‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Squirrlnutz' post='778970' date='May 27 2009, 01:42 PM']I'm jumping in here late but are you saying that us waterboarding them is [i]insignificant[/i] or [i]does nothing completely [/i]to fuel the terrorist fire?

I would say that any poor treatment of prisoners from impovershed conditions to various forms of torture to death can be construed in any way they deem necessary to recrute new terrorists.

I don't think waterboarding is any significant cause of future terrorism, even now in light of all the allegations, but to say it is completely neglegable because they already hate us so much seems brash.

Don't forget we're putting our soldier's asses on the line for future conflicts against different enemies as well, and taking a tough stance against torture now could benefit them later on.

Throw in no real evidence that torture is even successful at eliciting accurate information and we find ourselves wondering "why even do it in the first place?" Unless you just want to inflict pain and suffering upon alleged enemies, there is no reason.[/quote]


Completely agree.

[StrengthOfFates]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='778968' date='May 27 2009, 01:31 PM']I think I did answer it.[/quote]

[quote][b]Tell me this - if you believe that American soldiers are invading your cities, murdering and harvesting the organs of your countrymen so that they can be sold to rich Jews in America - would you really give a fuck about a couple of instances of sleep deprivation or waterboarding?[/b][/quote]

Here's my answer: no.

[quote]It adds to the problem, it gives them tangable proof rather than just propaganda, further if gives reason for them to believe that propaganda.[/quote]

They do not doubt what they are told or what they see (example: Mohammed Al-Dura). Most of the population in the middle-east are plain ignorant, and above all, they [i]want[/i] to hate the west. They are ignorant, poor, stifled, and they need someone to blame. Like I said, this is not a new concept - it's exactly why someone like Hitler was able to gain power.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='StrengthOfFates' post='778978' date='May 27 2009, 01:59 PM']Here's my answer: no.



They do not doubt what they are told or what they see (example: Mohammed Al-Dura). Most of the population in the middle-east are plain ignorant, and above all, they [i]want[/i] to hate the west. They are ignorant, poor, stifled, and they need someone to blame. Like I said, this is not a new concept - it's exactly why someone like Hitler was able to gain power.[/quote]


So when the CIA discuses blowback, it's poppycock?

The following disagrees.

[url="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html"]http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html[/url]

[quote]Blowback in Iraq?
CIA report says Iraq is becoming an urban warfare training ground for terrorists.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Iraq may prove to be a better training ground for terrorists that even Afghanistan was in the early days of Al Qaeda's presence there, and the result is the "training a new kind of Islamic militant" according to the BBC. The New York Times reported Wednesday that this assessment, taken from a new classified CIA report of the situation in Iraq, says that the country is serving "as a real-world laboratory for urban combat."

The report, which has been circulating this month among top US government and intelligence officials, "made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict," according to the Times.

The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda.

The assessment said the central role played by Iraq meant that, for now, most potential terrorists were likely to focus their energies on attacking American forces there, rather than carrying out attacks elsewhere, the officials said. But the officials said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with militants who leave Iraq equipped with considerable experience and training.


Reuters reports that the Iraq insurgency is now becoming an international threat, and that it could ultimately lead to a threat to the US.

"You have people coming to the action with anti-US sentiment. . . . And since they're Iraqi or foreign Arabs or to some degree Kurds, they have more communities they can blend into outside Iraq," said a US counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Bush and other government officials have long said that it was better to have terrorists fighting in Iraq than in America – Bush press secretary Scott McClellan repeated this line of thinking during the daily White House press conference Wednesday.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online reporter Edmund Roy reports that the development of Iraq as a training ground for terrorists was something that the US and its allies had hoped to avoid.

Two decades ago Afghanistan became the magnet for Islamic militants, who later on became the Al Qaeda network operating under the protection of the Taliban. While the Afghan operation was largely fought on a rural battlefield, the CIA report says that Iraq is now providing extremists with more comprehensive skills, including training in operations devised for populated urban areas. Thus bombings, assassinations and conventional military attacks on police and military targets have increased with deadly effect, but the White House isn't quite ready to admit to anything just yet.
Mr. Roy also reports that American military officers in Iraq have told him that "the gearing up of a competent new Iraqi military is at least five to 10 years off. And that really is a figure that is just put forward because no one quite knows."
While the Guardian reports that Britain's Foreign Office and Security Service doubt there will be much " spillover" to other countries, the one country that might face a problem is Saudi Arabia.

If there was to be a spill-over, Saudi Arabia is potentially vulnerable because many of the Arab fighters in Iraq originate from there. Jamal Khashoggi, media adviser to the Saudi ambassador in London, said yesterday he agreed in part with the US assessment.
"It will be worse than Afghanistan," he said. "We are talking about a very brutal type, a very weird version of Islam in Iraq. It is very scary."

Newsweek reports that the insurgents' "most powerful weapon" is their vast network of spies and infiltrators. One of the biggest areas of concern is that the new Iraq army may have hundreds of " ghost soldiers" - enlistees who show up irregularly, just enough to keep up connections but are actually working for the insurgents. The US had originally set up a system to screen them out, but it ran into problems.
... with pressure on to find an exit strategy for Iraq – and to build significant Iraqi forces fast – a lot of doubtful characters seem to have slipped through the cracks. Gaps in the process were quickly exploited in a strategic campaign of infiltration by the insurgency.
And the Associated Press reports that, in an effort to " deflect criticism" that it was only using foreign fighters on suicide missions, the Al Qaeda spokesman in Iraq posted a note on a website that said the group had "formed a unit of potential suicide attackers who are exclusively Iraqis."
Columnist Pepe Escobar argues in The Asia Times that no one should be surprised this is happening, considering some people have been warning about it happening for quite some time.

Anyone familiar with the invasion and occupation of Iraq knew this for a fact as far back as two years ago – at a time when Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld was, on the record, very happy with the idea of Iraq as the new jihad Mecca. The CIA report cannot but conclude that the new jihadis – who are now taking their higher education in urban warfare in the Sunni triangle – will be even deadlier than the famous Arab-Afghans. There was blowback in Afghanistan – after the US financed a jihad. There is now blowback in Iraq – after the US invented a jihad out of the blue.

News of the CIA report comes the day after The Christian Science Monitor reported that the US had scored a success, when an international conference "broadly endorsed the perspective of a stable and free Iraq being crucial for the whole world."[/quote]

[STRAYCAT]

Waterboarding is nothing to cutting off the heads of your captives. Wake the fuck everybody.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='STRAYCAT' post='779038' date='May 27 2009, 07:54 PM']Waterboarding is nothing to cutting off the heads of your captives. Wake the fuck everybody. [/quote]


So an eye for an eye type of justice huh?

[STRAYCAT]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='779039' date='May 27 2009, 08:00 PM']So an eye for an eye type of justice huh?[/quote]
Eye for any eye? waterboarded captives are still alive right? Our troops or even civilians captured beheaded is ok with you?

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='STRAYCAT' post='779042' date='May 27 2009, 08:08 PM']Eye for any eye? waterboarded captives are still alive right? Our troops or even civilians captured beheaded is ok with you? [/quote]


Of course not, and neither is waterboarding.

[STRAYCAT]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='779043' date='May 27 2009, 08:10 PM']Of course not, and neither is waterboarding.[/quote]



I have no problem with doing what it takes to protect our best interest and our saftey here is our best interest right now.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='STRAYCAT' post='779046' date='May 27 2009, 08:13 PM']I have no problem with doing what it takes to protect our best interest and our saftey here is our best interest right now. [/quote]


Have you missed everything said here? It isnt necessary nor does provide reliable information. We can get better info without it.

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='778987' date='May 27 2009, 01:34 PM']So when the CIA discuses blowback, it's poppycock?

The following disagrees.

[url="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html"]http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html[/url][/quote]
You could also argue that Iraq is an urban training ground for anti-terrorism for US forces...which was sorely needed before we ever went in there, since it became obvious that things didn't turn out the way the Bush admin expected post-invasion.

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='779049' date='May 27 2009, 07:17 PM']Have you missed everything said here? It isnt necessary nor does provide reliable information. We can get better info without it.[/quote]
Yes. Sleep deprivation with 130 decibel Metallica music is like kryptonite to a Muslim terrorist suspect...

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='779050' date='May 27 2009, 08:30 PM']You could also argue that Iraq is an urban training ground for anti-terrorism for US forces...which was sorely needed before we ever went in there, since it became obvious that things didn't turn out the way the Bush admin expected post-invasion.


Yes. Sleep deprivation with 130 decibel Metallica music is like kryptonite to a Muslim terrorist suspect... [/quote]


Depends on who wins the propaganda battle.


Although I know your joking, there is never a fear of death with regard to sleep deprivation or loud music.

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='779051' date='May 27 2009, 06:34 PM']Depends on who wins the propaganda battle.


Although I know your joking, [b]there is never a fear of death with regard to sleep deprivation or loud music.[/b][/quote]
Should there be? I mean, if you cannot instill fear with interrogation, then what do you have? Empty promises that don't do any good? An offer of a nice turkey dinner? Safe return to your family?

I wonder in the face of all this ruckus over waterboarding (which in my mind is torture) is what [b]are[/b] the acceptable and/or effective techniques that everyone would be OK with?

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='779057' date='May 27 2009, 09:11 PM']Should there be? I mean, if you cannot instill fear with interrogation, then what do you have? Empty promises that don't do any good? An offer of a nice turkey dinner? Safe return to your family?

I wonder in the face of all this ruckus over waterboarding (which in my mind is torture) is what [b]are[/b] the acceptable and/or effective techniques that everyone would be OK with?[/quote]
Good question. Another one is: just how much should a society be willing to debase itself in order to live up to its principles?

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='779060' date='May 27 2009, 08:21 PM']Good question. Another one is: just how much should a society be willing to debase itself in order to live up to its principles?[/quote]
That's another good question. I just want to know what is and isn't acceptable. Apparently causing physical harm is not acceptable as it constitutes torture. But is the imminent threat of pain/harm acceptable? And if you don't get anywhere with an empty threat, then what? Don't you kind of have to follow through?

I wish there was more interrogation drug research. I would love it if a truth serum actually existed. Just inject the guy and let him spill the beans.

[STRAYCAT]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='779060' date='May 27 2009, 09:21 PM']Good question. Another one is: just how much should a society be willing to debase itself in order to live up to its principles?[/quote]
You do enough to survive. I don't know what will take to make some here understand why the cia did what they did....another major attack...gas some in a subway,hey maybe explode a small private plane with bio chems over a bengals game.... These extreme radicals want you me and our families dead since we don't buy into their radical beliefs.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='779060' date='May 27 2009, 09:21 PM']Good question. Another one is: just how much should a society be willing to debase itself in order to live up to its principles?[/quote]


Yes

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='STRAYCAT' post='779076' date='May 27 2009, 10:10 PM']You do enough to survive. I don't know what will take to make some here understand why the cia did what they did....another major attack...gas some in a subway,hey maybe explode a small private plane with bio chems over a bengals game.... These extreme radicals want you me and our families dead since we don't buy into their radical beliefs. [/quote]


We dont need to resort to these tactics though, it is possible to get the info we need without them.

[Homer_Rice]

The answer is pretty obvious: Nuns With Guns.

[img]http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4728/virgins.jpg[/img]

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='779084' date='May 27 2009, 08:54 PM']We dont need to resort to these tactics though, it is possible to get the info we need without them.[/quote]
My question remains, though, and I don't know the answer and I suspect you do not either: how? How do we get that? What methods are OK and which ones are not, and what are their relevant success rates compared to torture techniques?

[Homer_Rice]

C'mon, Bung. It isn't hard to figure some of this stuff out. It's not like we're living in a vacuum, that there was no conflict before 9-11. The Geneva Conventions were negotiated for reasons, and the Nuremberg Trials were held..ditto. Insofar as specific techniques go, I'm sure enough experts have spoken out in recent months to provide plenty of grist for the thought-mill. And, lastly, given the general consensus that torture doesn't provide reliable intel, it's hard to imagine that there could be any justification for sodomizing kids at Gitmo.

In any case, [url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html"]"For six decades, they held their silence..."[/url]

[|Elflocko|]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='778696' date='May 26 2009, 12:07 AM']I suspect that Gore would have acted within the framework of the current geopolitical zeitgeist, too. Doesn't the fact that Bush was crap...CRAP...as prez. A gullible fool who was put into power because he had the right pedigree and because he was so easily manipulable.

[b]And don't get me started on Obama. He may end up being worse in this respect: the fucker ought to know better, he's certainly "smart" enough. It's one thing to be dumber than a box of rocks; it's another to be a soul-sucking sellout.[/b][/quote]


Ding!

He always goes to the extreme to prove his point, but his point stands nonetheless...


[quote]Saturday, May 23, 2009
As They Slept In Late
Clever guy, Barack Obama. Launches the biggest attack against basic American jurisprudence in history the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend, figuring that by the time Tuesday rolls around, a hung-over nation fattened on BBQ won't have noticed.

I refuse to act like the Republicans who stuck by Bush after he crossed the line between garden-variety piggishness to authoritarian psycho. I regret not listening to my libertarian friends who warned me that Obama had dictatorial tendencies. They were right.

Bush was bad. Bush was evil.

Obama is worse than Bush.

Preventive detention marks the death knell of American democracy.[/quote]







[quote]Wednesday, May 27, 2009
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Mr. Obama: Resign Now
With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now—before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"—contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."

"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.

Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried.

What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys languishing at Guantánamo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama Administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted. As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn't enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone conclusion.

Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime—an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime—in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.

COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL[/quote]

More of the same, bend over and take it.

I'm beginning to think that America really is dead; the corpse just hasn't started to smell yet...

[Homer_Rice]

[url="http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/05/water-cure-for-mancow-disease.html"]One Libertarian's take...[/url]

[Homer_Rice]

[url="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2009/05/no-torture-no-prosecution.php"]...and from the other side...[/url]

[StrengthOfFates]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='778987' date='May 27 2009, 02:34 PM']So when the CIA discuses blowback, it's poppycock?

The following disagrees.

[url="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html"]http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/dailyUpdate.html[/url][/quote]

What does this have to do with our argument? The article you've posted even points out that people who are [u]already[/u] anti-American are coming to Iraq to fight ...and so they are fighting, right? So that means they gain experience in fighting. Not to mention, this article was written in 2005 and is a little out-dated.

[quote]Blowback in Iraq?
CIA report says Iraq is becoming an urban warfare training ground for terrorists.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Iraq may prove to be a better training ground for terrorists that even Afghanistan was in the early days of Al Qaeda's presence there, and the result is the "training a new kind of Islamic militant" according to the BBC. The New York Times reported Wednesday that this assessment, taken from a new classified CIA report of the situation in Iraq, says that the country is serving "as a real-world laboratory for urban combat."

The report, which has been circulating this month among top US government and intelligence officials, "made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict," according to the Times.

The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda.

The assessment said the central role played by Iraq meant that, for now, most potential terrorists were likely to focus their energies on attacking American forces there, rather than carrying out attacks elsewhere, the officials said. But the officials said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with militants who leave Iraq equipped with considerable experience and training.


Reuters reports that the Iraq insurgency is now becoming an international threat, and that it could ultimately lead to a threat to the US.

"[size=5][b]You have people coming to the action with anti-US sentiment[/b][/size]. . . . And since they're Iraqi or foreign Arabs or to some degree Kurds, they have more communities they can blend into outside Iraq," said a US counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Bush and other government officials have long said that it was better to have terrorists fighting in Iraq than in America – Bush press secretary Scott McClellan repeated this line of thinking during the daily White House press conference Wednesday.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online reporter Edmund Roy reports that the development of Iraq as a training ground for terrorists was something that the US and its allies had hoped to avoid.

Two decades ago Afghanistan became the magnet for Islamic militants, who later on became the Al Qaeda network operating under the protection of the Taliban. While the Afghan operation was largely fought on a rural battlefield, the CIA report says that Iraq is now providing extremists with more comprehensive skills, including training in operations devised for populated urban areas. Thus bombings, assassinations and conventional military attacks on police and military targets have increased with deadly effect, but the White House isn't quite ready to admit to anything just yet.
Mr. Roy also reports that American military officers in Iraq have told him that "the gearing up of a competent new Iraqi military is at least five to 10 years off. And that really is a figure that is just put forward because no one quite knows."
While the Guardian reports that Britain's Foreign Office and Security Service doubt there will be much " spillover" to other countries, the one country that might face a problem is Saudi Arabia.

If there was to be a spill-over, Saudi Arabia is potentially vulnerable because many of the Arab fighters in Iraq originate from there. Jamal Khashoggi, media adviser to the Saudi ambassador in London, said yesterday he agreed in part with the US assessment.
"It will be worse than Afghanistan," he said. "We are talking about a very brutal type, a very weird version of Islam in Iraq. It is very scary."

Newsweek reports that the insurgents' "most powerful weapon" is their vast network of spies and infiltrators. One of the biggest areas of concern is that the new Iraq army may have hundreds of " ghost soldiers" - enlistees who show up irregularly, just enough to keep up connections but are actually working for the insurgents. The US had originally set up a system to screen them out, but it ran into problems.
... with pressure on to find an exit strategy for Iraq – and to build significant Iraqi forces fast – a lot of doubtful characters seem to have slipped through the cracks. Gaps in the process were quickly exploited in a strategic campaign of infiltration by the insurgency.
And the Associated Press reports that, in an effort to " deflect criticism" that it was only using foreign fighters on suicide missions, the Al Qaeda spokesman in Iraq posted a note on a website that said the group had "formed a unit of potential suicide attackers who are exclusively Iraqis."
Columnist Pepe Escobar argues in The Asia Times that no one should be surprised this is happening, considering some people have been warning about it happening for quite some time.

Anyone familiar with the invasion and occupation of Iraq knew this for a fact as far back as two years ago – at a time when Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld was, on the record, very happy with the idea of Iraq as the new jihad Mecca. [b]The CIA report cannot but conclude that the new jihadis – who are now taking their higher education in urban warfare in the Sunni triangle – will be even deadlier than the famous Arab-Afghans. There was blowback in Afghanistan – after the US financed a jihad.[/b] There is now blowback in Iraq – after the US invented a jihad out of the blue.

News of the CIA report comes the day after The Christian Science Monitor reported that the US had scored a success, when an international conference "broadly endorsed the perspective of a stable and free Iraq being crucial for the whole world."[/quote]

By the way, this author's credibility, in my eyes, has just flown out of the window. He needs to brush up on his history a bit, considering we NEVER funded the "Arab-Afghans" (Who weren't Afghani at all).

Where's this phantom CIA report he keeps referencing? I give this article 2 "dismissive wanks".

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='StrengthOfFates' post='779273' date='May 28 2009, 07:42 PM']by the way, this author's credibility, in my eyes, has just flown out of the window. He needs to brush up on his history a bit, considering we NEVER funded the "Arab-Afghans" (Who weren't Afghani at all).[/quote]
Didn't we help arm the mujahadeen (sp?) in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the early 1980's? I seem to recall a particular weapon called a Stinger shoulder-fired missle that was particularly effective against the flying-tank HIND attack helicopter the Soviets were using back then. And I'm sure that there was more munition supplying than that, since it's always a pleasure to supply a proxy country against your superpower enemy [i]du jour[/i]. Granted, the USSR was [i]du jour[/i] for a LONG time (and nuclear armed!), but this foreign policy behavior is unfortunately not unique for the USA. Or any other major nation throughout history for that matter.