front
06-17-2004, 01:04 AM
This is a short post from Rahul Mahajan from his website : http://www.empirenotes.org/
"Some wheat amid the chaff of the 9/11 Commission. You can see a transcript of the morning session
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46525-2004Jun16.html
on the Post website, but there'e really nothing worth reading. The two staff statements released today have considerably more. A lot of media attention has been paid to Staff Statement 16
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_16.pdf
, the Outline of the 9/11 Plot, which contains the sensational revelations about Khalid Shaikh Muhammed's alleged plans to hijack nine or ten planes on the same day, as well as the news about repeated postponement of the final attack. There's also been a fair amount of attention to the commission's conclusion, which is not exactly news, that there is no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda or the 9/11 plot in particular.
Actually, though, what's more interesting is some of the information in Staff Statement 15,
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_15.pdf
Overview of the Enemy. It is meant to be a capsule history and analysis of al-Qaeda. It misses a few elementary points, actually saying that al-Qaeda was created by bin Laden, not Abdullah Azzam, but that can probably be understood simply as an effect of trying to quickly gloss over a dozen years as background.
The most interesting part of the conclusions, if they can be trusted, have to do with money. First, as the report says,
Contrary to popular understanding, Bin Laden did not fund al-Qaeda through a personal fortune and a network of businesses. Instead, al-Qaeda relied primarily on a fundraising network developed over time. Bin Laden never received a $300 million inheritance. From 1970 until approximately 1994, he received about $1 million per year -- a significant sum, but hardly a $300 million fortune that could be used to fund a global jihad. According to Saudi officials and representatives of the Bin Laden family, Bin Ladin was divested of his share of his family's wealth. Next, toward the end of the statement:
Al-Qaeda's money was distributed as quickly as it was raised -- what was made was spent. The CIA estimates that $30 million was spent annually, including paying for terrorist operations, maintaining terrorist training camps, paying salaries to jihadists, contributing to the Taliban, funding fighters in Afghanistan, and sporadically contributing to related terrorist organizations. The largest expense was payments to the Taliban, which totalled an estimated $10-20 million per year. Actual terrorist operations were relatively cheap. If these conclusions can be trusted, some pretty clear conclusions follow. If al-Qaeda was spending $30 million annually, then it is prohibitively unlikely that it got any significant levels of support from any state with real access to resources. As I have said now and then on this blog, had the Bush administration actually thought there was the slightest chance that Saddam's government would aid al-Qaeda in any way, they would never have gone to war in the way they did. During their year of blustering, when it was clear that war was coming, Saddam could easily have transferred funds to al-Qaeda that would have dramatically increased their ability to conduct attacks -- especially since it looks as if the lion's share of their budget is tied down in administrative expenses, leaving much less for discretionary programs like the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the administration had to have been confident that Saddam would never give al-Qaeda anything, or they couldn't have taken the risk that he would enable them at one stroke to increase their basic capacity by a factor of 10 or more.
Second, it seems to rule out significant support from any major political players in the Saudi state. Given that the royal family is so large and the politics so Byzantine, it is possible that bin Laden has sympathizers, or people who want to use him as a catspaw, in the royal family; it doesn't seem possible that any members with genuine power are providing him with resources.
In fact, the 9/11 Commission did draw both of these conclusions; the point is, though, that the rest of what they have to say seems actually to be genuinely consistent with those conclusions."
This needs to be repeated across all boards.
cheers
front
"Some wheat amid the chaff of the 9/11 Commission. You can see a transcript of the morning session
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46525-2004Jun16.html
on the Post website, but there'e really nothing worth reading. The two staff statements released today have considerably more. A lot of media attention has been paid to Staff Statement 16
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_16.pdf
, the Outline of the 9/11 Plot, which contains the sensational revelations about Khalid Shaikh Muhammed's alleged plans to hijack nine or ten planes on the same day, as well as the news about repeated postponement of the final attack. There's also been a fair amount of attention to the commission's conclusion, which is not exactly news, that there is no evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda or the 9/11 plot in particular.
Actually, though, what's more interesting is some of the information in Staff Statement 15,
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_15.pdf
Overview of the Enemy. It is meant to be a capsule history and analysis of al-Qaeda. It misses a few elementary points, actually saying that al-Qaeda was created by bin Laden, not Abdullah Azzam, but that can probably be understood simply as an effect of trying to quickly gloss over a dozen years as background.
The most interesting part of the conclusions, if they can be trusted, have to do with money. First, as the report says,
Contrary to popular understanding, Bin Laden did not fund al-Qaeda through a personal fortune and a network of businesses. Instead, al-Qaeda relied primarily on a fundraising network developed over time. Bin Laden never received a $300 million inheritance. From 1970 until approximately 1994, he received about $1 million per year -- a significant sum, but hardly a $300 million fortune that could be used to fund a global jihad. According to Saudi officials and representatives of the Bin Laden family, Bin Ladin was divested of his share of his family's wealth. Next, toward the end of the statement:
Al-Qaeda's money was distributed as quickly as it was raised -- what was made was spent. The CIA estimates that $30 million was spent annually, including paying for terrorist operations, maintaining terrorist training camps, paying salaries to jihadists, contributing to the Taliban, funding fighters in Afghanistan, and sporadically contributing to related terrorist organizations. The largest expense was payments to the Taliban, which totalled an estimated $10-20 million per year. Actual terrorist operations were relatively cheap. If these conclusions can be trusted, some pretty clear conclusions follow. If al-Qaeda was spending $30 million annually, then it is prohibitively unlikely that it got any significant levels of support from any state with real access to resources. As I have said now and then on this blog, had the Bush administration actually thought there was the slightest chance that Saddam's government would aid al-Qaeda in any way, they would never have gone to war in the way they did. During their year of blustering, when it was clear that war was coming, Saddam could easily have transferred funds to al-Qaeda that would have dramatically increased their ability to conduct attacks -- especially since it looks as if the lion's share of their budget is tied down in administrative expenses, leaving much less for discretionary programs like the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the administration had to have been confident that Saddam would never give al-Qaeda anything, or they couldn't have taken the risk that he would enable them at one stroke to increase their basic capacity by a factor of 10 or more.
Second, it seems to rule out significant support from any major political players in the Saudi state. Given that the royal family is so large and the politics so Byzantine, it is possible that bin Laden has sympathizers, or people who want to use him as a catspaw, in the royal family; it doesn't seem possible that any members with genuine power are providing him with resources.
In fact, the 9/11 Commission did draw both of these conclusions; the point is, though, that the rest of what they have to say seems actually to be genuinely consistent with those conclusions."
This needs to be repeated across all boards.
cheers
front