A reviling thought..... what if those videos of the training camps in

[HysteryDiagnosis]

Afghanistan.... were taken.... during the time that they were called "Freedom Fighters" by a famous past president.... wouldn't it just irk you to no end.... it does me... that we so did not want to let Russia gain a warm water port that we got in bed with what is now our greatest threat and worry in the world.... aside from Hussein's romance novels that is..... and the pet goat... don't want to leave out the pet goat.... criminy.

[Island Blue]

1. Are you talking about the videos of the dudes on the monkey bars

the media always likes to show, or something else?

[VOX]

7. HAHA! When media reports say"terrorist training camp" destroyed...

All my mind's eye sees is flying dirt and dust. :crazy:

[TheGoodCitizen]

2. Good point...

...let's roll with it.


Whoever's left diggin for facts around this gang of crooks and hoods will be left in the dust.

Johnny, who in the hell taught you to be such a cheater.... Boosh mommy! :woohoo:

[eleny]

3. Well, we did give money, arms and training to OBL and his people

So they could fight the Soviets. I never considered that the video clips of training were old ones *we* took. Oh, jeez! Your synapses are really firing!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. A mind is a terrible thing..... thankx... :)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. I mean.... who would be interested in taping that crap... who had more to

lose... us or them? They just want to fight them there Ruskies... and we wanted to make sure that we would control the pipelines that we knew would eventually run through there....... I think these tapes need to be produced and their dates examined... whaddya say?

[Igel]

10. That's probably an overstatement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_BinLad%27n#Afghan_Jihad

Possibly money and arms, indirectly; training, unlikely.

[eleny]

11. Maybe not an overstatement

"The war in Afghanistan contributed to the disintegration of the USSR. CIA-trained Afghan refugees, or the Mujahideen, in turn trained anybody from any country who wanted to fight in the jihad. People like Osama bin Laden were trained by the CIA. We gave the Mujahideen fantastic weapons, such as surface-to-air rocket launchers, that they used to destroy Soviet jets and helicopters."
http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/inside/archive/01_11_06/border.html

[Igel]

12. But that's a non sequitur, if the two sentences are related.

"The war in Afghanistan contributed to the disintegration of the USSR. CIA-trained Afghan refugees, or the Mujahideen, in turn trained anybody from any country who wanted to fight in the jihad. People like Osama bin Laden were trained by the CIA."

The first sentence allows the inference that UBL was trained by the Afghans, since he fell into the "anybody from any country" category; the second ignores the first sentence.

Sounds less like a primary source, and more like somebody's who's generalized beyond what the primary sources would allow.

[eleny]

13. the point is how we got those traning videos so quickly after 9/11

If the CIA trained Mujahideen - then that's how we had the videos so fast.

As for your parsing - take it up with the author I quoted. I choose to believe him. Let me know what he says.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. You might want to check this out.....

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0143034669/qid=1120928254/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/103-2215371-0231868?v=glance&s=books&n=507846



Ghost Wars: The Secret History of The CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet (Paperback)
by Steve Coll "IN THE TATTERED, cargo-strewn cabin of an Ariana Afghan Airlines passenger jet streaking above Punjab toward Kabul sat a stocky, broad-faced American with short graying..." (more)

Although the book does not focus on Bin Laden until he becomes a player in Afghanistan, it does provide much better discussion of Bin Laden's very close relations with Saudi intelligence, including the Chief of Staff of Saudi intelligence at the time, Bin Laden's former teacher and mentor. There appears to be no question, from this and other sources, including Yossef Bodansky's book on Bin Laden and David Kaplan's US News & World Report on Saudi sponsorship of global terrorism, that Bin Laden has been the primary Saudi intelligence agent of influence for exporting terrorism and Islamic radicalism to South Asia, the Pacific Rim, Africa, Europe, Russia, and the US. CIA and the FBI failed to detect this global threat, and the USG failed to understand that World War III started in 1989. As with other evils, the US obsession about communism led it to sponsor new emerging threats that might not otherwise have become real. However, the book also provides the first documentation I have seen that Bin Laden was "noticed" by the CIA in 1985 (page 146), and that Bin Laden opened his US office in 1986. It was also about this time that the Russian "got it" on the radical Islamic threat, told the US, and got blown off. Bob Gates and George Shultz were wrong to doubt the Soviets when they laid out Soviet plans to leave Afghanistan and Soviet concern about both the future of Afghanistan and the emerging threat from Islamic terrorism.

The middle of the book can be considered a case study in how Pakistani deception combined with American ignorance led us to make many errors of judgment. Some US experts did see the situation clearly--Ed McWilliams from State ("Evil Little Person" per Milt Bearden) comes out of this book looking very very smart.

The final portions of the book are detailed and balanced. What comes across is both a failure of the US to think strategically, and the incredibly intelligent manner in which Bin Laden does think globally, strategically, and unconventionally. Bin Laden understands the new equation: low-cost terrorism equals very high cost economic dislocation.

Side note: CIA provided the Islamic warriors in Afghanistan with enough explosives to blow up half of New York (page 135), and with over 2000 Stinger missiles, 600 of which appear to remain in the hands of anti-US forces today, possibly including a number shipped to Iran for re-purposing (ie London, Dallas, Houston)

[meti57b]

5. That sounds very possible. They had those training camp shots the next day

after the 9/11 attack.

I also remember soon after the 9/11 attack they had footage of alleged "terrorists" testing chemical weapons or gas at measured distances away from tied-up dogs to see if it would kill them. The dogs collapsed and died. That footage was played again and again on television as most people love dogs and were sickened by it. I bet that film was taken during the time we were assisting bin Laden fight the FSU.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

8. Give that man a cigar... good catch on the fact that it was only a short

time before they produced the training tapes. Imagine if this were to be (can I say leaked) to the press, or perhaps emailed to KO, or something of the sort..... if you don't stir the pot, it will stick to the bottom... something I learned from grandma. heh heh heh....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. Here's your article.....

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/10/1425222

Thursday, June 10th, 2004
Ghost Wars: How Reagan Armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan


During Reagan's 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We take a look at America's role in Afghanistan that led to the rise of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.