In The Know

Recently it has struck me just how uninformed the general American populace really is. For instance, I have been reading Rohan Gunaratna's Inside Al Qaeda. It is a fabulous book if you want to have a deeper knowledge of the world's leading terrorist organization. In the third chapter of the book, Mr. Gunaratna writes about Al Qaeda's presence worldwide. I was surprised to find (although in retrospect I shouldn't have been) that Al Qaeda was largely responsible for the debacle that was the "Blackhawk Down" incident in Somalia in 1993. According to Mr. Gunaratna, Al Qaeda trained, supplied and encouraged the Somali islamist militants who shot down that Army helicopter, engaged our troops in the ensuing firefight and desecrated of our fallen soldiers. To a large portion of the American people (myself included in this instance), Al Qaeda was not a real problem until the 1998 East Africa embassy bombing in Kenya and Tanzania. But they were extremely active much earlier as Somalia points out.

Monday night, after a Bible study, I was talking to a friend about some of the recent goings on in Iraq and Pakistan. Recent news out of these two countries has shown that local sheiks in Iraq and tribal leaders in Pakistan are turning against Al Qaeda and have fought gun battles against Al Qaeda and associated militants in their respective areas. In some of the reports I've read, as many as 50 Al Qaeda fighters have been reported killed. The question my friend asked me as I related these stories is, "why haven't I heard of this?"

Why indeed? I started hearing the above noted stories two weeks or more ago through various minor sources. Only earlier this week did I hear these stories in mainstream sources. The MSM does not report the successes of the Global War on Islamist Terrorism. For its own political reasons the MSM does not report on success unless it can't avoid doing so. How did I get such advance notice of these recent activities? I recently setup a Google News Alert that automatically e-mails me when it finds news that I have requested. For instance, I have setup an Alert on the term "Al Qaeda," so every time "Al Qaeda" pops up in the news or on the web (blogs, etc.) I will get an e-mail with a summary of these reports. I also try to read a wide variety of news sources and blogs. You have to dig for yourself -- you can't rely on the MSM to give you anything except their own political or social agenda.