More to the point, 'Al Qaeda' isn't even a unified entity under a single banner or leadership structure. Our biggest headache these days is actually groups that refer to themselves as "Al Qaeda" but have no ties to the organization that inspired them.

The most succinct treatise I've read on the problem of tyrants and terrorists was something called "inverting the Bell Curve".
I'll see if I can conjure it up with the Google-wand.

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

Ahh, here we go. "Terrorist Strategy 101"
Also worth watching "The Battle of Algiers" if you can find it and "Thinking like a Terrorist" by Mike...
Both do an excellent job of expanding on the points raised in Terrorist Strategy and provide real life examples of the bell-curve inversion.

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

Sounds like you really wanna defend these guys. Look, they admitted they did 9/11. Osama has pretty much said so in those videos he has released over the last few years and his higher ups have done the same thing.

The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest films of all time - a towering achievement. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of the forum. I am reminded of the conversation between an Algerian "terrorist" leader (ie The Algerian resistance against the French occupation of their country) and a French General. When the French General enquired of the Algerian why he felt it was necessary to bomb French cafes in Algiers, the Algerian "terrorist" responded: "Sir, if we had at our disposal the weaponary that you have at your disposal we would not find it necessary to bomb your cafes, but rather we would target your military bases instead".

Would it do any good to try and reason with you?

__________________
Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

"The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just they know so much that isn't so"
- Ronald Reagan

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger, is prepared for a Master and deserves one"
- Alexander Hamilton

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.

__________________
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

^ Somebody's poisoned the water hole!

We simply don't have the intel to tie Bin Laden to Sept 11th. Nobody here thinks Bin Laden is a swell guy. So please knock off the thinly veiled personal attacks and get with the discussion.

Tell me, have you ever read "The Art of War" by Sun-Tsu?

__________________
"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain"- Iowa state motto
-Proof-hunter

Ventura/ Paul '12

Do you believe that you can support an argument endorsing either tyranny or terrorism?

__________________
Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.