Abdullah Azzam’s name rings a bell. A Palestinian university professor and member of the CIA-penetrated Muslim Brotherhood, Azzam set up the Services Office (Maktab al-Khadamat) a CIA- and Saudi-sponsored support organization for the mujahideen (through Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence) fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing a network infrastructure based in Peshawar, Pakistan, that would later form the basis for al Qaeda, itself a CIA-ISI contrivance (see Gerecht, Atlantic Monthly, July 2001).

In short, the Sharm el-Sheik operation smells of CIA (in the current context, "CIA" translates into cooperation between several intelligence agencies—CIA, U.S. and British military intelligence, and Mossad—and "black" covert ops such as the bombings at Sharm el-Sheik are entirely off the books and use long-groomed assets such as al-Qaeda and other "Islamic terror" groups spawned by the long-compromised Muslim Brotherhood).

Soon after the Sharm el-Sheik bombings, NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer chimed in with an obligatory statement: the bombings "demonstrate that people of all nations and of all faiths are victims of the indiscriminate threat of terrorism. They also confirm the need for the international community to stand together to defend against this threat." It is, to say the least, disingenuous of NATO to make such a proclamation, considering it provided financial and military support to al-Qaeda in Kosovo and Bosnia (a well-documented fact although never mentioned here in the United States—see Isabel Vincent, U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars). In short, we should take note when a terrorist-funding organization such as NATO issues statements in the wake of terrorist events. In addition to funding and supporting al-Qaeda in the Balkans, NATO worked closely with British intelligence agents and the CIA to create Operation Gladio (the Italian variant of a wide-ranging series of fascist, anti-communist covert paramilitaries)

As Daniele Ganser writes, Gladio-like operations spanned across Europe and beyond: "…in Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BDJ, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC, in Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Counter-Guerrilla, and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the secret armies in France, Finland, Spain, and Sweden remain unknown… In order to guarantee a solid anti-communist ideology of its recruits, the CIA and MI6 generally relied on men of the conservative political Right. At times, former Nazis and right-wing terrorists were also recruited, and eventually these "right-wing terrorists" engaged in bombings and assassinations subsequently blamed on the left, part of a "strategy of tension" (from 1969 to 1974). Ganser writes:

In this age of global concern about terrorism, in which secret services are thought of as part of the solution and not as part of the problem, it is greatly upsetting to discover that Western Europe and the United States collaborated in establishing secret armed networks which in the majority of countries are suspected of having had links to acts of terrorism. In the United States, such nations have been called rogue states and are the object of hostility and sanction. Can it be that the United States itself, potentially in alliance with Great Britain and other NATO members, should be on the list of states sponsoring terrorism, together with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran? Or, alternatively, is it plausible to assume the secret NATO armies operated for years beyond the control of legitimate political authorities?

For Ms. Ganser, this may be upsetting, but for many of us it is all too typical of the way the fascist and neolib (and neocon faction) state does business. Islamic terrorism, created in large part by the state (as amply documented), is a new (or extended) Gladio black op on steroids.

"Throughout history governments have used terrorism against their own people and created paper tiger enemies as a means of obtaining and retaining the trust of the masses in the process of gradually enslaving them," write Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones. "The Anglo-American establishment that controls the military-industrial complex of the West has been caught over a hundred times carrying out bombings and other terrorist attacks around the world to further their corporate aims and to blame their enemies… How many of the family members of the London subway bombing victims are aware of the fact that in a 2000 investigation the Italian Senate concluded that the 1980 Bologna train bombing [a Gladio op] that killed 85 people was carried out by 'men inside Italian state institutions and … men linked to the structures of United States intelligence’?"

It is impossible to ignore (unless you get your news exclusively from Fox) the links between Islamic terrorism and "structures of United States [and British and Italian] intelligence." It makes absolutely no sense for "al-Qaeda" (and its variants) to kill innocent civilians at Sharm el-Sheik or in the subways of London—unless we are to presume, as the state and its various corporate media propaganda ministries would have us believe, that Muslims simply embrace an "evil ideology" and engage in senseless and pointless violence without logical political objectives. It should be obvious this violence benefits the United States and its collaborators in a well-orchestrated effort to build a military and police super-state (a "New World Order," for lack of a better term). Sharm el-Sheik is but another step in a global strategy of tension (and terror) designed to build a frightened and thus illogical consensus for repressive police state tactics.