NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm reposting this in it's own thread because I want some discussion.

After leaving Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan, by 1984, Osama bin Laden was in charge of a front organization called Maktab al-Khidamar (the MAK). The MAK supplied money, arms and fighters to the Afghani resistance of the Soviet invasion. This much is straight from bin Laden's public CIA bio.

However, there is already an interesting connection. The MAK was being fed by Pakistan's state security service, the Inter-Service Intelligence agency. The ISS was in turn the conduit through which the CIA funneled funds (between $6 and $20 billion dollars parcelled out between 1978 and 1992) and training to thwart the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. in 1986, CIA chief William Casey supported the ISI initiative to recruit fundamentalist muslims from around the world. Between 1982 and 1992, over 100,000 Islamic fundamentalists went to Pakistan to join the Afghani jihad.

According to John Cooley, a journalist with US ABC and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorisim, fundamentalist muslims recruited in the United States for the jihad were sent to Camp Perry, a CIA spy-training camp in Virginia. Here, Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and a few American Muslims were taught "sabotage skills." This came home to roost, according to the November 1st, 1998, British Independent, when one of those charged in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained bin Laden's operatives in 1989. These operatives were recruited in Brooklyn, given paramilitary training around New York and then sent to Afghanistan to join Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's jihad (more on him in a bit). This was part of a Washinton approved plan code named "Operation Cyclone".

Mohammed's students included El Sayyid Nosair, who killed the Israeli Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotted with others to bomb landmarks around New York, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Another member of "Operation Cyclone" may have been Egyptian Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was also jailed for the 1993 WTC bombing. Abdel-Rahman entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval.

According to the Independent, a confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was "partly culpable" for the WTC bombing.

An interesting fact is that Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe broadcast Islamic fundamentalist tirades all across Central Asia. Mind you, while they were praising fundamental Islamics, they were also condemning the Islamic uprising that toppled the Shah in Iran in 1979. No one seemed much bothered by the contradiction at the time, though.

The US's mujaheddin leader of choice was one of the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar was a "freedom fighter," not a terrorist, who earned a reputation for throwing acid in the faces of Islamic women who didn't wear veils in the 1970s.

While bin Laden wasn't the leader of the resistance in Afghanistan, the CIA found him and other Arab fighters to be their prime allies because they were, at least at the time, one-dimensionally anti-Soviet.

There is no question that the CIA new who bin Laden was and what he was about. Milt Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, said in an interview in the January 24th, 2000, New Yorker about bin Laden, "Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did."

In 1986, drawing on his family's construction empire, bin Laden brought heavy equipment into Afghanistan and constructed "training camps" with the collaboration of the ISI and the CIA, who called them "terrorist universities." The CIA armed bin Laden's mujaheddin figheters and Pakistan, the US and the UK all supplied military training.

Tom Carew, a British SAS soldier who fought for the mujaheddin, told the British Obersver in August of 2000, "The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate."

Bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar who's faction took Kabul in 1992 and rained US supplied missiles on the city, killing over 2,000 civilians, until the new government made him prime minister.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his opium dealing and it's odd that the CIA backing of the mujaheddin coincided with a huge upswing in heroin trafficking. By 1994, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of heroin users in the US.

By the end of the Afghani war, bin Laden returned to his rich family construction business in Saudi Arabia and was actually something of a hero to the Saudis. What was going on behind the scenes was much more interesting.

In 1988, bin Laden had split from The MAK and formed his own group, al-Qaeda, and took many of the more extreme members of the MAK with him. He simply continued to do what he had been doing in Afghanistan at the asking of the ISI and CIA for the past 4 years--recruit, train and fund mercenaries. These Afghanis, as the Arab vets were known as, later appeared behind many of the emerging violent Islamic groups around the globe, such as the GIA in Algeria, the Gamat Ismalia in Egypt and the Shiite militants in Saudi Arabia. All of these organizations claimed many lives and property dollars. And all received training and supplies from, guess who? The CIA.

Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda only became "terrorists" when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over the US stationing some 540,000 troops in Saudi Arabia following the Kuwait invasion. When many of these troops stayed in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, Bin Laden took on a new enemy, the US. He already knew how to fight this kind of war because he had been fighting it all during the 80s, except then he was working for us against the U.S.S.R. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in September of 1994, Bin Laden was there with facilities, soldiers and funds as well as training camps, all of which he offered to the new religious regime.

In defence of this, proponents pointed to the Cold War mentality and intelligence of a fracturing infrastructure in the Soviet Union. Senator Orrin Hatch, who at the time served as a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, the committee in charge of making these decisions, said, "It was worth it."

Voted YES.

I don't wish to be flippant, but I cannot pass this up.

Wouldn't the only people responsible for the creation of Osama bin Laden be Mr and Mrs bin Laden?

...

Apologies, again. I'll sulk off now.

you know, i heard there was a guy in california starting up a clothes line named after himself. the "bin ladin" line. now, they say its not the same person, and that there arnt any real family ties, but i doubt it.

I don't wish to be flippant, but I cannot pass this up.

Wouldn't the only people responsible for the creation of Osama bin Laden be Mr and Mrs bin Laden?

...

Apologies, again. I'll sulk off now.

Ha! But I can show that Mommy and Daddy Osama met through a secret dating service set up by the CIA....oh never mind. :D

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

Yes, but he was doing it with our weapons and is still doing it with our training. We knew exactly who he was and what he stood for and we used it and now we act surprised when the tool turns against us.

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

Yes, but he was doing it with our weapons and is still doing it with our training. We knew exactly who he was and what he stood for and we used it and now we act surprised when the tool turns against us.

I would yes, we created him as a fighting machine, like a terminator. Then the terminator went crazy and turned on it's masters, just like in the movie terminator.

actually the archangel micheal did, ever since dad put him in charge of the muslims, he's gotten really into the whole jihadi thing.

We may have nown who and what Bin Laden was, but we couldn't have possibly known about what would happen in the future. We knew he hated us as much as he hated the Soviets, but we didn't know that the Soviet Union would collapse within two decades, leaving us as his only surviving enemy and therefore the sole target of his hate. We helped Bin Laden fight the USSR, and we were right to do so. It was more important to defeat them in Afghanistan than it was to destroy a possible future enemy. The enemy of our enemy may not have been our friend, but he was one of the few "allies" we had in the area. Bin Laden hated us before Afghanitan and he hated us afterwards, even though we helped him. We did NOT create him. I only voted a possible because we still can't ignore the fact that e didn't capture/kill him when we had the opportunity and he was no longer any use to us.

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

Yes, but he was doing it with our weapons and is still doing it with our training. We knew exactly who he was and what he stood for and we used it and now we act surprised when the tool turns against us.

What weapons would those be? Examples please. And your suggestions for defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan would have been?

In my opinion, the only real way Bin Laden gained from the US involvement in the Afghan-Soviet war was not even as a direct result of US involvement. Bin Laden's gain from the war was that it gained him visibility in the Arab world. Since he has been seen as a freedom fighter and a hero to Muslims, that was what he gained from war in Afghanistan.

Osama is the perfect Goldstine (read 1984 )

The CIA created him to act as a fundraising-cheerleader for using terrorism against the USSR... (Something the Russians never did to us)

Think about that::: Bush tells us that "terrorism" is "evil" but at the same time we're supposed to believe that it was "good" for the US to hire "terrorist" to fight the "Evil Empire"
(Even though they never stooped to our level)

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

Yes, but he was doing it with our weapons and is still doing it with our training. We knew exactly who he was and what he stood for and we used it and now we act surprised when the tool turns against us.

What weapons would those be? Examples please. And your suggestions for defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan would have been?

From Unholy Wars:

"According to Sadat, Brzezinski proposed: "Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghanis the armaments they need to fight, and I gave them the armaments." USAF C-5 Galaxy and C-130 transports shortly began flying the Egyptian arms supplies to Pakistan. There the CIA turned them over to the Pakistani military which, with a good deal of waste, corruption and loss, passed them on to the seven main groups of Muslim zealots training in the arts of guerilla war and urban terrorism."

The US govt. funded the manufacture of Egyptian armaments (copies of Soviet weapons) and shipped them to Pakistan. This was originally done in order to maintain deniability. Actual captured Soviet weapons were also refurbished and delivered. The Afghanis could always claim the weapons were captured in battle. Later even Stinger missles were provided. The book will blow your mind and its all documented. I recommend anyone that wants to know the true origin of the terrorist groups we're facing read it.

No, it would have happened anyway.

No, it would have happened anyway.

what a very accurate name for someone who bases their opinions on what they hear with a deaf ear see with a blind eye...

Not really. Osama is a real person, but there have been so many lies fabricated about him by the government, it's hard to tell who he really is anymore. Not saying he's a good guy.

We may have nown who and what Bin Laden was, but we couldn't have possibly known about what would happen in the future. We knew he hated us as much as he hated the Soviets, but we didn't know that the Soviet Union would collapse within two decades, leaving us as his only surviving enemy and therefore the sole target of his hate. We helped Bin Laden fight the USSR, and we were right to do so. It was more important to defeat them in Afghanistan than it was to destroy a possible future enemy. The enemy of our enemy may not have been our friend, but he was one of the few "allies" we had in the area. Bin Laden hated us before Afghanitan and he hated us afterwards, even though we helped him. We did NOT create him. I only voted a possible because we still can't ignore the fact that e didn't capture/kill him when we had the opportunity and he was no longer any use to us.
Oh, no, of course you couldn't have known on whom that rabid Islamic fundamentalist might've turned in the future. Because it requires brains to think one or two steps ahead. For the record, the British and the French had the discernment to direct most of their support towards Ahmad Shah Massoud, a moderate ethnic Tajik commander. But you chose to subcontract the anti-Soviet job to the ISI and the worst of the worst of Pashtuns and Arabs that they picked: Hikmatyar, bin Laden and their ilk.

Well, the chickens came home to roost on 9/11.

Yes, I was there when they made him in a little cloning vat in southern afghanistan.

*looks into magic crystal ball*

I see Russians invading Afghanistan...I see Americans kicking them out...I see....Bugs Bunny...

I also see Michael Jordon being sucked down a golf hole...by furry creatures....

There you have it. Blame Jordan.

*looks into magic crystal ball*

I guess it's just too hard for you to actually think about the actaul research...

Don't worry... the president is here to protect you from terrorist, communist, civil liberties... ect

The CIA funded bin Laden to fight to Soviets. What he's doing now is primarily with his own money.

Yes, but he was doing it with our weapons and is still doing it with our training. We knew exactly who he was and what he stood for and we used it and now we act surprised when the tool turns against us.

What weapons would those be? Examples please. And your suggestions for defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan would have been?

From Unholy Wars:

"According to Sadat, Brzezinski proposed: "Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghanis the armaments they need to fight, and I gave them the armaments." USAF C-5 Galaxy and C-130 transports shortly began flying the Egyptian arms supplies to Pakistan. There the CIA turned them over to the Pakistani military which, with a good deal of waste, corruption and loss, passed them on to the seven main groups of Muslim zealots training in the arts of guerilla war and urban terrorism."

The US govt. funded the manufacture of Egyptian armaments (copies of Soviet weapons) and shipped them to Pakistan. This was originally done in order to maintain deniability. Actual captured Soviet weapons were also refurbished and delivered. The Afghanis could always claim the weapons were captured in battle. Later even Stinger missles were provided. The book will blow your mind and its all documented. I recommend anyone that wants to know the true origin of the terrorist groups we're facing read it.

As I stated in another thread, much of the information in this book has been shown to be erroneous or false.

I repeat my question...what weapons are they using against us. For example, there have been 55,000,000 AK-47's constructed by the Russians and countless variants used and built by other nations. I could get online right now and purchase one for $200. When the Russians left Afghanistan, they left HUGE quanities of weapons behind and provided more to the Afghan puppet army than the US ever did through its sources in Pakistan. When this army surrendered or broke up, these weapons fell into the hands of the Mujahadeen. Some doesn't mean all and I shudder to think what would've happened had the Mujahadeen had to keep using Lee Enfied's against AK-47'S 74'S, RPK's and DsHK's.

Stingers you say? Surely, the book points out that the Stinger is a perishable weapon in that any stocks we provided the Mujahadeen with would no longer be usable as the fuel in the rocket eventually goes bad.

As I stated in another thread, much of the information in this book has been shown to be erroneous or false.

I repeat my question...what weapons are they using against us. For example, there have been 55,000,000 AK-47's constructed by the Russians and countless variants used and built by other nations. I could get online right now and purchase one for $200. When the Russians left Afghanistan, they left HUGE quanities of weapons behind and provided more to the Afghan puppet army than the US ever did through its sources in Pakistan. When this army surrendered or broke up, these weapons fell into the hands of the Mujahadeen. Some doesn't mean all and I shudder to think what would've happened had the Mujahadeen had to keep using Lee Enfied's against AK-47'S 74'S, RPK's and DsHK's.

Stingers you say? Surely, the book points out that the Stinger is a perishable weapon in that any stocks we provided the Mujahadeen with would no longer be usable as the fuel in the rocket eventually goes bad.

My contention in doing this research and starting to write this article was never that we are currently funding him or supplying him with weapons. The simple point was that in the past, both through direct action, recruitment and training on our own soil as well as abroad, the US knowingly acted to aid, train and support a man who has now become a global terrorist. The weapons we provided to him are long gone, certainly, but the training and the bunkers are still there. In some part, we created a monster who we knew perfectly good and well was a monster and now we act surprised when he moves against us.

As for the discrediting of Unholy Wars, I think you're mistaken. The facts presented in that book have, to my knowledge, never been refuted or proven to be false. Of course, I don't know everything, so if you have a source on this debunking, I would greatly appreciate reading it.

Finally, I can't remember if it was you or another poster, but here's a question for anyone who can answer: Why was it so important to "defeat" the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan? We had intelligence in the mid 80s that the Soviet Union was beginning to crack internally so all we did was hasten it's eventual downfall. Why was this needed so badly that we funded, trained and recruited Islamic fundamentalists to work as "freedom fighters" for the mujaheddin?

US sold many stingers to mujahedeen. When war with USSR finished US wanted to buy them back at four-time price. i dont know how many they succeded to get back.

OBl was just one of thousands of mujahadeen who fought...he wasn't that important of a blip on the intelligence radar....yes..we chose the most ruthless..the ones who could get the job done..the ones with the ability to generate charisma to draw in recruits...admittedly as proxy soldiers with the Russians and their proxy soldiers (the propped up USSR puppet government they installed)..

No one could foresee that 20 yrs down the road we would be in Saudi Arabia defending it from Saddam which would in turn tick off OBL and his ilk.

And as far as the Tajiks were concerned..hell..half of them were either outright warlords or heroin dealers themselves..so it's not like the French and the Brits had any shining examples either, no matter how moderate he might have appeared.

OBl was just one of thousands of mujahadeen who fought...he wasn't that important of a blip on the intelligence radar....yes..we chose the most ruthless..the ones who could get the job done..the ones with the ability to generate charisma to draw in recruits...admittedly as proxy soldiers with the Russians and their proxy soldiers (the propped up USSR puppet government they installed)..

But he was an "important" blip on the CIA's radar. He was one of the controlling members of the MAK which was most definitely on their radar and his close ties to Hekmatyar, who was working with the CIA, means that they knew who he was and what he was capable of. It can be argued that they couldn't possibly realize that he would eventually turn on the US so spectacularly, but it can also be argued that they should have considered this possibility.

OBl was just one of thousands of mujahadeen who fought...he wasn't that important of a blip on the intelligence radar....yes..we chose the most ruthless..the ones who could get the job done..the ones with the ability to generate charisma to draw in recruits...admittedly as proxy soldiers with the Russians and their proxy soldiers (the propped up USSR puppet government they installed)..

But he was an "important" blip on the CIA's radar. He was one of the controlling members of the MAK which was most definitely on their radar and his close ties to Hekmatyar, who was working with the CIA, means that they knew who he was and what he was capable of. It can be argued that they couldn't possibly realize that he would eventually turn on the US so spectacularly, but it can also be argued that they should have considered this possibility.

If they considered the possibility of a dog turning on the hand that fed it...the CIA would never have used proxy soldiers or mercs in the entirety of it's history..And even as you say..he was only one of several controlling members of MAK..I'm sure there were men just as ruthless and fundamentalist as OBL was..we can agree that there was no consideration given on the possibility of one of their proxies turning on them.

If they considered the possibility of a dog turning on the hand that fed it...the CIA would never have used proxy soldiers or mercs in the entirety of it's history..And even as you say..he was only one of several controlling members of MAK.

He founded the MAK and served as one of three controlling members until his split with the organization in 1989.


I'm sure there were men just as ruthless and fundamentalist as OBL was.

Oh, indeed there were, and some of them were being funded and trained and supplied by the ISI and the CIA as well. The point is that the CIA new exactly the individuals they were dealing with because they were the ones chosen to be aided in an attempt to further U.S.S.R. destabilization. If it was possible for them to bring down a country like the U.S.S.R., which was the CIA goal, then why was it never considered that they might be able to employ those same techniques against us?

If they considered the possibility of a dog turning on the hand that fed it...the CIA would never have used proxy soldiers or mercs in the entirety of it's history..And even as you say..he was only one of several controlling members of MAK.

He founded the MAK and served as one of three controlling members until his split with the organization in 1989.


I'm sure there were men just as ruthless and fundamentalist as OBL was.

Oh, indeed there were, and some of them were being funded and trained and supplied by the ISI and the CIA as well. The point is that the CIA new exactly the individuals they were dealing with because they were the ones chosen to be aided in an attempt to further U.S.S.R. destabilization. If it was possible for them to bring down a country like the U.S.S.R., which was the CIA goal, then why was it never considered that they might be able to employ those same techniques against us?

Frankly because..and this is only my opinion....probably never brought up to those who were training them....I mean after all...they objective was for them to bleed themselves against the Soviets and their puppet government in Afghanistan..no doubt they'd figured they could never obtain the resources or personnel they would later acquire as Al-Queda.

Osama is the perfect Goldstine (read 1984 )

The CIA created him to act as a fundraising-cheerleader for using terrorism against the USSR... (Something the Russians never did to us)

Think about that::: Bush tells us that "terrorism" is "evil" but at the same time we're supposed to believe that it was "good" for the US to hire "terrorist" to fight the "Evil Empire"
(Even though they never stooped to our level)


I think you are stretching things there Tex by putting it all on one side.

We can fairly label al-qaeda today as "terrorist", but with respect to when the overt aid and training was predominantly in place it whould better be describes as a guerilla war against the Soviet invasion.

In that sense, the funding of the Mujahadeen is not a far-cry from the aid and training that the Soviets gave to North Vietnam. In both those instances it was a case of funding the natives to get the troops of the other out of a country. Not that the US was invading with intent to occupy in vietnam in the same way that Russia was in Afghanistan, but then again the US's lack of intent to assume ownership on the one hand compared to the Russians clear intent to occupy on the other also supported the need for a more involved response by the US in the case of Afghanistan.


And in all of the little dirty wars throughout southeast asia, africa, central america etc. both sides were involved in funding and training their own little groups of insurgents as they battled for ideological supremacy, generally with little real concern for the wellbeing of the citizens involved.

Which is to say that BOTH sides have much on their hands.


Did the CIA have a hand in creating Osama? Sure. He fought a war for us and lived to fight again.

but so did the Russians play their part. There is after all a direct "cause and effect" scenario in play. Where would Osama be today if the USSR hadn't decided that it needed little bit of extra eral estate?

NATO and the USSR faught the cold war largely by proxy. The battles were fought in the jungles and deserts of the third world while the leaders engaged in rhetoric for domestic consumption. On some levels, and from our standpoint, if they had to battle then this sure beat the hell out a direct confrontation between the two. We as a race might not still be here had they gone that route.

But as the cold war ended those proxy wars became moral and ethical baggage that we all swept under the rug. A running list of dirty little secrets that we wanted to remain out of the public eye as much as possible. Our interest evaporated along with our enemies, and in an environment of economic recession we lost our appetite for funding many of these little wars. And so suddenly those that we claimed to be there to help, our "trusted friends" who we were "battling at their sides for the sake of freedom" sudenly found themselves dropped like a bad habit. Not to be talked about. And they woke up to the discovery that they had fought and died for a largely uncaring world so that we - the priviledged - didn't have to.

And people wonder where the resentment comes from.


Did the CIA help "create" Bin Laden? Sure. And they did it in accordance with the wishes of the American government, and at the time they even did so with the approval of all of the rest of us who supported the Mujahadeen in their quest to free the Afghanis from the Soviets. It was so much in the public eye that Hollywood helped make them the stuff of legends as Stallone fought with them in a Rambo movie, and as James Bond enlisted their aid in the Living Daylights. Glorious allies in the war against the evil communist empire.

The better question is what could we have done differently AFTER the Afghan war in order to have not become the replacement enemy for these people? Or at least to mitigate their need to attack us. That was a failure at the senior policy level more than it can be attributed to the intelligence community.

-Z-

The better question is what could we have done differently AFTER the Afghan war in order to have not become the replacement enemy for these people? Or at least to mitigate their need to attack us. That was a failure at the senior policy level more than it can be attributed to the intelligence community.

-Z-[/quote]

I'm not sure there was a whole lot of anything we could have done, after the war we had literally thousands if not tens of thousands of guerilla fighters trained in the latest small arms, small unit tactics, and then they were stranded in a country that has never known true peace since the time of Alexander the Great. Beset in a country that was at civil war with itself as soon as the Russian withdrawal was complete...a war where these mujahadeen were honed and tempered during 20 yrs of civil war with the Tajiks who replaced the Soviet Regime.

How do you remove the gun from a man born into that role?..the psychological conditioning alone would have been an huge obstacle...we counted on the religous fervor of these men...something to aid them in their combat against the "atheist and Godless communists"..

The culture these men were born into, lived in, fought in obligated them to being simple folk with a cause...with a smattering of intelligentsia from a half a dozen Arab states...men of idealism and fervor..OBL was one of these men...ripe for molding by the CIA as a future leader with MAK and then when he split with MAK over philosophical and political differences.

The only thing we could have done was to directly intervene in the civil war between them and the puppet regime which would have surely have brought the Soviets back into the fray..no way would they have allowed US troops so close to their southern borders...especially supporting rebels in their own back yard.

I'm going to get so much flak for saying this, but the CIA did not "create" Bin Laden, they trained him; there's a difference. He's a smart guy and figured if he could get trained by us, he could learn to "beat" us to an extent, and that's just what he did.

...
I would yes, we created him as a fighting machine, like a terminator. Then the terminator went crazy and turned on it's masters, just like in the movie terminator.

But isn't that Assimov's unwritten fourth rule of robotics? All robots will eventually turn against their makers in an orgy of destruction and the hurting and the screaming and the running and the cloyvan clayvan hey hey hey.

I hate to admit it but we indeed helped create bin Laden


I'm sorry but my idea of foregin policy would clearly state that we do NOT aid terrorists to fight our enemies

considering the Bush familys incestous relations with the Bin Ladens its glaringly obvious that the CIA was 100% responsible for the creation of Osama--Poppa Bush was MEETING with the bin Ladens on 911!!!!

Has anyone seen the film Rocky 3? A pretty crap film but it did make me laugh since right at the end it stated "This film is a tribute to the gallant freedom fighters of Afghanistan" - AKA Islamic terrorists and the Taleban, I just thought it's amazing how the winds of hollywood and public opinion can change in accordance with circumstance. Still I guess when those people were at war with the USSR they were freedom fighters but when the USSR collapsed and they became more focused on the west they became terrorists intent on destroying society as we know it.

Has anyone seen the film Rocky 3? A pretty crap film but it did make me laugh since right at the end it stated "This film is a tribute to the gallant freedom fighters of Afghanistan" - AKA Islamic terrorists and the Taleban, I just thought it's amazing how the winds of hollywood and public opinion can change in accordance with circumstance. Still I guess when those people were at war with the USSR they were freedom fighters but when the USSR collapsed and they became more focused on the west they became terrorists intent on destroying society as we know it.in retrospect it woulda been far better had the Soviets won in Afghanistan then the barbarians Bush has sided with

Oh, no, of course you couldn't have known on whom that rabid Islamic fundamentalist might've turned in the future. Because it requires brains to think one or two steps ahead. For the record, the British and the French had the discernment to direct most of their support towards Ahmad Shah Massoud, a moderate ethnic Tajik commander. But you chose to subcontract the anti-Soviet job to the ISI and the worst of the worst of Pashtuns and Arabs that they picked: Hikmatyar, bin Laden and their ilk.

Well, the chickens came home to roost on 9/11.

That isn't even close to what I said. My point was that we assumed that Bin Laden would go after his closest enemy, the USSR, not the US. This was logical, this was rational. Nobody expected the USSR's imminent collapse, especially the US. It was a shock when it happened, and we are still trying to pick up the pieces from a policy that was based upon countering them. Many of the dictators and terrorists that we propped up to aid us against the Soviets turned on us when the USSR dissolved. You need only look at Tenet's recent resignation as evidence that our security agencies still haven't managed to adapt to a post-Soviet era.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because your hindsight tells you that we shouldn't have funded Bin Laden that it doesn't mean that we were right in doing it at the time. He was a resource, and we used him. It is at least possible that if Bin Laden had died during the conflict, someone else would have taken his place. It's so easy to paint a target on one man and claim that he created a problem, but Bin Laden has always been a symptom, not the disease itself.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because your hindsight tells you that we shouldn't have funded Bin Laden that it doesn't mean that we were right in doing it at the time. He was a resource, and we used him. It is at least possible that if Bin Laden had died during the conflict, someone else would have taken his place. It's so easy to paint a target on one man and claim that he created a problem, but Bin Laden has always been a symptom, not the disease itself.The problem was and remains our mindset that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. It's not--our friends are our friends. Maybe if we stopped rolling over for dictators because they give us what we want--oil--we'd find ourselves with fewer of these problems. Bin Laden is a perfect example of blowback.

I have actually said often the CIA made him. Maybe not made him, but they sure did make sure he could fight off the Russians. I think the CIA had a lot to do with training him.
Hind sight is 20/20, I don't think the CIA thought he would ever turn around and blow up a couple buildings in the US and I am not sure I would believe anyone who now claims we should have known.

Any nation who claims they have never made mistakes, supported the wrong cause, or mistreated people is a liar.

Well if you give a couple of billion dollars in CIA training to a fundamentalist you have to kind of expect some repocussions... Hey let's give some gasoline to that pyromaniac over there!!!

Well if you give a couple of billion dollars in CIA training to a fundamentalist you have to kind of expect some repocussions... Hey let's give some gasoline to that pyromaniac over there!!!on 911 Bush also evacuated Saudi terrorists in a flight from Tampa when all other flights were grounded

Well if you give a couple of billion dollars in CIA training to a fundamentalist you have to kind of expect some repocussions... Hey let's give some gasoline to that pyromaniac over there!!!on 911 Bush also evacuated Saudi terrorists in a flight from Tampa when all other flights were grounded

Actually those were in fact, members of the Bin Laden family... Makes you think doesn't it?

OBl was just one of thousands of mujahadeen who fought...he wasn't that important of a blip on the intelligence radar....yes..we chose the most ruthless..the ones who could get the job done..the ones with the ability to generate charisma to draw in recruits...admittedly as proxy soldiers with the Russians and their proxy soldiers (the propped up USSR puppet government they installed)..

No one could foresee that 20 yrs down the road we would be in Saudi Arabia defending it from Saddam which would in turn tick off OBL and his ilk.

And as far as the Tajiks were concerned..hell..half of them were either outright warlords or heroin dealers themselves..so it's not like the French and the Brits had any shining examples either, no matter how moderate he might have appeared.
It's very likely that Tajiks, such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ismail Khan, drew income from the drug trade, but they were nowhere as vicious to fellow Afghanis deemed "insufficienty pious" as Hikmatyar, nor openly anti-Western as was Bin Laden -- even back in the 80's. Had the CIA bothered to think just a little bit beyond the immediate task of bleeding the Soviets, they might have realised what sort of venomous snakes they've been nurturing. Instead, y'all (Americans) chose to remain ignorant of the dangers and to think that you were using Bin Laden. But it turns out Bin Laden was using you.

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In that sense, the funding of the Mujahadeen is not a far-cry from the aid and training that the Soviets gave to North Vietnam. In both those instances it was a case of funding the natives to get the troops of the other out of a country. Not that the US was invading with intent to occupy in vietnam in the same way that Russia was in Afghanistan, but then again the US's lack of intent to assume ownership on the one hand compared to the Russians clear intent to occupy on the other also supported the need for a more involved response by the US in the case of Afghanistan.
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I don't think there's any evidence that the USSR was planning to annex Afghanistan. If you think there is, could you please cite it?

As for 3rd world proxy wars, I think your point is largely fair, but there is one important distinction: in Vietnam USSR and China were backing indigenous anti-American forces, who stayed home after the Americans were gone; whereas the U.S. sought to draw foreign Moslem fighters from all over into Afghanistan. -- It is really quite astounding that no one in the U.S. intelligence "community" has bothered to think of what this pan-Arabic, pan-Moslem network of some of the most vile and retrograde fundamentalists might up to, after the job was done in Afghanistan. After 1989 these people went back to Algeria, to Jordan, to Saudi, to Indonesia and the Phillippines, even to UK and France, where they formed the backbone of the Al-Qaeda network now undermining "un-Islamic" governments and attacking Western interests from Manila to Rabat. Some "ripple effect", eh?

Well if you give a couple of billion dollars in CIA training to a fundamentalist you have to kind of expect some repocussions... Hey let's give some gasoline to that pyromaniac over there!!!on 911 Bush also evacuated Saudi terrorists in a flight from Tampa when all other flights were grounded

Actually those were in fact, members of the Bin Laden family... Makes you think doesn't it?also makes you think why it never drew the attention of our intelligence agencies all these saudis in flight schools in Florida learning how to fly planes but not wanting to learn how to LAND THEM

I don't think there's any evidence that the USSR was planning to annex Afghanistan. If you think there is, could you please cite it?


Well, I'm sure there is evidence to "prove" that, but let me put it to you in a different way and spare myself the trouble. We didn't need proof to know that when Hitler invaded Poland without provocation, he wasn't planning on leaving that country any time soon. In the same way, when the USSR invaded Afghanistan without provocation, we were pretty sure the Soviets weren't planning on having a tea party with the locals. I'm not sure what kind of proof you are looking for--perhaps some sort of secret communique with the words "lets annex Afghanistan"?

I don't think there's any evidence that the USSR was planning to annex Afghanistan. If you think there is, could you please cite it?


Well, I'm sure there is evidence to "prove" that, but let me put it to you in a different way and spare myself the trouble. We didn't need proof to know that when Hitler invaded Poland without provocation, he wasn't planning on leaving that country any time soon. In the same way, when the USSR invaded Afghanistan without provocation, we were pretty sure the Soviets weren't planning on having a tea party with the locals. I'm not sure what kind of proof you are looking for--perhaps some sort of secret communique with the words "lets annex Afghanistan"?
Comparison of Afghanistan with German invasion of Poland is inane. The Germans formally annexed a chunk of Poland and installed a German governor to rule the remainder. The Soviets did neither of these in Afghanistan.

My point was and remains that USSR invaded Afghanistan to prop up a pro-Soviet regime, just like the U.S. invaded Vietnam to prop up a pro-American gov't there.

No, actually the example is a relevant one. You don't have to officially install a governor or annex a country to take it over. As is well known, Soviet strategy focused around the creation of buffer zones, ie the creation of client states that were independent in name alone. Hitler's Germany went through the formalities of claiming new territory, the Soviets were just smarter about it and never bothered to do so.

As every observer at the time realized, Warsaw Pact nations were just as much a part of the USSR as its composite republics, it just wouldn't have been worth it to enrage the native populations and make it official. Soviet strategy was clear: when possible covertly cause coups that would result in the creation of Soviet puppet-states, but if it proved to be impossible use the military to force the country to submit. It is remarkably clear because it closely mirrors the policy of the US at the time, although the US had less interest in permanently occupying anyone. Pint being: the USSR ws annexing Afghanistan without formally declaring that they were doing so.

No, actually the example is a relevant one. You don't have to officially install a governor or annex a country to take it over. As is well known, Soviet strategy focused around the creation of buffer zones, ie the creation of client states that were independent in name alone. Hitler's Germany went through the formalities of claiming new territory, the Soviets were just smarter about it and never bothered to do so.

As every observer at the time realized, Warsaw Pact nations were just as much a part of the USSR as its composite republics, it just wouldn't have been worth it to enrage the native populations and make it official. Soviet strategy was clear: when possible covertly cause coups that would result in the creation of Soviet puppet-states, but if it proved to be impossible use the military to force the country to submit. It is remarkably clear because it closely mirrors the policy of the US at the time, although the US had less interest in permanently occupying anyone. Pint being: the USSR ws annexing Afghanistan without formally declaring that they were doing so.
That's beside the point. Zeppistan was seeking to establish a distinction between Soviet involvement in Afghanistan vis-a-vis US involvement in Vietnam: "...Not that the US was invading with intent to occupy in vietnam in the same way that Russia was in Afghanistan..."
My argument is that no substantive distinction exists b/c both USSR and US deployed their troops to prop up (and control) friendly regimes, not to annex territory. In both cases the pattern of escalation was very similar: first use secret services to put a friendly gov't in power; then, when rebels begin to cause trouble to the indigenous army, send in military advisers; and when that doesn't help, order a large-scale invasion.