US uses al-Qaeda threat to scare Americans

An interview with Edward Corrigan, human rights and international lawyer from Ontario, to shed more light on the issue of the US and al-Qaeda interrelations.
US uses al-Qaeda threat to scare Americans Question: Now, it seems, from the statement of the White House press secretary, that anybody whose ideology is against the US or is perceived as a threat, is categorically regarded as al-Qaeda.

Corrigan: That is a correct observation, but the other issue is that it really is a phantom; something that does not exist. Al-Qaeda means the database. There is no organization, there is no hierarchy and there is no membership card, there is no oath.

So al-Qaeda as an organization, in a conventional sense, does not exist but anybody that the Americans have a grievance with or somebody who has a grievance with the United States is all put under this umbrella and they say this is al-Qaeda or its affiliates, okay?

At the very best, it is a very, very loose, nebulous organization; not organization but maybe some contacts between Islamic groups and groups that have national grievances against the United States for some reason or another.

But the anger that has been expressed in existence with the massive killing by the drone strikes of innocent civilians, the massive intervention into internal affairs of other countries and blowing up people without, really, a just cause;…, just under the mere premise that we suspect that they may be opposed to us, which is the worst of the Nazis and the Stalinists and any other sort of totalitarian country would do just to get away with people that they want to kill, or even people they just think may be a threat.

But thinking somebody is a threat and somebody being an actual threat is totally different and of course especially when you have the United States deciding in a unilateral manner who is a threat and everybody, of course if they kill, happens to be a threat and a few civilians, they say, are collateral damage, but there is massive killings of innocent civilians.

But this whole thing is really a pretext; I agree with, I guess, one of your previous speakers where they said this is just a pretext used to support the NSA program.

Right now there is a massive effort on the part of the Congress to curtail the NSA. Germany for example has cut off its agreement with the United States and Britain over the spying scandal. You earlier addressed the fact that a number of South American countries; Bolivians and others have also strongly protested this, ok?

But the anger to the United States is because of their drone program; is because of this massive spying, it is because of killing of the civilians, intervention into other countries rights and the whole thing because of the political pressure to curtail the NSA.

It is miraculous, all of a sudden a threat comes up, you know, the al-Qaeda is on the run, we are destroying it, but all of a sudden they close all of the embassies.

This is really a pretext used to try to silence the mounting opposition to the United States to these massive illegal spying programs.