Of course, it’s far too nuanced an issue to boil down in a couple of sentences but such is the nature of online discourse.

I see Al quaeda and in a more general sense Sunni extremism as a whole as the child of Saudi Arabia. The bombing of the US Cole was probably the point when the Saudi regime realised that exporting Salafist Jihad abroad had bigger consequences than they intended (attack regional opponents like Israel and Iran) and that it was quickly getting out of control and so they attempted to distance themselves in case America and Britain turned around and cut off their military aid.