It ain't al-Qaeda, people, it's pissed-off Muslims like Bilal Abdullah

from today's la times...

British suspect's beliefs drove him

Bilal Abdullah was an angry militant Islamist long before he became a doctor in Britain or a chief suspect in last week's attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow, according to acquaintances.

The Iraqi doctor spoke fluent English, studied for his British medical exams in Cambridge and worked part time at a local Staples office supply store, according to a friend from those days in 2004 and 2005.

Abdullah also praised former Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, and kept his group's videos showing beheadings and assaults. He cheered the killing of U.S. and British troops, and wanted to see a strict Islamic government in Iraq, as well as Islamic dominance around the world.

the next time you hear bush use al-qaeda in every other sentence of a speech, keep the following in mind...

British security officials say no direct links to Al Qaeda have yet been found, and terrorism experts are skeptical that there is one. Abdel Bari Atwan, author of "The Secret History of Al Qaeda," noted in an interview Wednesday that Al Qaeda operations in London, Bali and Madrid all were deadly accurate, whereas last week's attacks were rudimentary and unsuccessful.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is very experienced. They manufacture car bombs every day. They know how to detonate bombs, where to park them, how to select targets," said Atwan, who is editor of the London-based Al Quds al Arabi newspaper.

this is what bushco doesn't want us talking about... there's a ton of pissed-off muslims out there and the more we keep trying to kick their collective asses, the more pissed-off they're gonna be, and the more of those now in the peaceful mainstream are going to start feeling the same way... bush and his buddy, tony, succeeded in making the war on terrorism into a war on al-qaeda, a war which they then conflated with islam...

just as an interesting speculation, what if terrorists, instead of being defined as radical islamists working for al-qaeda, were defined as radical christians who believe in acting out their beliefs by bombing (or attempting to bomb) abortion clinics, and murdering physicians who perform abortions...? what if all christianity got lumped in with those people...? every day, more and more christians would become radicalized and feel it necessary to take strong steps to protect their cherished beliefs... let's face it, if you become convinced that powerful forces are out to obliterate the fundamental principles you live by, along with your very identity as a person, anger and rage is not an irrational response...

we don't have to look very hard to find other examples of religions and cultures that became radicalized under threat of extinction: the protestant-catholic conflict in northern ireland, the christian-muslim bloodbaths in the balkans, the basque-spanish situation in spain, and, of course, israel and palestine, are some of the most recent, and recorded history is littered with others... when people feel their beliefs and entire way of life are under attack, they get angry and fight back... it's bad enough that the u.s. wants to control all the world's energy resources and feels justified using military power to get them, it's vastly much worse when that agenda gets wrapped in religious ideology and painted as a global struggle of christianity vs. islam...

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