“All governments lie.” You can add to that great quote “and all newspapers lie, too.” -American journalist I. F. Stone. Knowing the truth matters in a democracy because without the truth citizens can’t make informed decisions about government policies that impact their lives. It is not possible to consciously answer fundamental societal questions like “should we go to war?” without a firm grasp of all the facts at hand. When independent journalists fail to provide the simple and straightforward facts to the public, they become complicit in government murder and fraud, and deserve even more ridicule than dishonest government officials and government-owned journalists. 11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real Al-Qaeda is either one of these things, or it is a combination of them: a) a completely fake threat; the organization does not exist, b) an organization that exists in small numbers but was created by the CIA to serve a corrupt U.S. foreign policy, and remains a U.S. intelligence asset in the manufactured global war on terrorism, or c) a small organization that exists independently of the U.S. government but its strength and influence in the Middle East is exaggerated by radical policymakers and officials in Washington. Out of all three statements the first and second deserve the most serious attention because they are supported by the evidence listed below. #1. Radical American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was ordered to be assassinated by President Obama, met with top military officials at the Pentagon months after the 9/11 attacks. #2. CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed in June 2010 on ABC’s This Week that there are less than 100 Al-Qaeda members in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. #3. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), one of the world’s leading security think tanks, published a report this year which said that the threat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is exaggerated by Western policymakers. #4. Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview to the Los Angeles Times’s Patt Morrison in October 2010 that Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist. #5. The U.S. government created, and funded Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s to be used to draw the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, and bleed it to death in a costly and unwinnable war. #6. Robin Cook, who served as a British MP for 22 years and as Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote an article for the Guardian in July 2005, a month before his death, called “The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means.” #7. A BBC article from July 2004 called “Al-Qaeda’s origins and links” reveals that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA agent in the 1980s. #8. J. Michael Springmann, a 20 year foreign service official, and a former Consulate officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has publicly stated for many years that the CIA brought over Muslim radicals to the United States for secret terrorist training. #9. Germany’s Der Spiegel’s published an article by Siegesmund von Ilsemann called “Arming the Middle East: The Checkered History of American Weapons Deals” in June 2007. The article backed up the reporting done by the BBC, and elsewhere that the United States government “supplied Afghan freedom fighters in the 1980s with money and arms for their struggle against occupying Soviet troops. One of the best customers for the CIA back then was Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden.” This account is only half-true. The CIA funded and trained a network of Muslim fighters not to liberate Afghanistan from corrupt Soviet influence, but to create havoc and instigate a Soviet invasion so that it would drain itself of blood and treasure. Once the objective of bringing down the Soviet Union was achieved, the stage was set for the United States and the West to invade Afghanistan and take advantage of the country’s vast resources, from oil to heroin. #10. Selig Harrison, a current member of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an expert on South Asia, said in March 2001 at a conference called “Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia,” that the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI helped create the backward and tyrannical Taliban. #11. The September 11, 2001 attacks, which serve as the basis for America’s wars in the Middle East, were committed by the United States government with assistance from the government of Israel. This is an indisputable fact added by: maasanova