Poor choice of words at the least......

[Cal Smith]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ushill0117,0,7156356.story?coll=ny-leadnationalnews-headlines

Real smart making remarks like this on MLK Day at a speech organized by the National Action Network.

[boldt_action]

"poor choice"

[Cal Smith]

"poor choice"

thanks

[boldt_action]

thanks
no prob

[richter915]

uhm

"pour"?

and as for the article and her comments...absolutely hilarious and I think she got the reaction she wanted. She did it on MLK Day for a reason and it was definitely heard. I think Republicans will definitely use this against her but I think she has the support of African American activists.

[getupkid53]

wow... I guess you come to expect that out of a woman... zing..

and as for al sharpton.. that guy is a flaming pile of moron. I don't understand why people listen to him.

[boldt_action]

That was stupid of her.

[Cal Smith]

mayor of new orleans has his foot in his mouth as well

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/HurricaneKatrina/wireStory?id=1512336&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

[boldt_action]

uhm

"pour"?

and as for the article and her comments...absolutely hilarious and I think she got the reaction she wanted. She did it on MLK Day for a reason and it was definitely heard. I think Republicans will definitely use this against her but I think she has the support of African American activists.
he fixed it before you posted, don't be an asshole.

[richter915]

he fixed it before you posted, don't be an asshole.
actually, no he didn't. As I was writing the post he changed . Go jerk off to Jack Bauer some more, ok?

[richter915]

"poor choice"
uhm.

and you're complaining to me? You actually posted this as I was writing my post. hah.

[getupkid53]

I just want to know how the hell she got out. The cotton doesn't pick itself hilary. Get your ass back to work and have your wench daughter fix me a lemonade... and make sure she is promiscuous about it.

[boldt_action]

uhm.

and you're complaining to me? You actually posted this as I was writing my post. hah.
Then type faster, there was time for a few replies between his post and your meaningless drivel.
actually, no he didn't. As I was writing the post he changed . Go jerk off to Jack Bauer some more, ok? And i will, go kill yourself.

[richter915]

Then type faster, there was time for a few replies between his post and your meaningless drivel.
And i will, go kill yourself.
hahaha. ya.

[splitsecond]

At least no advisors in this administration or anyone linked to Bush have killed themselves Hillary.



And sorry, the Clinton administration has already reserved its spot as corrupt/horrible/worthless, etc.

[Trainsaw]

At least no advisors in this administration or anyone linked to Bush have killed themselves Hillary.



And sorry, the Clinton administration has already reserved its spot as corrupt/horrible/worthless, etc.
Clinton > Bush, easy choice. Dude nails or doesn't nail intern or Guy sends country to war for fake reasons he said was true at one point. Like I said, Easy Choice

[Cal Smith]

Clinton > Bush, easy choice. Dude nails or doesn't nail intern or Guy sends country to war for fake reasons he said was true at one point. Like I said, Easy Choice

Have we already forgotten Clinton lopping thousands of missiles into Iraq for those same reasons you're finding fault with Bush?

[Trainsaw]

Have we already forgotten Clinton lopping thousands of missiles into Iraq for those same reasons you're finding fault with Bush?
How many US troops died when we were lopping missiles into Iraq?

[Cal Smith]

How many US troops died when we were lopping missiles into Iraq?

What?!? Look at the point you were making. You were not making a point about American deaths, rather you said, "Guy sends country to war for fake reasons he said was true at one point." You were focusing on the reasons for war. Clinton had those same reasons. Pull your head out of your ass.

I find this post funny because you're justifying what Clinton did, by ignoring you last justification against Bush.

[Trainsaw]

What?!? Look at the point you were making. You were not making a point about American deaths, rather you said, "Guy sends country to war for fake reasons he said was true at one point." You were focusing on the reasons for war. Clinton had those same reasons. Pull your head out of your ass.

I find this post funny because you're justifying what Clinton did, by ignoring you last justification against Bush.
Clinton overall was a better president than Bush will turn out to be. With the citizens, and economy. We didn't engage in war w/ Iraq w/ Clinton, we might have sent missiles but it wasn't a war. Bush did send us to war for fake reasons.

[Cal Smith]

Clinton overall was a better president than Bush will turn out to be. With the citizens, and economy. We didn't engage in war w/ Iraq w/ Clinton, we might have sent missiles but it wasn't a war. Bush did send us to war for fake reasons.

Just me but I'd guess the Iraqis considered it a war, but what your doing is semantics. The FACT is both Presidents had the same reasoning. Had both of their reasons been correct than the war would be more than justified by most.

****The only difference is you're holding one responsible for their reasoning and allowing the other to hide behind the bad reasoning by saying, "at least he didnt go to war".****

Read that above again.............do you not see how foolish you are being?

[Trainsaw]

Just me but I'd guess the Iraqis considered it a war, but what your doing is semantics. The FACT is both Presidents had the same reasoning. Had both of their reasons been correct than the war would be more than justified by most.

****The only difference is you're holding one responsible for their reasoning and allowing the other to hide behind the bad reasoning by saying, "at least he didnt go to war".****

Read that above again.............do you not see how foolish you are being?
You tried to bring up the point that clinton did the same thing as bush, he didn't, there was no war engaged with Iraq during Clinton's time.

[Cal Smith]

You tried to bring up the point that clinton did the same thing as bush, he didn't, there was no war engaged with Iraq during Clinton's time.

Again.......semantics.........you don't think it was a war because no US soldiers died, some might not think it's a war becasue maybe a decleration of war wasn't made, and some would consider it a war because we shot thousands of cruz missiles into Iraq and killed thousands of people (i'm guessing had bush done this you would consider it a war).

You're not reading what I'm saying cause you keep doing it.
****The only difference is you're holding one responsible for their reasoning and allowing the other to hide behind the bad reasoning by saying, "at least he didnt go to war".*****

[fromwithin]

doesn't matter. no troops were killed, economy was good, gas prices were low. Clinton had meetings with and knew exactly where Bin Laden was too. I'd take that over the world we live in today.

oh and New Orleans will always be chocolate to me.

[Cal Smith]

doesn't matter. no troops were killed, economy was good, gas prices were low. Clinton had meetings with and knew exactly where Bin Laden was too. I'd take that over the world we live in today.

oh and New Orleans will always be chocolate to me.

The part in the bold is the only legit point that has been made about Clinton having a better Presidency.

As for clinton knowing where Bin Laden was then that did us a hell of a lot of good. What you just siad you'd "take" is exactly what helped lead us to 9/11.

[fromwithin]

The part in the bold is the only legit point that has been made about Clinton having a better Presidency.

As for clinton knowing where Bin Laden was then that did us a hell of a lot of good. What you just siad you'd "take" is exactly what helped lead us to 9/11.

the whole government knew about 9/11 so I don't want to hear any more crap about that. They fully knew we were going to be attacked and did NOTHING about it. I'm sorry I guess you dont drive a car then, cause oil prices are damn sure important to me. That's what the whole reason for this war is. It's not about terrorists, or WMD, its about controlling the oil supply along with the world's supply of opium. But I'm sure you'll pass that off as a conspiracy, so i'll just say this: I grew up a Republican, hating Clinton and thinking no one could ever be worse than him. Then I reviewed everything that Clinton did that was good for the country, and how good of a speaker he was and I didn't mind him. After seeing Bush take office though, Clinton looks like a saint.

[Cal Smith]

the whole government knew about 9/11 so I don't want to hear any more crap about that. They fully knew we were going to be attacked and did NOTHING about it.

You should read the 9/11 commission report. It's online or I'm sure really cheap at half price books. Fact is you said you'd take Clinton knowing where Bin Laden was over anythign today, and Clinton SIMPLY knowing where Bin Laden was did not do anything for us. For evidence of that look at the Khobar bombing, USS Cole bombing, the Embassy's in Africa being bombed, and finally Sept. 11th.

I'm sorry I guess you dont drive a car then, cause oil prices are damn sure important to me. That's what the whole reason for this war is. It's not about terrorists, or WMD, its about controlling the oil supply along with the world's supply of opium. But I'm sure you'll pass that off as a conspiracy, so i'll just say this: I grew up a Republican, hating Clinton and thinking no one could ever be worse than him. Then I reviewed everything that Clinton did that was good for the country, and how good of a speaker he was and I didn't mind him. After seeing Bush take office though, Clinton looks like a saint.

Yes, I will pass that off as a conspiracy. Obviously you know that's a big pill to swallow because you wouldnt have brought the conspiracy idea up.

Let me just say. I don't have a problem with Clinton. I thought he was a decent President. Yes, I think he should have been removed from office for lying under oath. But I think he did a good job of not doing a lot when it came down the economy. We were going through a boom in the 90's and he didnt try to tamper with it. As far as his foreign policy went I'd give him a "C-".

The things ya'll are bringing up are partisan rhetoric though. I dont care if you think Clinton was the second coming of Christ, but if you don't have any good points then I'm gonna challenge what you're saying.

[fromwithin]

READ:











Mujaheddin

In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.
Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organizing resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.
Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the “contra” force was known.
Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's fall. This only galvanized the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.
The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.
Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilize the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).
Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavory “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970's for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.
After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.
Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.
In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”
Made in the USA

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0745319173/ref=ase_conspiracyarc-20/104-8924776-1297547?v=glance&s=books), has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989.
These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called “ Operation Cyclone (http://rense.com/general31/cyc.htm)”.
In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organization known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK).
MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.
Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialized in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.
The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US royal family.
Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process, the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private construction company.
Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire.
(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior's sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share.)
Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.
Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did.”
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organization, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company — albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate” business operations.
Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980's — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilized primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.
Bin Laden only became a “terrorist” in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet Union.
He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.
After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.
Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.
Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.
In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.
“It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.”
Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military retaliation.
Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism operations”.
Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980's. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.

[Cal Smith]

READ:











Mujaheddin

In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.
Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organizing resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.
Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the “contra” force was known.
Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's fall. This only galvanized the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.
The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.
Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilize the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).
Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavory “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970's for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.
After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.
Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.
In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”
Made in the USA

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0745319173/ref=ase_conspiracyarc-20/104-8924776-1297547?v=glance&s=books), has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989.
These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called “ Operation Cyclone (http://rense.com/general31/cyc.htm)”.
In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organization known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK).
MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.
Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialized in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.
The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US royal family.
Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process, the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private construction company.
Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire.
(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior's sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share.)
Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.
Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did.”
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organization, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company — albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate” business operations.
Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980's — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilized primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.
Bin Laden only became a “terrorist” in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet Union.
He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.
After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.
Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.
Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.
In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.
“It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.”
Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military retaliation.
Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism operations”.
Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980's. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.

2 Questions................What's your source and who wrote this...........and what is your main point you are trying to make here.

[fromwithin]

and this:

If you look at the changes in the political economy of Afghanistan, you may conclude that this is neither a "war on terror" that Washington says it is nor a pipeline war as some of its critics allege. It looks as if it is the latest Opium War, regardless of intentions of all parties (Afghans, Americans, Europeans, and others) involved.

According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 (http://www.unodc.org/afg/en/reports_surveys.html) by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium cultivation has increased 64% since 2003. The opium industry now employs 2.3 million in Afghanistan (compared to 1.7 million in 2003), i.e., 10% of the Afghan population. The export value of Afghan opium is estimated to be $2.8 billion, a 22% increase since 2003. The opium export today accounts for more than 60% of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product.

Afghan farmers are not getting richer, though. The average farm price that fresh opium commands is only $92/kg in 2004, a decline of 67% since 2003, when fresh opium fetched $283/kg. Much of the profits goes to traffickers, who capture 78% of the opium export value: $2.2 billion (a 69% increase over $1.3 billion that went to traffickers in 2003). In contrast, opium farmers received only the total of $0.6 billion, a 41% decline compared to what they managed to get in 2003; each opium farming family's yearly income is now about $1,700 ($260 per capita), 56% lower than in 2003, when it was $3,900 ($600 per capita). Still it beats growing wheat: even though "bad weather and disease lowered the 2004 opium yield per hectare by almost 30 per cent" (United Nations Information Service, "United Nations Drugs Office Reports Major Increase in Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan," November 18, 2004 (http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2004/unisnar867.html)), making opium production less productive and profitable than last year, the gross income from opium per hectare is $4,600, more than ten times the gross income from wheat per hectare of $390.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/montages/11poppygraphic.gif (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/12/10/international/11poppygraphic.gif) Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reports that "a new confidential American military assessment" by Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, expects that "[p]oppy cultivation and opium production will continue to increase in Afghanistan, expanding the dangerous influence of drug lords at all levels of the government of President Hamid Karzai" ("Afghans' Gains Face Big Threat in Drug Traffic," December 11, 2004 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/politics/11military.html)).

Afghanistan was not always the world's largest producer of opium. The first turning point was Washington's support for Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Soviet Union. Before the American intervention, Afghanistan had an economy largely based upon subsistence agriculture: "As late as 1972, economists estimated that the cash economy constituted slightly less than half of the total" (Barnett Rubin, "The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan," 1999 (http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/afghanistan/links/rubin99.shtml)). The war against the Soviets and Afghan Communists changed it. The mujahideen commanders -- a new elite whose rise in Afghanistan was underwritten by US, Pakistani, and Saudi monies -- "pressured the peasants to grow opium, a cash crop they could tax. It was also during this period that the production of opium started to increase" (Rubin, 1999 (http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/afghanistan/links/rubin99.shtml)).

The US intervention in Afghanistan was a chapter in the long history of opium and empire. Sugar (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0140092331-0), tea, coffee, tobacco, and opium -- "[t]hese first truly mass-produced, mass-marketed global commodities rearranged fundamental relations of power and authority all along the trajectories of their production, movement, and consumption" (James L. Hevia (http://www.unc.edu/depts/history/faculty/hevia.html), "Opium, Empire, and Modern History," China Review International 10.2, Fall 2003 (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/china_review_international/v010/10.2hevia.pdf), p. 312), fueling the growth of capitalism and the expansion of the British Empire:
By the early part of the nineteenth century, British Indian opium had stanched the flow of New World silver into China, replacing silver as the commodity that could be exchanged for Chinese tea and other goods. By the 1830s, silver was flowing out of China to India and beyond. As opium imports in China steadily increased, the political and economic results in India, Britain, and the greater empire were profound. . . . [T]ea and sugar duties helped to pay for the Royal Navy’s upkeep and development.20 Opium revenues in India not only kept the colonial administration afloat, but sent vast quantities of silver bullion back to Britain. The upshot was the global dominance of the British pound sterling until World War I.

In this respect, the figures compiled by John Richards (http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/history/faculty/richards) in his study of opium revenue in India ["The Opium Industry in British India," The Indian Economic and Social History Review 39.2-3, 2002, pp.149–180] are instructive.21 Managed through the East India Company monopoly, opium, by 1839, accounted for around 11 percent of the total revenue of the British establishment in India, a figure that held for the next decade. After 1850, the opium produced 16–17 percent of revenues, peaking at 100 plus million rupees (10 million pounds sterling) annually by the early 1880s. Over this period of time, opium revenues equaled around 42 percent of the land tax, the other main source of monies of the British Raj. Although there was a drop-off after 1890, opium still generated around 8 percent of total revenue for the next two decades at an average of about 75 million rupees annually. The direct revenue generated by opium in India was supplemented by the inflow of silver from sales of the drug in China. In 1839, the figure was 22.6 million rupees, and it steadily increased to around 41 million rupees per year on average in the decade from 1865 to 1875. There was a reduction afterwards, but around 22 million rupees per year still entered India through the mid-1890s. In addition to these monies, there was also a movement of silver bullion from the British trading firms in China, such as Jardine and Matheson, to London banks.

As Carl Trocki (http://www.hhs.qut.edu.au/about/trocki.jsp) has argued, and Richards' data supports, without opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable. (Hevia, p. 313) Today, it is said that the global illicit drug trade involves "US$500 billion annually of which US$300 billion is laundered" (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, "Money Laundering" (http://www.unodc.un.or.th/money_laundering/)). That's about 5% of the GDP of the United States ($10.99 trillion), but don't think it's chump change. Consider this: the cost of the US war on Iraq is $150 billion (http://costofwar.com/) (and counting). Imagine how many insurgencies and counter-insurgencies (using narco dollars (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=5375) in the name of fighting against "narco terrorists" (http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/04.58%20Terrorism%20FINAL%202.htm)) $500 billion can buy, given that military and paramilitary soldiers' labor power in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is incomparably cheaper than US soldiers'.

[fromwithin]

2 Questions................What's your source and who wrote this...........and what is your main point you are trying to make here.

Norm Dixon, its from a conspiracy website of course, but a fine interesting read isnt it? The point I'm trying to make is that the things we're told and things that are actually being done are totally different. I wholeheartedly believe that 9/11 was orchestrated by us, the USA. I know you probably think I'm crazy by now, but isn't it funny how the only plane that went out when all aircraft was grounded was a plane carrying the Bin Laden family?

[Cal Smith]

Norm Dixon, its from a conspiracy website of course, but a fine interesting read isnt it? The point I'm trying to make is that the things we're told and things that are actually being done are totally different. I wholeheartedly believe that 9/11 was orchestrated by us, the USA. I know you probably think I'm crazy by now, but isn't it funny how the only plane that went out when all aircraft was grounded was a plane carrying the Bin Laden family?

and on that note i'll be done trying to talk to you. you're right, i do think you're crazy. But if I honestly thought Bush was the second comign of Christ I wouldnt expect you to take me seriously as I have now done with you.

[fromwithin]

and on that note i'll be done trying to talk to you. you're right, i do think you're crazy. But if I honestly thought Bush was the second comign of Christ I wouldnt expect you to take me seriously as I have now done with you.

fair enough, but isn't it uncanny how they didn't take even the slightest precaution on the 10th of September when now as soon as there's one threat ALL the red flags go up. it just doesn't add up. I shouldn't have said that I believe that the US did it, but something just doesnt add up about the whole situation, it's too fishy.