Otherwise, you wouldn't get two contradictory reports:
"Algeria blasts highlight rising strength of Al Qaeda" by Craig Whitlock/Washington Post December 13, 2007
BERLIN - Until last year, Al Qaeda's affiliate in North Africa was an isolated bunch of desert and mountain guerrillas, struggling to attract recruits, money, and attention. Yesterday's bombings in the heart of Algeria's capital are the latest sign that the network has improved on all three fronts since swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
Just in time for Bush and the War-Promoters, too!!!!
Whatta COINCIDENCE, huh?
By targeting the Algerian Supreme Court and UN agencies, the attackers sent a defiant message to Algerian authorities and undermined the government's claims that the group's demise is near. They also served notice that no part of the country is safe from their reach, ending a decade of relative calm in heavily guarded Algiers.
Counterterrorism officials and analysts said the Algerian network's operations have become much more sophisticated since Al Qaeda adopted the group in September 2006, announcing a formal partnership and urging the Algerians to focus on French, US, and other foreign targets.
Since then, the local Al Qaeda branch has moved its fight from the Algerian countryside, where its pattern of attacks on police stations and military barracks had received little publicity outside North Africa. By recruiting suicide bombers - a new phenomenon in Algeria - and targeting civilians, the network has learned quickly that it can seize global attention.
George Joffe, a North Africa researcher at Cambridge University in England:
"I don't think this implies the terrorist danger from the group is any greater, but rather that it's just become more efficient. The tactics have changed."
An obscure faction once known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat took on a new name, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in January. Maghreb is an Arabic word for the region of North Africa stretching from Libya to Mauritania.
In April, it bombed the Government Palace in the center of Algiers and a police station on the edge of the city, killing 33. The explosions were the first suicide attacks in Algeria since the 1990s, when the country was mired in civil war, and the worst violence in the capital in more than a decade. In September, bombers targeted a convoy carrying President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, missing him but killing 22.
Meantime, the group has reinvented its propaganda wing, creating a polished Internet operation that lionizes its "martyrs" within hours of an attack and includes narrated videos of past bombings.
Evan Kohlmann, a New York-based analyst who studies Internet use by terrorist groups:
"It's remarkably sophisticated. It's one thing to carry out a suicide bombing. It's another thing to record video of the attack at the same time."
Yup, I've seen the terrorism-promoter on tv!
Without 'em, you wouldn't be on tv, would you, Kohlman?
This is ALL ZIONIST PROPAGANDA, readers!
Oh, how clearly we see now!
The network began distributing its videos on the Web three years ago. Since then, the group has set up a permanent web site with recruiting pitches and footage of fighters assembling bombs.
Ummm, about those "websites?"
You mean THESE websites and THESE videos?
And how come they all track back to places like Texas or Maryland?
The North African faction has direct connections to the media arm run by Al Qaeda's central leadership. About 12 hours after yesterday's bombings in Algiers, a brief assertion of responsibility was posted on the al-Hisbah Islamic Network, a password-protected site that releases video announcements by bin Laden and his deputies.
That statement and a more detailed assertion were posted later on the Algerian group's permanent website. It included photos of the two men who allegedly carried out the bombings.
One depicted a smiling, gray-haired man, identified as Ibrahim Abu Uthman, who by the site's account drove a truck loaded with 1,800 pounds of explosives into the office complex housing several UN agencies.
The other bomber, identified by the Al Qaeda website as Abdul Rahman al-Asimi, blew up a van outside the Algerian Supreme Court about 10 minutes before the UN attack."
I'm not highlighting and commenting because I am sick of Zionist-promoted garbage, readers!
CUI BONO?
Of course, the New York Times plays down the attacks, which makes me suspect U.S/Mossad involvement even more!
"An Appeal for Calm After Suicide Bombings in Algeria" by KATRIN BENNHOLD and ELAINE SCIOLINO
ALGIERS — A day after suicide terror attacks rocked Algeria’s capital, the country’s foreign minister urged calm on Wednesday, saying that the bombings did not portend civil war.
In an interview with Europe 1 radio, the foreign minister, Mourad Medelci, insisted that the situation was different from that in the early 1990s, when the army intervened to cancel elections that an Islamist party was poised to win. That act sparked a civil war between Islamists and the government that left at least 100,000 people dead.
Mr. Medelci: “I lived through the periods of the ’90s, and I see what the situation is today. The situation today is that the population, the Algerian people, is united, completely united, against terrorism. This cannot be a situation of civil war. A terrorist attack] is very easy to do, in Algiers or in other capitals. You can put a bomb there where you want despite all the security measures.”
Yeah, especially when it is GOVERNMENTS that are CARRYING OUT the "terrorist" attacks!
As emergency workers searched for survivors and dug out bodies after two truck bombings that hit a United Nations compound and the government’s Constitutional Council, the military-backed government unofficially released new details about the identity of the two suicide bombers involved in the attack.
According to two prominent local journalists briefed by Algeria’s intelligence services, one of the bombers was Rabah Bechla, 64, from a town east of Algiers, who had been involved in radical Islamist activities for more than a decade. The second was Larbi Charef, about 30, a released prisoner from an impoverished neighborhood on the eastern edge of the capital.
One guy was 64?! I'm smelling a SET-UP JOB STINK, readers!
The journalists added that both bombers were Algerians affiliated with different wings of the terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, North Africa’s most active terrorist group, which has claimed responsibility for the twin attacks.
A statement Tuesday from the group posted on a radical Islamist Web site showed photographs of the two men, calling each a “martyrdom hero” but using what appeared to be aliases. It said that the two bombers attacked their targets with trucks carrying more than 1,700 pounds each of explosives.
Yup, shoveling the old bullshit!
Mr. Bechla apparently joined the predecessor organization of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 1996 and has been only a minor figure in the organization, according to Mounir Boudjema, a senior editor of the newspaper Liberte and one of the journalists who received the intelligence information.
Mr. Charef was known to the police after being arrested and convicted for a series of petty crimes in 2004 and spending one year in prison, according to Mr. Boudjema’s account. When Mr. Charef left prison, he traveled to the eastern mountains of Algeria, where the terrorist group is active, the journalist said.
Hey, a PETTY-CRIME PATSY!!!!!!!
The death toll from the bombings continued to change Wednesday. Mr. Medelci said that there were 31 dead, five of them foreign nationals. The dead included two Chinese, a Filipino, a Dane and a Senegalese, the Interior Ministry said. The United Nations said that at least nine members of its staff were killed.
The Algerian government has struggled — with limited success — to convince the outside world that its crackdown against terrorists was working and that the threat from terrorism inside Algeria had diminished.
The bombings came after a string of suicide attacks since April for which the same terrorist group took responsibility; among them were an attack in April in which two cars exploded, the killing of more than 30 and wounding 200, and a suicide attack in a crowd awaiting the appearance of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in September that killed 22 people but not the president. Previously, suicide was not part of the group’s attacks.
Ooooooooh, was my sniffer just ASSAULTED by the shitstink of Zionist propaganda!!!
Gagging!!!!
Foreign embassies and corporations tightened security in the wake of the bombings. The French Embassy urged “extreme prudence” and limitations on travel inside the country. The American Embassy said on its Web site that it was “implementing more robust security procedures” while it determined “the current security situation.”
Large multinational companies with stakes in Algeria also indicated that they have stepped up security, although they declined to give details. The newly constructed Constitutional Council might have been a target because it oversees the country’s elections.
Yeah, like the "terrorists" give a shit about our SHAM elections!
Can't you smell the bullshit propaganda, readers?
A change to the constitution has been proposed that would allow Mr. Bouteflika to run for a third term. But going after United Nations offices was a new development in the country’s 15-year struggle against Islamist opponents, who previously had focused their attacks largely on symbols of the government.
That SHITSTINK just keeps getting STRONGER!!!!
The United Nations compound was an easy target because it was less protected than high-profile embassies like those of the United States and France, the country’s former colonial ruler. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a review of United Nations security precautions and policies in Algeria and elsewhere.
One diplomat in Algiers, who requested anonymity under normal diplomatic rules:
“It was the only high-profile international target they could hope to successfully hit. By not just focusing on Algerian targets, they are re-branding themselves as an international terror organization. Calling yourself Al Qaeda helps with recruitment.”
So does calling yourselves "Al-CIA-Duh!"
In the Arabic online statement Tuesday night in which the organization had claimed responsibility for the attacks, it described the United Nations offices as “the headquarters of the international infidels’ den.”
Tired of the lies, readers?
