune on the whole story? Who made it big, and whose interests were served?
>
>A good point, and the reason the most important investigation after 911 was done by forensic accountants. I think the thing that convinced them they were right about who did it was by checking stock trading and money movement in the week prior to the attack.
>
>I would love to know how many car accidents and heart attacks were the result of those investigations.

Is there a publicized report? Sounds like an interesting read.

>I am surprised I apparently was wrong in my prediction that a big part of the "war on terror" was going to consist of our helping one half of the Saudi royal familiy kill the other half. C'est dommage.

There's too many of them, and forcing them into a Darwinian fight would only ensure that the toughest get on top. The devil you know is still easier.

>>He was. But then, if your choice is no gun vs toy gun... and you're a dictator... you wield the toy gun for real, lest the plebeians recognize the emperor's clothes.
>
>Well, that may work for keeping your own people in line,

which is the first and foremost duty of any dictator worth his salt,

> but it is still a pretty dangerous way to interact with your neighbors. I think one of the reasons we had to take the WMD thing seriously ( and err on the side of believing they were there ) was because the Israelis were starting to believe it.

Or they reported that they did... because otherwise the presses would be stopped?

> We are not the only nation that believes in pre-emptive threat neutralization. Iran is playing a very dangerous game. My guess would be that after Israel developed the bomb, the next thing they started working on was bunker busters. The really sad thing is there are a whole lot of Iranians who have more in common with secular Israelis than they do with their own "leaders".

And the secular Israelis can't really be heard here, which is not only a pity, but a good source of further conspiracy theories. Why is the hawkish side of Israeli politics heard so much more loudly here than the dovish?

>As a side note, I always find it interesting that in cheering on aspirations for an Arab ( or Persian ) bomb the Palestians never seem to have looked closely at a map <s>

Neighbor 1: "And how much is that bomb?"
Neighbor 2: "A million dollars"
Neighbor 1: "Wish one of those fell into my yard."