There's no such thing as "Al Qaeda"

...now let me qualify that.

There are in my view, basically two "Al Qaedas".

The first is the mythical one our so called 'News' services barrage us with on a daily basis - you know, the one that 'hates us because of our freedoms' - that International, organised and monolithic force of 'evil extremists' that just happens to pop up where the oil is; the massively hyped and propagandised threat used to justify worldwide militarism and a huge increase in domestic civil liberties restrictions; the catch-all phrase used to describe anyone NATO wants to bomb - 'Taliban' and 'Vietcong' being similar phrases.

The second "Al Qaeda" - the one behind the myth and hype, is little more than a Western Database of expendable Intelligence Assets, recruited by the US through it's proxies such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many other countries - anywhere there is a muslim population and US backed regimes. The use of this database as a tool of Statecraft has been widely documented in the Balkans, Kosovo, Chechnya, Algeria and many other places. It began in the 80's during the Soviet-Afghan war and continues to this day. Most of these individuals probably believe they are genuinely fighting a 'jihad', but some are double agents.

Most of the time, the individual groups the US wants to bomb, are not "Al Qaeda" at all - e.g. the Houthi fighters in the Yemen, a Shi'a group likely backed by Iran and opposed to the US client state government of President Saleh.