Once upon a time there was a man called bin Laden and an organisation called 'Al Qaeda'

"Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan." This statement is attributed to Robin Cook, the ex-British Foreign Minister in an interview with the 'Guardian' one day after the London bombings on July 7th, 2005.  A month later Robin Cook was to die from a heart attack. However, let's not get carried away with conspiracy theories here and content ourselves with the fact that .... well, middle aged men, who are not particularly fit, do have heart attacks from time to time and on this occassion the heart attack was actually accompanied by a fall while on a walking holiday in the north of Scotland.

Another quote, which is often falsely attributed to Mr Cook is: "The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money." "Falsely attributed" as I say, and the quote in fact comes from Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence. Nevertheless, all we have here is Bunel reaching that logical conclusion that Robin Cook wasn't quite willing to make. However, it was also a conclusion that was based on the French intelligence officer's own research.

No, 'Al Qaeda' does not exist, or at least it doesn't exist to provide opposition to the United States and its allies, and it is in fact used as a pretext to pursue a foreign policy that appears to have a tendency of picking on Muslims in particular but which ultimately aims at absolute global hegemony for the United States. Therefore, it is time to analyse that policy and to look at the reasons for it. As the "global war on terror" moves out into the open and into the Yemen, we should be looking seriously at why Washington wants to be there and why it wants to control the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa.