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Volume 18, Number 18, April 28, 2004

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Month End Feature

Al Qaeda's Victory

Kudos must circumspectly go to Al Qaeda for its well-conceived manipulation of a Spanish election and its plan that  predicted and initiated a daisy-chain effect that includes at least London and Washington where real danger now exists.

The March 14 Spanish  electoral upset was not happenstance. Intercepted Al Qaeda communications declared that Spain was the weakest link in the anti-terrorism coalition but if it could be broken, others would follow like pieces of domino (translation). With style and correlated threads in mind we believe this to be written work at least rooted in the thinking of Ayman al-Zawahiri and scribed (more or less on an intellectual par with junior to mid-high school level) by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, maybe Saif al-Adel or a peer. These persons are believed to be among the Al Qaeda Majlis Al Shura, a collective council of thinkers, planners and scribes forming a quasi advisory board to Usama Bin Laden symbolically, but to Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri in effect. This core group also communicates and promotes doctrine to the independent inductees who have been drawn into training camps then sent back into the world without specific missions, to invent their own. The Majlis Al Shura, seldom creates its own operations but those few it does are successful. This is the case with Spain and what shall follow in the same vein.

"(translation) We think the Spanish people's leadership [Jose Maria Aznar Government] will not stand more than a hit, or more," the doctrinal musings declared, "before it will be forced to withdraw [from Afghanistan and Iraq] ...cause would be population pressure on it... if its army forces stay after these attacks, the victory of the Socialist Party [Rodriguez Zapatero] will be certain... ...the withdrawal of Spanish  forces [from Afghanistan and Iraq] will follow. (end translation)"

Spanish opposition socialist party's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, considered an outsider for Spain's top job, then promised Spaniards he would withdraw Spain from the U.S. coalition if he would win the election.

Polls said he wouldn't win. 

Had March 10 been election day, polls show pro-U.S. conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar would have won with a healthy margin. Spain would stay in the coalition.

So Al Qaeda went into action and gave Spaniards a shake that changed many voters' minds.

On March 11, three days pre-election, Al Qaeda moved somewhat later than its original plan foretold with its first of two attacks (the second being foiled by Spanish police who disarmed a bomb on the high-speed commuter-rail between Madrid and Seville) and blew up a few thousand Spanish citizens on their way to work. Numerous bombs on four trains were all meant to detonate simultaneously; bring down the roof killing thousands as the commuter trains converged on a central Madrid commuter hub. The plan did not work fully, but the lesser result achieved the same end effect.

Spanish television's first reports erred in crediting Basque terrorist group ETA with the acts but TV stations soon broadcast Al Qaeda's hastily produced video tape to correct the record, take credit away from ETA, and credit Al Qaeda. It is clear that both competing political parties attempted to assign blame according to their campaign platforms. Al Qaeda quickly set the record straight with its video-taped claim for credit to say the Socialist Party was correct, it was Al Qaeda's act and Madrid commuters were being punished for the Aznar governments' participation in the U.S.-led coalition. This occurred just as Spanish authorities arrested five Al Qaeda thugs linked to detonators and Koranic verse found at the scene.

As the hours passed and the opening of polling booths approached, the death toll rose. Human remains were extracted from the rubble and Spaniards took to the streets in protest; in vigil. The near-simultaneous attacks on four Spanish commuter trains killed 200 civilians, badly injured another 1,500 people and 500 more persons sustained less threatening wounds.

The government's polls dropped by 11-16 percent. It lost the election. The Al Qaeda plan worked. Jose Maria Aznar said, "March 11, 2004, has taken its place in the history of infamy." Interviewers doing anecdotal post mortems on the election were told by voters that whereas Aznar was generally liked, he had essentially caused Spain's Al Qaeda-served punishment with his government's pro-America policies and therefore Aznar was to be punished by getting their ouster.

The winning socialist party promptly withdrew Spain from the coalition and Al Qaeda won its biggest victory ever. 

The Al Qaeda WTC effort was nothing compared to its Spanish campaign. The results of  Al Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attack were unpredicted and flukish. Al Qaeda's overturning of Spain's government was on target, predicted and brilliantly executed. In the modern history of overturning unwanted governments, not even the CIA with all its means could have pulled this off in its bygone halcyon years of skullduggery.

On the Ides of March, in the daisy chain of events, Zapatero, haplessly aligned with Al Qaeda, declared a goal to help U.S. Senator John Kerry win the U.S. presidency. (Kerry, whose initial outings have left him appearing somewhat kookish, precipitously grabbed the endorsement.) Zapatero joined in spirit Usama Bin Laden and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, pleading that constituents urge Americans to vote for Kerry whilst being interviewed on Spanish radio. "We're aligning ourselves with [U.S. Senator John] Kerry," declared Zapatero. "...we hope Senator John Kerry will win the presidency." 

The unprecedented and blatant interference in U.S. internal affairs by a EU-member nation shocked the globe, but delighted Al Qaeda which concomitantly has made the U.S. election a top priority and has sent messages to Zapatero informing him that if he does in fact pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and if he will put his weight behind the effort to oust U.S. President George Bush, Al Qaeda will make Spain a "terror-free zone", an unprecedented terrorist cease-fire per se. (Could Al Qaeda by such moves become a new World Governor? It certainly has now a lot of power.)

Al Qaeda would like nothing more than to axe Bush. The ironically centrist conservative Bush administration since coming to power in 2001 forced, amidst great controversy, an anti-terrorism doctrinal change from a law enforcement "fly-swatter" approach of criminal indictments and arrest warrants, to a first-ever military, fight-them-on-their-own-turf, bloody war : the "Global War on Terrorism."  Many thousands have died.

The Bush doctrine ( 'if it looks like, sounds like or even hints of being Al Qaeda, we'll kill it!') is blooded and in full motion. The U.S. has killed anyone Al Qaeda-like or impounded them in hordes without warrant, relying on ancient war-time laws. This violent aggressiveness, apart from making the socialist governments of Canada and Europe shudder,  has damaged, horrified and fractured Al Qaeda and infuriated Bin Laden. 

Going back to February 2001, the Bush administration had DOD build a replica of Bin Laden's Kandahar mansion in a U.S. desert range and by May 2001 was getting practice lobbing missiles through its windows using manned and unmanned aircraft as launch platforms in an attempt to refine the "Predator" RPV. Bush had ordered "rolling back" to "permanently eroding" and eventually to "eliminating" bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. Bush clearly wanted him killed. Without war, U.S. law which prevented FBI agents from jailing folks who made stupid remarks to flight instructors also forbid assassinations. At the time there were hints Bush would seek lifting the ban on state-sanctioned assassination. 

Al Qaeda was founded in 1989 by Saudi-born Usama bin Laden who had come to Afghanistan in 1986 and had already created, Al Masadah, the Lion's Den, a training place for Persian Gulf Arabs. Partnered with Bin Laden in the formation of Al Qaeda was Egyptian Islamic Jihad's Bin LadenMuhammad Atef (1944-2001), a murdering radical somewhere past the fringe of psychopathy. (Usama bin Laden (left) and Muhammad Atef (below) whose daughter is married to bin Laden's son, were indicted November 4, 1998 in a U.S. court for the 7 August 1998 simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It is widely believed Atef was killed in November 2001 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan although we have no reports of his corpse being discovered.) 

The incipient Al Qaeda was an aggregation of the mujahideen freedom fighters, mekhtab al khidemat (MAK) and  Al Masadah. Usama Bin Laden and Palestinian Abdullah Azzam (an effective global promoter of the Afghani Jihad) had Al Qaeda's Muhammad Atefstimulated the creation of this mujahideen to oppose the 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. After the Soviets withdrew, Bin Laden and the Afghani mujahideen had no purpose in life; no enemies to fight, so they recruited, trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahideen to rid Muslim nations of Western influence and to kill Jews. Al Qaeda, in the vision of Usama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef  would be "The Base" of all such anti-West, anti-Zionist operations.

Al Qaeda is now a doctrinally-focused collaboration of scattered, eccentric, Islamic fundamentalist,  'inner-city-street-gangs' with C-phones and internet-connected PCs, each cell led by terrorist 'thugs'. The people of Al Qaeda share the same ideology in what can be described as a movement. There are no membership cards. 

Usama Bin Laden is its figurehead leader, perhaps seeing himself as a Christ-like prophet in the Islamic sense but having little to do with day to day operations. Usama Bin Laden's importance has been degraded and Al Qaeda as a whole is hurting badly blaming the United States' ("The Zionists and Crusaders") new anti-terrorist dogma.

Al Qaeda has lost to the new U.S. anti-terrorist doctrine one benevolent hosting nation; lost sympathy and acquiescence of  several Islamic countries; lost 87 training camps in Afghanistan and Iraq; lost tones of supplies and weapons; lost chemical warfare labs; lost countless weapons firing ranges; lost millions of dollars in cold hard cash; lost millions of dollars worth of potential earning power; lost dual-use chemical stores; lost most of its best leadership and a lot of prestige as its demeaned figurehead hides in caves and tunnels while Islamic Pakistani soldiers run him into the ground under the valiant leadership of Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf, no longer an acquiescent neighbour to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Al Qaeda has been bashed to bits by the Bush Administration's willingness to fight and needed a major successful event somewhere. Spain, France, England and America, in that order, keep popping up as central to Al Qaeda's strategic goals. Albeit, Israel, Iraq and other nations are passionately touted as theatres by regional 'independent' Al Qaeda-aligned zealots but the core Al Quaeda has bigger fish to fry. 

Spain nearly failed. Al Qaeda had a hard time finding operatives until a somewhat sloppy Moroccan crew came in step with the plan. In the final moments of a nearly botched effort, Al Qaeda won the jackpot in spades. Arguably it was aided by floundering, exasperated Spanish politicians who couldn't, on the eve of an election, get their story straight, but however you slice the blame, Al Qaeda won the whole pot.

Al Qaeda's Sulainman Abu Ghaith no doubt delighted as Kerry haplessly joins Zapatero, Al-Qaeda
and North Korea's Kim Jong Il in bashing US troop effort in IraqThe chain then continued to the U.S. while France and England's law enforcement elite began 'overturning the rocks', looking for Al Qaeda's next efforts, making more than a few arrests, and while Canada's RCMP anti-terrorist section detained a federal government contract employee working on the guts of Foreign Affairs' computer systems.
Right out of left field, U.S. Senator (D-Massachusetts) Kerry, a candidate for the U.S. left-wing party's leadership, went beyond 'kookish' when he impulsively said publicly in March what has always been true in Western politics at one time or another, but never spoken aloud owing to potentially drastic sovereignty ramifications. In March, Kerry issued the shocking declaration that un-named foreign leaders supported his campaign to oust his country's current leader.

Washington was rocked. A gasp, and then laughter, could be heard around the world and Kim Jong Il, once he stopped dancing about, ordered televised footage of Kerry's statements be broadcast to North Koreans in a prime state TV propaganda slot.

Some Americans went apoplectic. Mutterings are outright ugly within the security intelligence community. The thirst for power fogs minds; an unreasoned mind is easily manipulated; and the ability of the leftist media elite to mold the credulous minds of the North American middle class voters are well understood vulnerabilities exploitable by Al Qaeda's deep thinking "Majlis Al Shura" whose every home-made video gets 'breaking-news-flash"-priority and incessant replay on Al Jazeera and CNN.

Apart from raising alarm that he leads an international plot to unseat a U.S. President, Kerry, like Spain's Zapatero has chastised his country's invasion of Iraq. In February Kerry went on record with a statement saying that President Bush overstated the threat of Al Qaeda "terrorism". Kerry has also opposed troop funding; castigated the Bush administration for its anti-terror doctrinal re-direction and purblindly crafted the same scenario in America that Al Qaeda exploited in Spain. Kerry has heedlessly joined those now compromised by al-Quaeda to become an apparent chink in the U.S. armour.

Beware of this. Al Qaeda takes well its lessons learned from experiences, good and bad, and will do a replay on its tactics which have previously worked. Never forget that WWII poster: "Loose lips sink ships!" 

Unequivocally the events of this March now ending foretell of pending horror. Beware the Ides of this March 2004. Julius Caesar ignored that warning with lethal consequences.

Micheal John O'Brien, Editor



Complete Issue

This Issue: Related Links, Resources and Research

Al Qaeda training manual 1
Al Qaeda training manual 2
Al Qaeda training manual 3
Al Qaeda training manual 4
Al Qaeda: agents of Bacterial Origin
Global Terrorist Groups aligned to Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda Killed Masoud - Ahmad Shah Masoud
Al Qaeda's Usama Bin Laden
Al Qaeda: World Trade Center
VX Gas
BZ Gas
Agents of Bacterial Origin
Canada in Afghanistan
Chemical, Biological, Radiological & Nuclear Terrorism
Documentation & Diagrams - The Early Atomic Bomb
Al Qaeda Internet Rational For Its Existence
Decline of the American Empire
Indicting Al Qaeda and Bin Laden
U.S. Department of Justice
Copyright © 2004 MPRM Group Limited. All rights reserved.
Revised: March 31 2004

Publisher and Editor In Chief:
Micheal John O'Brien
The Wednesday Report is published and printed weekly in hard copy by MPRM Group Limited
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