Reports: Plot to attack Paris subway, airport

[destruction]

Here is an fact: The U.S. never trained UBL. Period. Indisputable.

Prove it!

Let me give you a hint loser. His code name was Timothy Osman:

http://www.orlingrabbe.com/binladin_timosman.htm

When Osama Bin Ladin Was Tim Osman

by J. Orlin Grabbe

The two men headed to the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California in the late Spring of 1986 were on their way to meet representatives of the mujahadeen, the Afghan fighters resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

One of the two, Ted Gunderson, had had a distinguished career in the FBI, serving as some sort of supervisor over Special Agents in the early 60s, as head of the Dallas field office from 1973-75, and as head of the Los Angeles field office from 1977-1979. He retired to become an investigator for, among others, well-known attorney F. Lee Bailey. And all along the way, Gunderson, whether or not actually a CIA contract agent, had been around to provide services to various CIA and National Security Council operations, as he was doing now.

In more recent years Gunderson was to become controversial for his investigations into child prostitution rings, after he became convinced of the innocence of an Army medical doctor named Jeffrey McDonald, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife and three young children in the 1970s. This has led to various attempts by the patrons and operators of the child prostitution industry to smear Gunderson's reputation.

Michael Riconosciuto was there to discuss assisting the mujahadeen with MANPADs—Man Portable Air Defense Systems. Stinger missiles were one possibility. If the U.S. would permit their export, Riconosciuto could modify the Stinger's electronics, so the guided missile would still be effective against Soviet aircraft, but would not be a threat to U.S. or NATO forces.

But Riconosciuto had another idea. Through his connections with the Chinese industrial and military group Norinco, he could obtain the basic components for the unassembled Chinese 107 MM rocket system. These could be reconfigured into a man-portable, shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft guided missile sytem, and produced in Pakistan at a facility called the Pakistan Ordinance Works. The mujahadeen would then have a lethal weapon against Soviet helicopter, observation, and transport aircraft.

Riconosciuto was more than just an expert on missile electronics; he was also an expert on electronic computers and associated subjects such as cryptology (see my "Michael Riconosciuto on Encryption").

Riconosciuto was a prodigy who had grown up in the spook community. The Riconosciuto family had once run Hercules, California, as a company town. In the early days (1861) a company called California Powder Works had been established in Santa Cruz, CA. It later purchased land on San Pablo Bay, and in 1881 started producing dynamite, locating buildings in gullies and ravines for safety purposes. A particularly potent type of black powder was named "Hercules Powder", which gave the name to the town of Hercules, formally incorporated in 1900. In World War I, Hercules became the largest producer of TNT in the U.S. Hercules, however, had gotten out of the explosives business by 1940 when an anhydrous ammonia plant was constructed. In 1959 Hercules began a new manufacturing facility to produce methanol, formaldehyde, and urea formaldehyde. In 1966 the plant was sold to Valley Nitrogen Producers. Labor problems led to a plant closure in 1977. In 1979 the plant and site was purchased by a group of investors calling themselves Hercules Properties, Ltd.

However, Michael and his father Marshall Riconosciuto, a friend of Richard Nixon, continued to run the Hercules Research Corporation. In the early 1980s Michael also served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians in Indio, California. Riconosciuto's talents were much in demand. He had created the a-neutronic bomb (or "Electro-Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device"), which sank the ground level of the Nevada test site by 30 feet when a prototype was tested. Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, said of Riconosciuto: "I've spoken to Michael Riconosciuto (the inventor of the a-neutronic bomb) and he's an extraordinarily bright guy. I also have a hunch, which I can't prove, that they both (Riconosciuto and Lavos, his partner) indirectly work for the CIA."

Riconosciuto's bomb made suitcase nukes obsolete, because it achieved near-atomic explosive yields, but could be more easily minaturized. You could have a suitcase a-neutronic bomb, or a briefcase a-neutronic bomb, or simply a lady's purse a-neutronic bomb. Or just pull out your wallet for identification and —. The Meridian Arms Corporation, as well as the Universities of California and Chicago owned a piece of the technology.

But there was more than explosives in the portfolios of the CIA agents who surrounded Riconosciuto like moths around a candle. Both Robert Booth Nichols, the shady head of Meridian Arms Corporation (with both CIA and organized crime conections), and Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the manager of the Cabazon reservation, were involved in bio-warfare work—the first in trying to sell bio-warfare products to the army through Wackenhut, the second in giving tribal permission for research to take place at Cabazon. According to Riconosciuto, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was in charge of the classified contracts for biological warfare research. Riconosciuto would later testify under oath that Stormont Laboratories was involved in the DARPA-Wackenhut-Cabazon project. Jonathan Littman, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle would relate: "Cabazons and Wackenhut appeared to be acting as middlemen between the Pentagon's DARPA and Stormont Laboratories, a small facility in Woodland near Sacramento."

The Race Weapon

Riconosciuto would make additional claims about Bio-Rad corporation, a medical supplier which had gradually taken over Hercules, California. They were also, Riconosciuto would say, covertly engaged in bio-warfare research—producing some of the deadliest toxins known to man. The focus of Bio-Rad's research was said to be bio-active elements that could be tailored to attack those with certain types of DNA. Weapons could thus be produced that were specifically designed to wipe out specific races or genetic classes of human beings. (Alternatively, particular DNA types could be immunized against a deadly biological agent; the agent could then be released, and everyone else would die.)

A couple of years later, Meridian International Logistics, the parent company of Meridian Arms, was to farm similar research out to the Japanese. This included (according to minutes of a corporate meeting dated Aug. 26, 1988) methods for "induction and activation of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes". Associated with Meridian's Robert Booth Nichols in a Middle Eastern operation called FIDCO, a company that ran arms into and heroin out of Lebanon's Beqaa (Bekaa) Valley, was Harold Okimoto, a high-ranking member of the Yakuza. Okimoto had longed worked under Frank Carlucci (who served as Secretary of Defense and Deputy Director of the CIA before becoming Chairman of The Carlyle Group). Okimoto owned food concessions in casinos around the world—Las Vega, Reno, Macao, and the Middle East. (Free drinks and anthrax while you play blackjack, anyone?)

Meeting Riconosciuto and Gunderson at the hotel were two representatives of the mujahadeen, waiting to discuss their armament needs. One of the two was named "Ralph Olberg." The other one was called Tim Osman (or Ossman).

"Ralph Olberg" was an American businesman who was leading the procurement of American weapons and technology on behalf of the Afghan rebels. He worked through the Afghan desk at the U.S. State Department, as well as through Senator Hubert Humphrey's office. Olberg looked after the Afghanis through a curious front called MSH—Management Sciences for Health.

The other man, dressed in Docker's clothing, was not a native Afghan any more than Olberg was. He was a 27-year-old Saudi. Tim Osman (Ossman) has recently become better known as Osama Bin Ladin. "Tim Osman" was the name assigned to him by the CIA for his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support and armaments.

Gunderson and Riconosciuto were not on an altruistic mission. They had some conditions for their help. And they had some bad news to deliver. The mujahadeen needed to be willing to test new weapons in the field and to return a research report, complete with photos.

The bad news was that some factions of the CIA didn't feel that Oldberg and Osman's group were the real representatives of the Afghans. Upon hearing this both Tim and Ralph were indignant. They wanted to mount a full-court press. Round up other members of their group and do a congressional and White House lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.

"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."

—The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

Did the lobbying effort take place? I don't know. There is some evidence that Tim Osman and Ralph Oldberg visited the White House. There is certainty that Tim Osman toured some U.S. military bases, even receiving special demonstrations of the latest equipment. Why hasn't this been reported in the major media?

One week after giving an affidavit to Inslaw regarding the PROMIS software in 1991, Riconosciuto was arrested on trumped-up drug charges. The Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case attempted to cover up Riconosciuto's intelligence background by claiming to the jury he was "delusional." A TV station came and pointed a camera out at the desert at Cabazon and said, "Riconosciuto says he modified the PROMIS software here." Of course Riconosciuto didn't modify the software out between the cacti and yucca. Sand isn't good for computers. He did the modifications in offices in nearby Indio, California. The AUSA told reporters Riconosciuto had been diagnosed with a mental condition, the implication being "he's making all this stuff up". Yes, there had been a mental evaluation of Riconosciuto. I have a copy of the report. The diagnosis? Here it is: NO MENTAL DISORDER. The Department of Justice consistently and maliciously lied to the jury, just as had been threatened by Justice Department official Peter Viednicks if Riconosciuto cooperated with the congressional investigation of PROMIS.

If the war against Osama Bin Ladin (Tim Osman) is not a total fraud, then what is Michael Riconosciuto doing in prison? Why doesn't he have an office next to Colin Powell so he can give realistic advice on Bin Ladin's thinking? And where is Ralph Olberg?

Thirty-four days before the East African embassy bombings of August 7, 1998, Riconosciuto notified the FBI in Miami that the bombings were going to take place. Two days prior to the bombings he requested of BOP (Bureau of Prisons) officials at the Federal Corrections Institution (FCI) in Coleman, FL., that he be allowed to call ECOMOG security headquarters to warn African officials. The BOP denied the request. Riconosciuto was mystified at being ignored by the relevant government authorities. I'm not mystified. I suspect the reason Riconosciuto was ignored was that the relevant parties, including especially the Miami FBI office, knew all along the bombings would take place. And they wanted them to happen.

The same is true with respect to the recent plane bombings of the WTC. It wasn't an intelligence "failure". The terrorist acts were deliberately allowed to happen. The actors may have been foreign. But the stage directors appear to have been all along here in the U.S. Cui bono?

Isn't it time to let Michael Riconosciuto out of prison, and wipe the slate clean of the trumped up drug charges, and let him be a national security advisor—at least with respect to the government's pursuit of Osama Bin Ladin? Isn't it time to quit pretending Osama Bin Ladin came out of nowhere?

This is not an academic argument. Sources say three dozen MANPADs have been imported into Quebec, Canada, from Colombia (where they arrived from Eastern Europe). The missile shipments followed the "northern" drug route—from Colombia into Canada. The missiles involved are Russian Strellas and Iglas. These will serve just fine to take down commercial airline flights. Just like TWA 800. Which group of terrorists has the missiles? Meanwhile, how many biological warfare agents are in the hands of organized crime? Maybe you should ask Riconosciuto about all this.

Michael Riconosciuto is now incarcerated at the FCI Allenwood, PA. You know where to find him.

[drlogic]

Question this, "NIGGUH"!!

Video Clip: "Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein," Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983. [Windows Media Video (WMV). Opens in Windows Media Player] (Iraqi television; courtesy CNN)

[b

God Damn U'r dumb, Niggah!

Did you read the entire post? The picture has a caption w/ a date that is incorrect and misleading which I took the liberty of clarifying.

Get it? You dumbfOhk?

http://bbs.clubplanet.com/showthread.php?p=2836919#post2836919

MOGAGO! (Tagalog for "YOU DUMBFUCK")

Sip Sip ang malekin titiko, Mogago! (suck my big dick, you dumbfuck)

oh yeah,,,in case you didn't know: Tagalog is the language spoken in the Philippines.

You see, I'm helping you get LEARNT.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by frenchbread

i'm not avoiding the question, i already gave you an example dumbass...how about you learn how to read...

but let me spell it out for you: the U.S. government spent years and millions of dollars training the one man that would later be the orchestrator of the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil...

want more?...

and if that's still not enough, i say let's go around the world and name countries were the state have "been"...(let's start from central america and work our way around the globe)...

Your misleading picture of Saddam and Rumy in 1983 says Saddam had already used the chemical weapons (which critics still say "he never had"?? go fig'r??).

Anyway, I did a google search on "Saddam Gasing Kurds" and this came back:

On March 16th 1988, Iraqi jets bombed the town of Halabja with chemical weapons. At least 5,000 people were killed and 7,000 severely injured. Fourteen years on, thousands are still suffering the affects of the chemical weapons.

http://www.khrw.com/crimes.html

Interesting?

As for the brilliant statement about the US funding terrorism(UBL), does the date and GeoPolitical climate of that time have any signifigance? Cold War, right? Enemy #1 USSR, right? UBL fighting the USSR, right? Did you not know this and mistakenly mislead or did you know this and intentionally mislead?

Let's try a simple approach: If after graduating from highschool, you snap and become a mass murder is your highschool accountable for "training" you?

Logic dictates that different times call for different measures. As a "proud American citizen, are you comforted w/ the notion that America is evil and deserves to be destroyed? (Note: You being one of Americas finest, this destruction of America includes YOU)

Have you thought this through? Do you even care to think this through? If 9/11 happened in the 90's would you still be this "angry" and so critical of America?

[destruction]

God Damn U'r dumb, Niggah!

Did you read the entire post? The picture has a caption w/ a date that is incorrect and misleading which I took the liberty of clarifying.

Get it? You dumbfOhk?

http://bbs.clubplanet.com/showthread.php?p=2836919#post2836919

MOGAGO! (Tagalog for "YOU DUMBFUCK")

Sip Sip ang malekin titiko, Mogago! (suck my big dick, you dumbfuck)

oh yeah,,,in case you didn't know: Tagalog is the language spoken in the Philippines.

You see, I'm helping you get LEARNT.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by frenchbread

i'm not avoiding the question, i already gave you an example dumbass...how about you learn how to read...

but let me spell it out for you: the U.S. government spent years and millions of dollars training the one man that would later be the orchestrator of the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil...

want more?...

and if that's still not enough, i say let's go around the world and name countries were the state have "been"...(let's start from central america and work our way around the globe)...

Your misleading picture of Saddam and Rumy in 1983 says Saddam had already used the chemical weapons (which critics still say "he never had"?? go fig'r??).

Anyway, I did a google search on "Saddam Gasing Kurds" and this came back:

On March 16th 1988, Iraqi jets bombed the town of Halabja with chemical weapons. At least 5,000 people were killed and 7,000 severely injured. Fourteen years on, thousands are still suffering the affects of the chemical weapons.

http://www.khrw.com/crimes.html

Interesting?

As for the brilliant statement about the US funding terrorism(UBL), does the date and GeoPolitical climate of that time have any signifigance? Cold War, right? Enemy #1 USSR, right? UBL fighting the USSR, right? Did you not know this and mistakenly mislead or did you know this and intentionally mislead?

Let's try a simple approach: If after graduating from highschool, you snap and become a mass murder is your highschool accountable for "training" you?

Logic dictates that different times call for different measures. As a "proud American citizen, are you comforted w/ the notion that America is evil and deserves to be destroyed? (Note: You being one of Americas finest, this destruction of America includes YOU)

Have you thought this through? Do you even care to think this through? If 9/11 happened in the 90's would you still be this "angry" and so critical of America?

BURN BABY BURN!!!

[igloo]

FACT: the U.S. never trained UBL. Period.

FACT: destruction is a repulsive cunt little boy social defect.

[destruction]

FACT: the U.S. never trained UBL. Period.

Don't just say it, back it!!

The CIA trained Osama bin Laden

and other Arabs

in the techniques of terrorism.

"Blowback" is the CIA's term for the unintended

destruction caused by its secret operations.

by Michael Jennings

Futurepower® Publishing

June 15, 2004, 11:14. May be frequently updated.

Copyright 2001-2004. Second Edition. Web addresses:

http://www.futurepower.org/cia_trained_bin_laden2.htm

http://www.hevanet.com/peace/cia_trained_bin_laden2.htm

Web address of the main article:

http://www.futurepower.org/usgovcorruption.htm

http://www.hevanet.com/peace/usgovcorruption.htm

Most Americans have no idea of the extent of the activities of the secret agencies of the U.S. government. For example, the 1998 MSNBC article, Bin Laden comes home to roost. [msnbc.com] says that Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. Osama bin Laden was linked to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, on February 26, 1993, and is assumed to be the leader behind the second bombing.

In a report called Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. Helped Midwife a Terrorist [public-i.org], the Center for Public Integrity [publicintegrity.org] provides excerpts from the book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. The author, Ahmed Rashid, discusses CIA involvement in Afghanistan in more detail. The book was published by Yale University Press in 2000. The ISBN number of the paperback is 0-300-08902-3. It costs $14.95.

Jane's, a company solely devoted to providing news about military events throughout the world, published an article on September 14, 2001 that provides another explanation of CIA involvement: Why? An attempt to explain the unexplainable [janes.com]. The article says,

The trainers [in terrorism] were mainly from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various U.S. training establishments. Mass training of Afghan mujahideen was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan Army...

Note that both this article and the one linked below called Blowback Chronicles say that Arabs were brought to the U.S. for training in terrorism.

About four minutes into the September 18, 2001 edition of the NBC TV show, "Today", in the U.S., an expert who spoke on the show said that the CIA chose the Taliban to lead Afghanistan when the Soviets left the country. There was no discussion of the fact that a secret agency of the U.S. government chose the form of government of another country. The Taliban government became hostile to the United States, and began supporting Osama Bin Laden.

The CIA has engaged in every activity that is considered terrorism. For example, see this quote from the 1979 Atlantic Monthly story, Inside the Department of Dirty Tricks [theatlantic.com]:

"We're not in the Boy Scouts", Richard Helms was fond of saying when he ran the Central Intelligence Agency. He was correct, of course. Boy Scouts do not ordinarily bribe foreign politicians, invade other countries with secret armies, spread lies, conduct medical experiments, build stocks of poison, pass machine guns to people who plan to turn them on their leaders, or plot to kill men such as Lumumba or Castro or others who displeased Washington. The CIA did these things, and more, over a long span of years.

(If you are not a citizen of the U.S., you may not know that the "CIA" is a secret agency of the U.S. government called the "Central Intelligence Agency". The Boy Scouts fact page [bsa.scouting.org] explains that the Boy Scouts of America [bsa.scouting.org] is an organization that helps young boys become responsible young men. The organization has a very good reputation for encouraging moral behavior. When the former head of the CIA said that the CIA was "not in the Boy Scouts", he was saying that the CIA does things moral people would not do. There is also an organization in the U.S. called the Girl Scouts.)

On September 15, 2001, The Guardian [guardian.co.uk], one of the largest newspapers in England, published a review of books about U.S. government involvement with Afghanistan, called Blowback Chronicles [guardian.co.uk]. Here are some quotes:

"Delighted by his impeccable Saudi credentials, the CIA gave Osama free rein in Afghanistan, as did Pakistan's intelligence generals."

Bin Laden and a man named Mustafa Chalaby, who ran a jihad refugee centre in Brooklyn [New York, U.S.A.], were both protégés of Abdullah Azzam. A formative influence on bin Laden, the charismatic Azzam was killed in a car-bomb in 1987: according to some rumours he was killed by the CIA. Others claim he was himself a CIA agent.

At the Farm and other secret camps, young Afghans and Arab nationals from countries such as Egypt and Jordan learned strategic sabotage skills. Passed down to the younger jihad generation which filled the ranks of the Bin Laden organisation, these skills would come back to haunt the United States. [The "Farm" is a commonly used name for the CIA's training center in Virginia, U.S.A.]

This is a remarkable statement. This and other sources say the CIA brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them to be terrorists. Note that there is apparently no public evidence that shows that anyone from the CIA actually met Osama bin Laden; that is unknown, apparently. The training may have been provided through other people.

Here is another quote:

[u.S. President George W. Bush is] the son of a man with close ties to the oil company Unocal, which wanted to put a pipeline across Afghanistan. Among their partners in the venture were BP and the Saudi royal family.

The pipeline across Afghanistan [unocal.com] was cancelled due to the Taliban government there. This is an official Unocal document. (If you view the link, do a search for the word "route", then find the route on a map of Afghanistan [afghana.com]. Or, see this alternative map [pathfinder.com].) On February 12, 1998, the vice president of Unocal provided testimony [house.gov] about this to the U.S. House of Representatives. Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca said, in part, "CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place." This is an official U.S. government document, from a U.S. government web site. BP is the large oil company British Petroleum.

Unocal was called "ethically bankrupt" for its scheme to charge royalties on automobile fuel sold in the U.S., without actually providing anything new. See the article, It's the Regs, Stupid! [nationalreview.com]

Before George Bush senior was elected president, he was head of the CIA.

(If you are not a U.S. citizen, you may not know that the father of the present President of the U.S. is George Bush, senior. He also was elected President of the United States.)

There have often been books, and articles in magazines and newspapers, that indicate that the secret agencies consider themselves above the public parts of the U.S. government. Here is another quote from Blowback Chronicles [guardian.co.uk]:

Hindered by Congressional interference, the CIA covertly sought Mrs. Thatcher's help - in one incident, during the Falklands war, they curried favour by handing over an illegal supply of Stinger missiles to British officials in a Washington car park.

If seems reasonable to say that few U.S. citizens realize the extent to which secrecy has corrupted the U.S. government.

The CIA [cia.gov] is a huge secret U.S. government organization that has two main parts. The About the CIA [cia.gov] page explains that the Directorate of Intelligence is the analytical branch of the CIA. This branch provides information to the U.S. government. (There seems to be no evidence that there have been problems caused only by collection of information.)

It is the CIA's Directorate of Operations that advances secret purposes. The job description is something like this: You will often be away from home. Your job may be very dangerous. You will be allowed and even encouraged to do things that are illegal. You may sometimes arrange the killing of foreign leaders.

It is easy to imagine what sort of person is attracted to that kind of job.

"Blowback" is a word invented by the CIA to refer to situations in which people, whom the CIA trained in violence and sneakiness, turn against the United States. Blowback is not necessarily viewed by the CIA as a terrible thing, since more trouble for the U.S. means more money for the CIA. However, for the U.S. citizen, "blowback" is the equivalent of the Biblical saying, "You harvest what you plant."

Revision history: June 15, 2004, 04:08 and 11:07 -- First publication of the second edition. Fixed links. Reformatted article. (cia_trained_bin_laden2.htm.)

http://www.futurepower.org/cia_trained_bin_laden2.htm

PWN3D!

If the US did not train him, who did? Now prove they didn't. Lets see it.

FACT: destruction is a repulsive cunt little boy social defect.

FACT: Igloo is an immature little nazi cunt who cannot handle the truth.

FACT: Igloo is an immature little nazi cunt who has no defense for his arguments hence why he attacks with insults instead of addressing points.

BURN BABY BURN!!

[igloo]

FACT: The U.S. never trained UBL. FACT: Nothing but myth.

[destruction]

FACT: The U.S. never trained UBL. FACT: Nothing but myth.

Translation:

FACT: Even though I cannot find any proof to support my "The U.S. never trained UBL" mantra, it makes me feel good saying it and he wasn't trained by the U.S. because I said so and that's all the proof I need because my words are always gospol and I am always right because my words are always above the facts no matter what because I said so. Facts are nothing but myths. Only my words count. I don't need to prove anything because I am always right.

FACT: I am a right wing bottom-feeding cock monkey for Bush.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp#BODY

Bin Laden comes home to roost

His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

By Michael Moran

MSNBC

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 — At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.

BEFORE YOU CLICK on my face and call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia’s Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.

But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s - well after the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 - was one of those times.

BIN LADEN’S BEGINNINGS

As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.

As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.

What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.

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.

WHAT’S ‘INTELLIGENT’ ABOUT THIS?

Though he has come to represent all that went wrong with the CIA’s reckless strategy there, by the end of the Afghan war in 1989, bin Laden was still viewed by the agency as something of a dilettante - a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.

In fact, while he returned to his family’s construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.

Most of these Afghan vets, or Afghanis, as the Arabs who fought there became known, turned up later behind violent Islamic movements around the world. Among them: the GIA in Algeria, thought responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians; Egypt’s Gamat Ismalia, which has massacred western tourists repeatedly in recent years; Saudi Arabia Shiite militants, responsible for the Khobar Towers and Riyadh bombings of 1996.

Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,†he said.

“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,†he said.

HINDSIGHT OR TUNNEL VISION

It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden’s connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein’s monster like this.

It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA’s Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party’s grip on power in Moscow.

Even Hatch can’t be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its “mission,†had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual “Soviet Military Power†report right up to 1990.

Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.

That decision is coming home to roost.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=293

Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. Helped Midwife a Terrorist

By Ahmed Rashid

LAHORE, Pakistan, September 13, 2001 — Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity. He is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This is an excerpt from his book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale University Press).

In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures.He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.

The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI [Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI's favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups. Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.

President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn Pakistan into the leader of the Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in Central Asia. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors. And the Saudis saw an opportunity both to promote Wahabbism [their strict and austere creed] and to get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of the players reckoned on these volunteers having their own agendas, which would eventually turn their hatred against the Soviets on their own regimes and the Americans.

Thousands of radicals come to study

. . . Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad.

n camps near Peshawar [near the Afghanistan border] and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied, trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism. None of the intelligence agencies involved wanted to consider the consequences of bringing together thousands of Islamic radicals from all over the world. "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?" said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Adviser. American citizens woke up to the consequences only when Afghanistan-trained Islamic militants blew up the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, killing six people and injuring 1,000. "The war," wrote Samuel Huntington, "left behind an uneasy coalition of Islamist organizations intent on promoting Islam against all non-Muslim forces. It also left a legacy of expert and experienced fighters, training camps and logistical facilities, elaborate trans-Islam networks of personal and organization relationships, a substantial amount of military equipment including 300 to 500 unaccounted-for Stinger missiles, and, most important, a heady sense of power and self-confidence over what had been achieved and a driving desire to move on to other victories."

A young Bin Laden

. . . Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent. Bin Laden, Prince Turki and [Lieutenant] General [Hameed] Gul [head of the ISI] were to become firm friends and allies in a common cause. The centre for the Arab-Afghans [Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xinjiang in China who had all come to fight with the Mujaheddin] was the offices of the World Muslim League and the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The centre was run by Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian Palestinian whom Bin Laden had first met at university in Jeddah and revered as his leader. Azam and his two sons were assassinated by a bomb blast in Peshawar in 1989. During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan Islamic scholar, whom the Saudis had sent to Peshawar to promote Wahabbism. Saudi funds flowed to Azam and the Makhtab at Khidmat or Services Center, which he created in 1984 to service the new recruits and receive donations from Islamic charities. Donations from Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private donations from Saudi princes and mosques were channelled through the Makhtab. A decade later, the Makhtab would emerge at the center of a web of radical organizations that helped carry out the World Trade Center bombing and the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998.

Until he arrived in Afghanistan, Bin Laden's life had hardly been marked by anything extraordinary. He was born around 1957, the 17th of 57 children sired by his Yemeni father and a Saudi mother, one of Mohammed Bin Laden's many wives. Bin Laden studied for a masters degree in business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah but soon switched to Islamic studies. Thin and tall, he is 6 feet 5 inches, with long limbs and a flowing beard. He towered above his contemporaries, who remember him as a quiet and pious individual but hardly marked out for greater things.

His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund it, so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. He brought in his company engineers and heavy construction equipment to help build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border. For the first time in Khost he set up his own training camp for Arab Afghans, who now increasingly saw this lanky, wealthy and charismatic Saudi as their leader.

. . . Bin Laden later claimed to have taken part in ambushes against Soviet troops, but he mainly used his wealth and Saudi donations to build Mujaheddin projects and spread Wahabbism among the Afghans. After the death of Azam in 1989, he took over Azam's organization and set up Al Qaeda or Military Base as a service center for Arab-Afghans and their families and to forge a broad-based alliance among them. With the help of Bin Laden, several thousand Arab militants had established bases in the provinces of Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan, but their extreme Wahabbi practices made them intensely disliked by the majority of Afghans. Moreover, by allying themselves with the most extreme pro-Wahabbi Pashtun MuMeddin, the Arab-Afghans alienated the non-Pashtuns and the Shia Muslims.

Upset by U.S. role in Gulf War

. . . By 1990, Bin Laden was disillusioned by the internal bickering of the Mujaheddin and he returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family business. He founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan veterans. Some 4,000 of them had settled in Mecca and Medina alone, and Bin Laden gave money to the families of those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he lobbied the Royal Family to organize a popular defense of the kingdom and raise a force from the Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq. Instead, King Fahd invited in the Americans. This came as an enormous shock to Bin Laden. As the 540,000 US troops began to arrive, Bin Laden openly criticized the Royal Family, lobbying the Saudi ulema [religious scholars] to issue fatwas, religious rulings, against non-Muslims being based in the country. . . . In 1992, Bin Laden left for Sudan to take part in the Islamic revolution under way there under the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan Turabi. Bin Laden's continued criticism of the Saudi Royal Family eventually annoyed them so much that they took the unprecedented step of revoking his citizenship in 1994. It was in Sudan, with his wealth and contacts, that Bin Laden gathered around him more veterans of the Afghan war, who were all disgusted by the American victory over Iraq and the attitude of the Arab ruling elites who allowed the US military to remain in the Gulf. As US and Saudi pressure mounted against Sudan for harboring Bin Laden, the Sudanese authorities asked him to leave.

In May 1996, Bin Laden travelled back to Afghanistan, arriving in Jalalabad in a chartered jet with an entourage of dozens of Arab militants, bodyguards and family members, including three wives and 13 children. Here he lived under the protection of the Jalalabad Shura [an advisory body or assembly], until the conquest of Kabul and Jalalabad by the Taliban in September 1996. In August 1996, he had issued his first declaration of jihad against the Americans, whom he said were occupying Saudi Arabia.

"The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets," the declaration read. Striking up a friendship with [Taliban leader] Mullah [Mohammed] Omar, in 1997 he moved to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and came under the protection of the Taliban.

By now, the CIA had set up a special cell to monitor his activities and his links with other Islamic militants. A US State Department report in August 1996 noted that Bin Laden was "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world." The report said that Bin Laden was financing terrorist camps in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen . . . and Afghanistan. In April 1996, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allowed the US to block assets of terrorist organizations. It was first used to block Bin Laden's access to his fortune of an estimated US$250-300 million. A few months later, Egyptian intelligence declared that Bin Laden was training 1,000 militants, a second generation of Arab-Afghans, to bring about an Islamic revolution in Arab countries.

CIA tries snatch operation

In early 1997, the CIA constituted a squad that arrived in Peshawar to try to carry out a snatch operation to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan. The Americans enlisted Afghans and Pakistanis to help them but aborted the operation. The US activity in Peshawar helped persuade Bin Laden to move to the safer confines of Kandahar. On 23 February 1998, at a meeting in the original Khost camp, all the groups associated with Al Qaeda issued a manifesto under the aegis of "The International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders." The manifesto stated "for more than seven years the US has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsular, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours, and turning its bases in the peninsular into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples."

The meeting issued a fatwa. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to." Bin Laden had now formulated a policy that was not just aimed at the Saudi Royal Family or the Americans, but called for the liberation of the entire Muslim Middle East. As the American air war against Iraq escalated in 1998, Bin Laden called on all Muslims to "confront, fight and kill, Americans and Britons."

1998 U.S. Embassy bombings

However, it was the bombings in August 1998 of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 220 people which made Bin Laden a household name in the Muslim world and the West. Just 13 days later, after accusing Bin Laden of perpetrating the attack, the USA retaliated by firing 70 cruise missiles against Bin Laden's camps around Khost and Jalalabad. Several camps which had been handed over by the Taliban to the Arab-Afghans and Pakistani radical groups were hit. The Al Badr camp controlled by Bin Laden and the Khalid bin Walid and Muawia camps run by the Pakistani Harakat ul Ansar were the main targets. Harakat used their camps to train militants for fighting Indian troops in Kashmir. Seven outsiders were killed in the strike -- three Yemenis, two Egyptians, one Saudi and one Turk. Also killed were seven Pakistanis and 20 Afghans.

In November 1998 the USA offered a US$5-million reward for Bin Laden's capture. The Americans were further galvanized when Bin Laden claimed that it was his Islamic duty to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons to use against the USA. "It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded for it by God," he said.

. . . After the Africa bombings, the US launched a truly global operation. More than 80 Islamic militants were arrested in a dozen different countries. Militants were picked up in a crescent running from Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Yemen to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Phillipines."

In December 1998, Indian authorities detained Bangladeshi militants for plotting to bomb the US Consulate in Calcutta. Seven Afghan nationals using false Italian passports were arrested in Malaysia and accused of trying to start a bombing campaign." According to the FBI, militants in Yemen who kidnapped 16 Western tourists in December 1998 were funded by Bin Laden. In February 1999, Bangladeshi authorities said Bin Laden had sent US$l million to the Harkat-ul-Jihad (HJ) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, some of whose members had trained and fought in Afghanistan. HJ leaders said they wanted to turn Bangladesh into a Taliban-style Islamic state.

Thousands of miles away in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania in West Africa, several militants were arrested who had also trained under Bin Laden in Afghanistan and were suspected of plotting bomb explosions. Meanwhile, during the trial of 107 Al-Jihad members at a military court in Cairo, Egyptian intelligence officers testified that Bin Laden had bankrolled Al-Jihad. In February 1999, the CIA claimed that through monitoring Bin Laden's communication network by satellite, they had prevented his supporters from carrying out seven bomb attacks against US overseas facilities in Saudi Arabia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uganda, Uruguay and the Ivory Coast -- emphasizing the reach of the Afghan veterans.

. . . But it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the original sponsors of the Arab-Afghans, who suffered the most as their activities rebounded. In March 1997, three Arab and two Tajik militants [from Tajikistan] were shot dead after a 36-hour gun battle between them and the police in an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar. Belonging to the Wahabbi radical Tafkir group, they were planning to bomb an Islamic heads of state meeting in Islamabad.

Fighting in Kashmir against India

With the encouragement of Pakistan, the Taliban and Bin Laden, Arab-Afghans had enlisted in the Pakistani party Harkat-ut-Ansar to fight in Kashmir against Indian troops. By inducting Arabs who introduced Wahabbi-style rules in the Kashmir valley, genuine Kashmiri militants felt insulted. The US government had declared Ansar a terrorist organization in 1996 and it had subsequently changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. All the Pakistani victims of the US missile strikes on Khost belonged to Ansar. In 1999, Ansar said it would impose a strict Wahabbi-style dress code in the Kashmir valley and banned jeans and jackets. On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts. Ansar had previously respected the liberal traditions of Kashmiri Muslims, but the activities of the Arab-Afghans hurt the legitimacy of the Kashmiri movement and gave India a propaganda coup.

Pakistan faced a problem when Washington urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to help arrest Bin Laden. The ISI's close contacts with Bin Laden, and the fact that he was helping fund and train Kashmiri militants who were using the Khost camps, created a dilemma for Sharif when he visited Washington in December 1998. Sharif sidestepped the issue but other Pakistani officials were more brazen, reminding their American counterparts how they had both helped midwife Bin Laden in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. Bin Laden himself pointed to continued support from some elements in the Pakistani intelligence services in an interview. "As for Pakistan there are some governmental departments, which, by the Grace of God, respond to the Islamic sentiments of the masses in Pakistan. This is reflected in sympathy and co-operation. However, some other governmental departments fell into the trap of the infidels. We pray to God to return them to the right path," said Bin Laden.

Conundrums for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia

Support for Bin Laden by elements within the Pakistani establishment was another contradiction in Pakistans Afghan policy. . . . The US was Pakistans closest ally, with deep links to the military and the ISI. But both the Taliban and Bin Laden provided sanctuary and training facilities for Kashmiri militants who were backed by Pakistan, and Islamabad had little interest in drying up that support. Even though the Americans repeatedly tried to persuade the ISI to cooperate in delivering Bin Laden, the ISI declined, although it did help the US arrest several of Bin Laden's supporters. Without Pakistans support, the United States could not hope to launch a snatch by US commandos or more accurate bombing strikes, because it needed Pakistani territory to launch such raids. At the same time, the USA dared not expose Pakistans support for the Taliban, because it still hoped for ISI cooperation in catching Bin Laden.

The Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates. The Saudis also gave cash for the Taliban's cheque book conquest of the north in the autumn. Until the Africa bombings and despite US pressure to end their support for the Taliban, the Saudis continued funding the Taliban and were silent on the need to extradite Bin Laden.

The truth about the Saudi silence was even more complicated. The Saudis preferred to leave Bin Laden alone in Afghanistan because his arrest and trial by the Americans could expose the deep relationship that Bin Laden continued to have with sympathetic members of the Royal Family and elements within Saudi intelligence, which could prove deeply embarrassing. The Saudis wanted Bin Laden either dead or a captive of the Taliban -- they did not want him captured by the Americans.

. . . By now Bin Laden had developed considerable influence with the Taliban, but that had not always been the case. The Taliban's contact with the Arab-Afghans and their Pan-Islamic ideology was non-existent until the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Pakistan was closely involved in introducing Bin Laden to the Taliban leaders in Kandahar, because it wanted to retain the Khost training camps for Kashmiri militants, which were now in Taliban hands. Persuasion by Pakistan, the Taliban's better-educated cadres, who also had Pan-Islamic ideas, and the lure of financial benefits from Bin Laden, encouraged the Taliban leaders to meet with Bin Laden and hand him back the Khost camps.

A life with the Taliban in Kandahar

Partly for his own safety and partly to keep control over him, the Taliban shifted Bin Laden to Kandahar in 1997. At first he lived as a paying guest. He built a house for Mullah Omar's family and provided funds to other Taliban leaders. He promised to pave the road from Kandahar airport to the city and build mosques, schools and dams, but his civic works never got started as his funds were frozen. While Bin Laden lived in enormous style in a huge mansion in Kandahar with his family, servants and fellow militants, the arrogant behaviour of the Arab-Afghans who arrived with him and their failure to fulfill any of their civic projects antagonized the local population. The Kandaharis saw the Taliban leaders as beneficiaries of Arab largesse rather than the people.

Bin Laden endeared himself further to the leadership by sending several hundred Arab-Afghans to participate in the 1997 and 1998 Taliban offensives in the north. These Wahabbi fighters helped the Taliban carry out massacres of the Shia Hazaras in the north. Several hundred Arab-Afghans, based in the Rishkor army garrison outside Kabul, fought on the Kabul front against [the Mujaheddin leader Ahmad Shah] Masud. Increasingly, Bin Laden's world view appeared to dominate the thinking of senior Taliban leaders. All-night conversations between Bin Laden and the Taliban leaders paid off. Until his arrival, the Taliban leadership had not been particularly antagonistic to the USA or the West but demanded recognition for their government. However, after the Africa bombings the Taliban became increasingly vociferous against the Americans, the UN, the Saudis and Muslim regimes around the world. Their statements increasingly reflected the language of defiance Bin Laden had adopted and which was not an original Taliban trait.

As US pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Laden intensified, the Taliban said he was a guest and it was against Afghan tradition to expel guests. When it appeared that Washington was planning another military strike against Bin Laden, the Taliban tried to cut a deal with Washington -- to allow him to leave the country in exchange for US recognition. Thus, until the winter of 1998 the Taliban saw Bin Laden as an asset, a bargaining chip over whom they could negotiate with the Americans.

The US State Department opened a satellite telephone connection to speak to Mullah Omar directly. The Afghanistan desk officers, helped by a Pushto translator, held lengthy conversations with Omar in which both sides explored various options, but to no avail. By early 1999 it began to dawn on the Taliban that no compromise with the US was possible and they began to see Bin Laden as a liability. A US deadline in February 1999 to the Taliban to either hand over Bin Laden or face the consequences forced the Taliban to make him disappear discreetly from Kandahar. The move bought the Taliban some time, but the issue was still nowhere near being resolved.

The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere appendages to the Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had taken centre stage for the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in the 1990s.

. . . Afghanistan was now truly a haven for Islamic internationalism and terrorism and the Americans and the West were at a loss as to how to handle it.

2000 by Ahmed Rashid. Reprinted by permission

PS...

YANKEES SUCK!

[igloo]

FACT: The U.S. never trained Bin laden

[destruction]

FACT: The U.S. never trained Bin laden

FACT: You have no proof. You fail to defend your position.

FACT: You put Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush and David Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, yourself and the rest of the Bush neocon bottom feeders above the facts to boast your baseless 'holier than thou', "I told you so" mantra.

FACT: All Bush lovers are cock jockeys because...

FACT: You are a God forgotten fully used up dirty AIDS bin.

FACT: Your whorish mother gives fine blowjobs.

FACT: You're equipped with the intellect of snot dribble.

FACT: You have been owned, boned, droned and re-owned.

[igloo]

FACT: The U.S. never trained Bin Laden. Pure fact.

[headpusher]

FACT: All Bush lovers are cock jockeys because...

FACT: You are a God forgotten fully used up dirty AIDS bin.

FACT: Your whorish mother gives fine blowjobs.

.

and is it true you are 41 years old?? i hope you dont have any kids..

[igloo]

and is it true you are 41 years old?? i hope you dont have any kids..

God forbid if he has kids.....His reproduction should be banned by law.....he should not be allowed to pass his social defects on...bad enough he has been hiding from the medical authorities from the institution he escaped from, but to reproduce is criminal.........hopefully they find him soon

[destruction]

FACT: The U.S. never trained Bin Laden. Pure fact.

Who says this. Got proof? Otherwise, shut up. You have no proof and you know it so why the lies? C'mon... your credibility depends on in. Sink or swim.

Oh wait.... You can't prove it. Nevermind.

Just shut the fuck up and keep swinging on headpusher's left nut..... fag.

[headpusher]

Who says this. Got proof? Otherwise, shut up. You have no proof and you know it so why the lies?

FACT: You are a 41 year old who still lives at home with his parents and you spend your days trolling on a club messageboard. You prolly never have been married and rarely get laid.

[destruction]

FACT: You are a 41 year old who still lives at home with his parents and you spend your days trolling on a club messageboard. You prolly never have been married and rarely get laid.

FACT: THIS FLAG KILLS...

BURN BABY BURN!!

[destruction]

FACT: You are a 41 year old who still lives at home with his parents and you spend your days trolling on a club messageboard. You prolly never have been married and rarely get laid.

FACT: I am a 47 year old who OWNS his own house. MY parents are dead and you spend your days playing armchair general to a war that you'd rather see someone elses kid get killed in when you KNOW you could be enlisting and fighting the same war you support yourself but you rather use lame excuses to keep yourself out of it because you're too much of a pussy to fight the same war you support.... Only to support Bush, of course and for your stock in Halliburton which has doubled (that must make you happy to know your stock doubled). By the way, I actually work thank you very much you chickenhawk blowboy poster whore for the neocon bottom feeders.

Keep sucking on Bush's dick. Die of AIDS cocksmoker.

Pussy.

[igloo]

FACT: The U.S. never, ever trained UBL. Ever. 100% fact. Indisputable

FACT: Destruction is a miserable, repulsive, reprehensible, despicable, cunt of a person.

[jtk4]

I am not saying we did or did not but I do not think that it is an Indisputable fact. Even if we did we did it in the fight against the ruskies and at the time they were a bigger threat then bin laden is now. just my opinion.

[igloo]

I am not saying we did or did not but I do not think that it is an Indisputable fact. Even if we did we did it in the fight against the ruskies and at the time they were a bigger threat then bin laden is now. just my opinion.

JTK4---not sure why, but my response to you had been erased????

I'll hit it again..

The U.S. never, ever, ever trained Bin laden. This is 100% fact, and is indisputable. I can say that with complete confidence, backed by overwhelming evidence by credible sources with information that has been proven, corroborated and incontrovertible.

Now, I cited earlier on this thread the finding of the 9/11 Commission report, which I used purposely due to the fact that the anti-Bush brigades and media loves to selectively use that against Bush (even when most have not even read the report). Interesting now that some on this thread now dismiss the finding that the U.S. never trained Bin Laden. Then again, predictable.

I can also point to Bergen's work, who is one of the very few Westerners who interviewed UBL, and is known as a top UBL profiler. He goes through great lengths to shatter the myths of the CIA-UBL relationship Including the Guardian article cited above), and does an excellent job of getting the facts straight about that era, and Bin Laden's roles and contributions during that time, including the Arab Afghans and the important distinctions between them and the Afghani Muhujadeen. These is a host of other works that lay out similar facts.

Now, the CIA-Saudi-Pakistani (ISI)-Afghan relationships during that time certainly had their shades of gray, and it worthy and always in need of constant analysis and introspect. But one thing is FACT--the U.S. never trained Bin Laden. Period.

You would be hard pressed to find a Joe Citizen who is more informed or well-read on the subject than me, including works by Theissen and Rashid (cited above). There are many myths, stretches of the truth, and exaggerations around the "Bin Laden" early era, and the U.S. training Bin Laden falls in that category. And of course, that lie is often used by repulsive, clueless blowhards like destruction whose only education is ANSWER talking points, Michael Moore exaggerations, or reckless, unbalanced google searches.

[destruction]

[drlogic]

Perfect illustration of why you are inconsequential

Kudos to you MOGAGO!

[igloo]

Drlogic,

Isn't it funny (or sad) how these repulsive, clueless cunts like destruction love to use the Bush-Hitler theme, yet did not have similar venom to Hussein (a monster of a human) or UBL (who has Islamic Hitler-like designs).

It may be time to simply start ignoring this shitstain destruction......he feeds off the attention he is getting here, since as a social misfit, he clearly is not getting it outside of a messageboard.........a while back, there was a similar social defect called normalnoises, who all (on both sides) starting ignoring, and he eventually went away.....I am not convincned yet that they are not the same, but we should do the same with destruction...

Hopefully the cunt will blow away, kill himself, or the authorities will catch him

[drlogic]

Drlogic,

Isn't it funny (or sad) how these repulsive, clueless cunts like destruction love to use the Bush-Hitler theme, yet did not have similar venom to Hussein (a monster of a human) or UBL (who has Islamic Hitler-like designs).

It may be time to simply start ignoring this shitstain destruction......he feeds off the attention he is getting here, since as a social misfit, he clearly is not getting it outside of a messageboard.........a while back, there was a similar social defect called normalnoises, who all (on both sides) starting ignoring, and he eventually went away.....I am not convincned yet that they are not the same, but we should do the same with destruction...

Hopefully the cunt will blow away, kill himself, or the authorities will catch him

I hear ya'!

This guy is a goon. Personally, I prefer exchange ideas in a civilized and constructive manner. When I hear/read posts that make all sorts of misguided implications void of perspective, crucial facts and historical reference I don't hesitate to flip the script and be just a asinine. My goal in doing so is to illustrate the absurdity in their argument/s by being just as absurd. Ironically w/ destruction, he turns around and gets extremely personal becoming everything he accuses conservatives of being.

I'm with ya'! He's not worth the corn in my shit.

ps...I refuse to believe he's a 47 yr. old male. NO WAY! He comes across more as a teenager who sports 5 inch stacked puma sneakers, has been to one to many raves and sucked on 1 too many nitrous balloons. One has to try REALLY HARD to be that ignorant, don't they? He should donate his body to science to maybe find out what went wrong.

[igloo]

I hear ya'!

This guy is a goon. Personally, I prefer exchange ideas in a civilized and constructive manner. When I hear/read posts that make all sorts of misguided implications void of perspective, crucial facts and historical reference I don't hesitate to flip the script and be just a asinine. My goal in doing so is to illustrate the absurdity in their argument/s by being just as absurd. Ironically w/ destruction, he turns around and gets extremely personal becoming everything he accuses conservatives of being.

I'm with ya'! He's not worth the corn in my shit.

ps...I refuse to believe he's a 47 yr. old male. NO WAY! He comes across more as a teenager who sports 5 inch stacked puma sneakers, has been to one to many raves and sucked on 1 too many nitrous balloons. One has to try REALLY HARD to be that ignorant, don't they? He should donate his body to science to maybe find out what went wrong.

[jtk4]

What does bush have to do with IF we trained bin laden? Like i said I do not think we trained bin laden but I am sure we aided him in some way.