what is alqaeda?

further to my earlier points about who/what is alqaeda, sibel was asked exactly this question in an interview with Jim Hogue, May 04 - her response:

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated.

So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap-- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money."

(via this dkos diary which refers to my work on the sibel story. (the diary asks whether abramoff is involved))

note that she is basically saying that there is no such thing as AlQaeda - it's baically just a word that is used to describe a network of drug-runners, arms traffickers and money launderers - which includes people like perle and feith. AlQaeda is not osama and a band of merry men - and it never was.