Re: Keepin On...'Best Kept'

From: Mark Allerton (Mark@warmspot.cix.co.uk)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 08:14:44 CEST

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    Steve,

    Look, the events of yesterday are just wrong, period. But I do want
    to take issue with some of the things you've been saying about the
    US's involvement with bin Laden.

    You wrote earlier:

    > The CIA didn't tell invent the tale of how the suicidal members of this
    > death cult would receive, as a reward, a painless death, an
    > immediate entry
    > into heaven and 71 beautiful virgins waiting to please them on the
    > other
    > side.... did it?

    The problem is that the CIA were fully aware of the nature of the
    beliefs held by these people, but they funded them anyway.

    You also wrote:

    > So, we trained underground Afghanis to defend themselves against the
    > invading occupying Russian army.

    If only you'd just trained the Afghanis. But that's not what
    happened - the Afghanis were not "manageable" enough for US
    purposes. Read this article from 1998:

    http://msnbc.com/news/190144.asp

    A choice passage:

    > By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan’s
    > mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan
    > struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for
    > Afghanistan’s freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds
    > sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
    >        Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of
    > Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab
    > zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than
    > the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well
    > prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were
    > one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a
    > small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon,
    > Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East,
    > became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against
    > Moscow.



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