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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