calm down children.

now about bin laden. he doesn't have any real power. it's a common misconception he planned 9-11. he didn't. i'm about to head to lectures and i can't remember the man who did but i will find it out later.

and about al qaeda as an organisation. alot of mistakes have been made about it. in afghanistan they thought it was a huge organistaion in the tora boras mountains with it's own base. a huge underground bunker complex with hydro power, tanks, helicopters etc. it in fact had a few caves with a bit of ammo in them.

the term al qaeda is an odd one. bin laden never used to use it. even after the embassy bombings it was never used. the first people to use it where in fact the americans while they were trying bin laden in his absence on the mafia laws (only laws which allow you to try in absence). of course the big thing was the construstion of al qaeda. noone knows exactly how it works. or how big it is. it could be thousands upon thousands of men. some think the real numbers are less than a hundred. but the term al qaeda was first used in that trial where they first established it as a real organisation and it's set up. whether this is correct remains to be seen and there are many pointers that it is not and seems to work under a franchise system rather than anything with a direct command like the ira.

also the term al qaeda is also intersting. it is in fact not the name of the organisation. al qaeda means "the base" and refered to the base in sudan. america at the time was still struggling for a name for this organisation that had just wiped out two embassies and so refered to it by this name as the base in sudan.

how much bin laden has anything to do with what is happening in iraq is hard to decide. did he personally send troops? did someone act under his orders? or is someone just doing what they think is what the organisation might like? kinda in the way the nazi government worked. or maybe saying that you work for al qaeda just gets you a better reputation.

aside from killing innocents america tortures them.