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EnglishLulu
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30 Aug 2010, 7:57 pm

jc6chan wrote:
wages war on the Taliban?
Political expediency and "what is in the national interests", which changes from time to time. I.e.

Ron Paul article in Counterpunch wrote:
"We should recognize that American tax dollars helped to create the very Taliban government that now wants to destroy us. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the CIA was very involved in the training and funding of various fundamentalist Islamic groups in Afghanistan, some of which later became today's brutal Taliban government. In fact, the U.S. government admits to giving the groups at least 6 billion dollars in military aid and weaponry, a staggering sum that would be even larger in today's dollars.

Bin Laden himself received training and weapons from the CIA, and that agency's military and financial assistance helped the Afghan rebels build a set of encampments around the city of Khost."
http://www.counterpunch.org/paul2.html

They used to fund and assist the Taliban, because the Taliban were, at one point, fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, and in the Cold War era, the US sided with the Taliban against the Communist USSR.

(For accessible 'edutainment', there's quite a good film about this, based on a true story, btw, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_9th_Company it's supposed to be like a Russian Full Metal Jacket or Platoon type film, I've watched it, but because I have mild prosopagnosia, a lot of the Russians with their uniforms and matching number 1 hair cuts blended into one another and I got a bit confused who was who, they started looking a bit the same. :oops:

See also, Charlie Wilson's War about CIA funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War - again consider it 'edutainment', based on a true story, which isn't the same as the truth. It'll give you a rough idea of some of the political issues and thought processes though.)

jc6chan wrote:
Both the Saudi government and the Taliban imposes barbaric laws on its people. I don't know about the US media, but in Canada, Canadian soldiers are seen as "heroes bringing hope to Afghans by improving their lives and fighting off the Taliban".

I'm aware that the Taliban was related to the 9/11 attacks, but just because the Saudi government doesn't attack Americans, it doesn't mean that the West should pretend that everything is OK.

What do you think?
The disparity is curious, isn't it?

I mean, if you take a look at the nationalities of the 9/11 hijackers:

Excerpt from wikipedia wrote:
All the suspected hijackers were from Saudi Arabia (fifteen hijackers), United Arab Emirates (two hijackers), Lebanon (one hijacker) and Egypt (one hijacker).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_ ... 11_attacks

Isn't it weird how Iraq and Afghanistan got invaded, but not Saudi Arabia, and not UAE, and not Lebanon, and not Egypt. Weird, huh?

Just Google for yourself:

Bush family Bin Laden family
Bush family Saudi Arabia

Btw, I've just Googled and then lazily posted up wikipedia references, but you shouldn't really believe everything you read there. :wink:

You should always double check and verify your sources, and also assess their credibility because the media is biased. (And I should know, I work in the media! :wink: )

Okay, that's your Taliban 101 and your Saudi Arabia (links with Bush family) 101 for today. :)

Maybe tomorrow I'll move on to CIA adventures in Africa and Latin America and the US doing what US politicians and militarists and spooks figure is in the US' best interests... to put all the Saudi Arabia stuff into a better context.



iamnotaparakeet
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30 Aug 2010, 8:08 pm

EnglishLulu wrote:
They used to fund and assist the Taliban, because the Taliban were, at one point, fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, and in the Cold War era, the US sided with the Taliban against the Communist USSR.


It is sad that the American political leaders of that day were so blind sighted by their aversion to the economic practice of communism that they didn't think ahead a few decades that the yahoos we gave weapons to would point them back at us.



Jacoby
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30 Aug 2010, 8:26 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
They did finance the Taliban. So did the Pakistanis.


The Taliban was the government of Afghanistan, so their financing of them needs to be time dependent for a correlation to be made. Also, is it the governments or the citizens who are financing the Taliban, or, more to the point which can be more legitimately pursued, were they intentionally financing such groups as Al Qaida or were they not intending the finances to be allocated in this manner.

However, they may all be sticking together, one being the financial backbone of the other. In such a case, perhaps independence from the usage of gasoline should be sought in an accelerated manner, since these countries primary source of income is their export of petrol.


No, they weren't the government of Afghanistan. They took the country by force and brutally murdered their president. Pakistan and their ISI(their version of the CIA) created the Taliban and funded them through out their reign of terror in Afghanistan. As I already said before the only 3 countries to recognize the Taliban government of Afghanistan were UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, said to the UN in 2001 before his murder which was only 2 days before 9/11 that the Taliban would not be able to survive 1 year without its funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.



iamnotaparakeet
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31 Aug 2010, 7:03 am

Jacoby wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
They did finance the Taliban. So did the Pakistanis.


The Taliban was the government of Afghanistan, so their financing of them needs to be time dependent for a correlation to be made. Also, is it the governments or the citizens who are financing the Taliban, or, more to the point which can be more legitimately pursued, were they intentionally financing such groups as Al Qaida or were they not intending the finances to be allocated in this manner.

However, they may all be sticking together, one being the financial backbone of the other. In such a case, perhaps independence from the usage of gasoline should be sought in an accelerated manner, since these countries primary source of income is their export of petrol.


No, they weren't the government of Afghanistan. They took the country by force and brutally murdered their president. Pakistan and their ISI(their version of the CIA) created the Taliban and funded them through out their reign of terror in Afghanistan. As I already said before the only 3 countries to recognize the Taliban government of Afghanistan were UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, said to the UN in 2001 before his murder which was only 2 days before 9/11 that the Taliban would not be able to survive 1 year without its funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.


Fine, bombard them from orbit with osmium telephone poles.