jwoody

I have my own opinion on this but I'm wondering what others think about, what has been described as, the biggest threat to global security since the cold war.

Are they just a small group of men with a video camera, or an organised army of dedicated followers in every country in the world?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the hostage taker in Iraq; is he Al-Qaeda?

I've read about the, so-called, terrorist traing camps in the Philipines. Are they Al-Qaeda?

What about the Iranians; do you think the Iranian Islamic government is Al-Qaeda?

The Turks in my local kebab shop; are they one of these sleeper cells I've heard about?

Many questions, not many answers.

avhg1

I vote that they are pretty small (< 10,000) It doesn't take that many crazy people to be a big threat. If we stay on them, I don't think we will eliminate them, but there will be less of them. Unfortunately, there is not shortage of wackos out there, so they will never be completely gone.

MSD

If you consider their militants as their members, I'll go with 100-1000. If you count sympathizers who wouldn't turn them in to authorities and would give them a place to hide, they number in the millions.

jwoody

I'd agree with you on that MrS.D. There doesn't appear to be any minimum requirement to join Al-Qaeda other than saying that you're in and that you don't like America.

The reason behind this post is I was watching a part 3 of a BBC series on TV last night:

The main point that the producers were trying to put across is that Al-Qaeda's significance in the world was greatly exaggerated by the Neo-Conservatives in the American government, in the same way that Russian Communism never posed a real threat to the world.

They did show some interesting footage of Donald Rumsfeld describing (with a neat cut-away diagram) Osama Bin-Laden's multi-level mountain lair. The way it was presented was like something from a James Bond movie.

KinkyKiwi

hmm..imma have to say at least 1 million...and if the "sympathetics" are counted millions. but i have to add that as far as i'm concerned anyone who shows support in any way is part of it. but then again i'm kinda crazy about that kinda stuff

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Fire

I tend to think the organization itself is small, but hte sympathizers and coattail riders number in the tens of thousands.....

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blahblah454

Honestly I think that the Al-Qaeda is just a little thing that has always been around, but USA needed a scape goat for 9/11 so they chose the Al-Qaeda. Who knows if Osama actually did it. In fact do we know anything? The TV tells us anything and everyone believes it, so I just choose to believe nothing.

dlish

i rekon OBL works for the cia or the US government, cos the tapes just keep coming at the most convenient time dont they.....yes that was him in the tapes last week (well it looked like him..at least if it was a fake it was better than that other one that got distributed where he was supposedly in a safehouse boasting about the attacks..pfft wat a fake! go to www.whatreallyhappened.com and check it out if u havent seen it yet)

anyways.. i rekon OBL and Dubya are in bed together..the bushes and the bin ladens have always been in bed together, what would make it change now?

ciao

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kiwiman

How old are you? The fact that the latest Bin Laden video was pretty much just ripping on Bush, right before the election in order to sway American opinion now means they're in cahoots?

Psycho Dad

I agree that that is likely accurate. Something that I have thought about (and I don't know why), is that if twenty young men on a suicide mission could take out over 3000 Americans on 9/11, why haven't another 20 been dispatched to take out more? I know the object of knocking down the WTC was as big of a part as the loss of lives, but it seems to me that the 150 people/terrorist average that day would have made them look to making bigger losses of life. That kind of makes me think that there are'nt as many of these guys willing to come over here and kill us as Tom Ridge wants us to believe. Either that or Islamic extremists lack creativity.

rfra3645

id say they lack creativity. and just arnt smart enuf to infiltrate us. as an american i can think of as many ways as the press talks about to hurt us but they just dont understand american ways. they probbally have big huge ideas but no way of turning them into really big huge check marks on the kill america score board.


i said 1000-10000

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KWSN

I find that kind of hilarious and outlandish. The diagram looks like something out of The Onion.

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omega2K4

Bahahaha. That diagram is hilarious. I voted for 10,000-100,000.

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Rdr4evr

I remember hearing on ABC or some news station not to long ago and it was stated that al queda has atleast 16,000 members. Although I believe that was just some kind of guess. I voted 10,000-100,000.

Kid_Karysma

On average, about 4 and 1/2 inches.

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Weezil

Why is there no "It doesn't exist" option?

jwoody

What made it even more ridiculous to me is that if you hollow out a mountain you'd end up with enough stone to make... a mountain. You can't hide that in your trousers like they did in 'The Great Escape'.

The only believable part thing in that diagram is the part that says "Bin Laden may have been moving around on horseback." The rest is purest bullshit and living proof that governments tell big fat lies to gather popular support for wars.

I also saw on TV a few months ago that there are Al-Qaeda training camps under cover of the jungle in Indonesia. Of course there is, you just can't see them for the trees.

Charlatan

Of course Geraldo will have a live TV event soon called: The Secret Vaults of Osama din Laden.

He will give us moment by moment updates as the authorities crack the Al Qaeda vault deep in Tora Bora...

This special will be aired soon as the US Special Forces have completed building a fortress that looks like the graphic above.

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tecoyah

had I replied to this thread a year ago....my answer would have been in the thousands.
As of today......at least 10,000 possibly 100,000....growing by the day

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Coppertop

Not that any of us would know. Hell, it's highly unlikely even they know. This is purely academic.

Dawson70

ya know what? I think Bin Laden lives right here in the US. If I were hiding from the US Military, I would hide where they are not. Makes ya wonder .....doesnt it.

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stingc

I'd guess under 100. If there's more than that it seems pretty obvious that they don't do anything except possibly get together once a week to swap "I hate america" jokes and get some baklava (every good club has to have free food at the meetings ). If there were even 100 people doing their best to wage a "war" against us, they're doing a pretty pathetic job.

(edit: The Iraqi insurgents are pretty bothersome, but I don't think most of them are Al Quaeda members. At least it's not terrorism in the same sense as 9/11 was.)

Psycho Dad

I don't think the diagram was to scale.

jwoody

Welcome to 'Tilted Paranoia' Coppertop.

tellumFS

I think it's a good question, but hard to judge for the general public. Personally, I voted for 1,000-10,000...based on the idea that the ex-Taleban are probably in cahoots with 'em, and that they probably have multiple cells in many countries.

But again, who really knows? Are they involved with the Iraqi insurgency? I wouldn't doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were recruiting there, and if they are, the question would be is how successful they are.

Drider_it

my reasoning is this.. they give out orders and never see or hear from another cell group for weeks months or years. They have people in cells that dosent know of the others for safety reasons.. if one or a whole cell gets captured they cant give out on the others.

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Eight

I think its quite big. 10,000 to 100,000.

My reasoning? I think they have "cells" in most countries, they have also having following s in most as well.

I doubt they are all active either.


I don't want to sound like I'm having a dig or causing trouble but just look at what happened on 9/11 to see how imaginative and good a breaching your security.

They also showed they have a lot of patience and are just waiting/planning there next attack. I believe they started planning and training for 9/11 about 4 year (possible more) before hand.

merkerguitars

I would think they are pretty big and a widespread, just not really organized worth a shit though. Yeah we will never eliminate them but we can suppress them enough so the aren't a huge threat.

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xray21

i think if it was ok we would just blow them all away.. but some people would be pissed so are goverment is just waiting untill it looks worse.

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arnie

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paulskinback

I think its tiny and its been blown out of proportion. I go with the theory that the governments of the western world want us to live in fear of the "enemy", whoever it may be in that era. Particularly for americans, who have lived in fear of cuba, the commies and the japs (as the older generation so lovingly refer to them). Pearl harbour was thought up by the american gov. to help boost their economy by going to war, and so too was the world trade center attack (i hate referring to it as 9/11 or september 11, too cliched for such an atrocity).

war is good for the economy, it wins elections, and it generally involves attacking countries far weaker than them. Hitler started the world wars to help bring Germany out of financial collapse. It provided jobs in munitions factories, in the army, in foreign countries where they would try to make people more "german", and it was only when the silly bugger tried to invade England (my green and pleasant land) that he fucked up. but it sure did good things for churchill and our economy.

we will always live in so-called fear fed to us by governments, but who fucking cares. i for one am not gonna stop getting out of bed in the morning just because some guy with a beard and an ak-47 in a hollywood studio pretends he's going to wipe out the infidel, calling himself osama.

its as much bullshit as the moon landing. end of.

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whocarz

Outside of the fact that the rest of your post is such utter nonesense that it isn't even worth responding to, Hitler only started one world war (the second one to be precise), and he fucked up when he invaded Russia, not when he tried to invade England. In fact, Hitler never wanted to fight the English or invade England, atleast not until he had dealt with the Russians.

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paulskinback

who cares? i'm right

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whocarz

No matter how loud or how often you say that, it's still false, so sorry.

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Mojo_PeiPei

The fact seems to be lost here that Al Qaeda isn't one gigantic assembly of terrorist all stars. The name itself means "the base", it's a network of terrorist organizations. So maybe the question is how many radical Islamic militants are out there? In that case easily in the hundreds of thousands.

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I'm guessing around 10,000-100,000.. I agree that the militant part of them are probarbly around 1000 but with all the symphatizers and "sponsors" they are far more than that.

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deekaybee

Thanks Mojo_PeiPei, I often thought "What does Al-Qaeda mean?".

I also think any terrorist group or radical religeous (islamic) thinkers are now stereotyped as Al-Qaeda. So their numbers I think are very much inflated. Plus the inflation of the numbers helps those in power? God knows our politicians won't come out and say "Oh BTW the threat is not really that big".

The problem is a few devoted people can easily influence the ill informed.

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pattycakes

not half as many as bush keeps telling us