It's official: Ron Paul doesn't know what he's talking about

[Gigliozzi]

â??While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they donâ??t make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistanâ??s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.
There was simply no point in the CIA and Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. The Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The â??letâ??s blame everything bad that happens on the CIAâ?� school of thought vastly overestimates the Agencyâ??s powers, both for good and ill.â?�
- Peter Bergen, Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 64-66

I knew the moment would come when Ron Paul would give away just what a pathetic fraud he really is. Well, I was watching â?? and I am a bit ashamed to admit this â?? Real Time with Bill Maher earlier tonight, where he made an appearance. At once, my wait was over.

The hype about Paul from his supporters seems to be that he is the only one among the presidential hopefuls from either side who â??really gets it.â?� He is heralded as the only one who knows his shit when it comes to American foreign policy, the only one who knows the â??factsâ?� and is â??educatedâ?� on the matter. All others who donâ??t share his views are ignorant, war-mongering fools with Israelâ??s dick in their mouths, and they should discover the real truth of things by reading the books Rogue Nation, Perilous Power, and the Koran.

I wonâ??t deny it â?? I am disgusted by just how many people are ecstatic at the prospect of rallying behind Ron Paulâ??s policy of appeasement. At the same time, there is no debate that can be successfully had with such people. At the end of the day, you cannot debate questions of morality. If the Ron Paulists out there believe that the torture and murder alike of thousands of innocent people, the monstrous decapitation of hostages, the mutilation and enslavement of women, the vow to remorselessly detonate nuclear weapons if acquired, the pledge to destroy democracy and erect a brutal theocracy upon its ruins, the complete eradication of all civil liberties (that would include the right to bitch about the eradication of all civil liberties), the annihilation of all art, sports, and scientific research, and the bombings of public works, markets, and schools are ever justified/understandable/called for in the name of anything, there is nothing that I or anyone else can say that will change their minds, and make them see it my way. (My way being that all those things are wrong. Always.)

I can, however, try my best to challenge Ron Paulâ??s cult of personality as the ultimate political sage. I need only draw from one factual fuck-up out of the many he has certainly committed to debunk his alleged intellectual superpowers.

On the last (and I do mean last, both as in the most recent, and as in the last that will air until late Augustâ?¦ After all, everyone is entitled to a Maher-free summer) episode of Real Time, Ron Paul, while going off about how the United States has made its bed, claimed among other things, with that usual shit-eating grin of his, that the U.S. funded and trained Osama bin Laden during the Soviet-Afghan War in the eighties.

I know that some â?? many, actually - who would hear this will think, â??Yeah, and? Thatâ??s common knowledge! We did fund and train Osama in the eighties!â?�

No, we didnâ??t.

But it doesnâ??t disturb me that much when I hear uninformed civilians make bogus claims such as the above. Itâ??s when someone who wants to be the President of the United States makes them that I draw the line.

If the excerpt I saw fit to start out this thread with doesnâ??t do it for you, here is a very brief history lesson on the matter.

MYTH: Osama bin Laden was funded and trained by the CIA.
FACT: American funding for the Afghan resistance began under the Carter presidency at the urging of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carterâ??s national security advisor. Later, Reagan agreed to match all the money the Saudis were pouring into the resistance, meaning of course that funding from the U.S. increased enormously. But hereâ??s the thing: the U.S. was giving its money NOT to the Saudis, but to Pakistani intelligence, which in turn put the money into official Afghan fighters, of which Osama was not a member. The Saudis, on the other hand, preferred to fund the â??Afghan Arabs,â?� who were but an external radical and militant group made up of, guess what, no Afghans at all, just Muslim extremists. Osama bin Laden worked with this group. In short, no money from the U.S. ever found its way into Osama bin Ladenâ??s coffers.

There exists no evidence whatsoever â?? Iâ??m talking testimonies, receipts, documents, checks â?? that Osama bin Laden and the organization he belonged to were ever on the U.S.â??s payroll. Yes, they were fighting a mutual enemy, but for different reasons, and U.S. funding never went to the Afghan Arabs. Saudi money did, and the U.S. and the Saudis had forged this â??dollar for dollarâ?� agreement â?? hence, we get this â??Osama funded by CIAâ?� myth from shortsighted people who donâ??t do all of their homework.

The Afghan Arabs hated America. Writes Richard Miniter in his book Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror:
â??Moreover, the handful of Americans who had heard of bin Laden in the 1980s knew him mainly for his violently anti-American views. Dana Rohrabacher, now a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, told me about a trip he took with the mujihideen in 1987. At the time, Rohrabacher was a Reagan aide who delighted in taking long overland trips inside Afghanistan with anti-Communist forces. On one such trek, his guide told him not to speak English for the next few hours because they were passing by bin Ladenâ??s encampment. Rohrabacher was told: â??If he hears an American, he will kill you.â?� If a CIA operative had tried to recruit bin Laden, he probably would not have lived through the experience.â?�

Miniter goes on to note:
â??The Saudis saw the effort as a way of protecting their kingdom, spreading their severe version of Islam, and extending their influence to the non-Arab Muslim world. The Reagan administration was no more responsible for the anti-Soviet Arab Afghans than bin Laden and his fellow jihadis were responsible for Reaganâ??s principled anti-Communism.â?�

Need even more proof? What if you were to hear it from Osama bin Ladenâ??s mouth himself?

Robert Fisk is a British journalist who interviewed bin Laden twice, once in 1993, and again in 1996. In 1993, he asked bin Laden about American assistance during the 1980â??s anti-Soviet war, to which Osama replied, â??Personally, neither I nor any of my brothers saw evidence of American helpâ?� in Afghanistan. (Robert Fisk, â??Anti-Soviet Warrior Puts His Army on the Road to Peace,â?� Independent, December 6, 1993.

In 1996, Fisk got a chance to repeat the question. He asked, â??Did not the Americans support the mujihideenâ??s war against the Soviets?â?�
Bin Laden: â??We were never at any time friends of the Americans. We knew that the Americans support Jews in Palestine and that they are our enemies.â?� (Robert Fisk, â??Why We Reject the West, by the Saudisâ?? Fiercest Arab Critic,â?� Independent, July 10, 1996.)

Despite the myth in question being so-called â??common knowledgeâ?� amongst some people, no respectable politician or reputable expert in this country will give this myth the consideration it doesnâ??t deserve. And rightly so. I wouldnâ??t be surprised if you could dig up a Chomsky piece where he himself is humble enough to admit itâ??s all bullshit. (As he - somewhat - did, by the way, in regard to The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy - ZNet |Foreign Policy | The Israel Lobby?.)

Because it is. And anyone who has bothered to go beyond the rumors, or the murky suppositions, and leafed through the most basic of high school textbooks dealing with the Soviet-Afghan War will come to understand this.

So to get back on track: What the fuck is Ron Paul talking about? How could he hold such a laughable misbelief, how could he possibly know so little about the Middle East and history as a whole, history of his own governmentâ??s affairs no less, and believe himself to be fit for the presidency?

This is the man you credit with such an enlightened understanding and knowledge of our foreign policy? This is the man who â??gets it?â?� This is the man who â??knows?â?� This clown who comes on TV and makes an illiterate ass of himself by claiming one of the basest of historical fairy tales as fact? So is it upon these fatuous falsehoods that Ron â??The Shitâ?� Paul builds his â??weâ??re asking for itâ?� case?

Perhaps it is Mr. Paul who needs to use that library card more often.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, the animals that make up Maherâ??s audience went absolutely crazy for the guy. :jumphappy:Even Maher was surprised.

Gigliozzi Reviewed by Gigliozzi on 05-28-2007. It's official: Ron Paul doesn't know what he's talking about â??While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they donâ??t make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistanâ??s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and Rating: 5

[Psycho4Bud]

I watched this dude on CNN last night before I went to bed. He made the incinuation that like the middle east, we had no business being in Europe during WW2! After everything we know that happened under Nazi rule and he makes that statement? I'll vote for a crook over an assclown any day of the week!

Have a good one!:s4:

[medicinal]

Gigliosi, If you look long enough and hard enough, you can find fault with anyone. Why don't you supply the identity of your blessed candidate so us assclowns can take him down a notch. I'm less concerned with the history of the Afgan Arabs then the immediacy of our own countries problems. Do you have the Messiah in mind? Speak up. Seems you are extremely interested in finding fault with Ron Paul, Give us a name oh wise one, and then you can defend him. BTW, you any relation to Judyani?

[fishman3811]

How the CIA created Osama bin Laden


19 September 2001
BY NORM DIXON

â??Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive â?? on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man â?? in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters.â?�

Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the â??evil empireâ?�, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The â??evil empireâ?� was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities â?? the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 â?? bin Laden the â??freedom fighterâ?� is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a â??terrorist mastermindâ?� and an â??evil-doerâ?�.

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt â?? and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

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 organising 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 â??contraâ?� 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 galvanised the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a â??national liberationâ?� 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 destabilise 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 â??Islamic revolutionâ?� 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 unsavoury â??freedom fighterâ?�. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s 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 â?? killing at least 2000 civilians â?? 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: â??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.â?�

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, 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 â??black Muslimsâ?� were taught â??sabotage skillsâ?�.

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 â??bin Laden's operativesâ?� in 1989.

These â??operativesâ?� 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 â??Operation Cycloneâ?�.

In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services â?? 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 â??partly culpableâ?� 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 specialised 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 â?? estimated to be US$5 billion â?? 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, â??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.â?�

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 â??training campsâ?�, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.

These camps, now dubbed â??terrorist universitiesâ?� 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, â??The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism â?? car bombing and so on â?? 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.â?�

Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company â?? albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with â??legitimateâ?� business operations.

Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980s â?? 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 utilised primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.

Bin Laden only became a â??terroristâ?� 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 â?? such as Egypt â?? 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 â?? and thousands of his mercenaries â?? 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 â??the same call againâ?�, even knowing what bin Laden would become.

â??It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.â?�

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 â??counter-terrorism operationsâ?�.

Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their â??workâ?�. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.

The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: â??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

[fishman3811]

Well from what i read their it seems that the CIA was funding the Mujahadean which Bin laden was part of.

[Psycho4Bud]

The insult game is done in here folks........this has been told before and VERY recently to you Gigliozzi. You have a gift waiting in your box from CC.........

Have a good one!:jointsmile:

[fishman3811]

Thank you P4B.

[Gigliozzi]

Before everything, Medicinal, I owe you an apology. I am sorry for my choice of words in my last post on this thread (now duly removed), where I wrote I thought you were being stupid. I hope you didn't take it seriously, and that you understood it was all in jest. You know I love you. :thumbsup:

Moving right along...

Fishman,

Boy oh boy, did you pick the wrong article to sustain your claims.

Sorry I took so long to respond (you didn't really think I'd give up this easy, did you?), but yesterday was busy. I hope some people - or at least you - continue to give a shit about this thread.

Get ready, folks, this is going to be a long one. :jointsmile:

I think I will start out by letting our public know just who Norm Dixon is, and what kind of a paper he works for.

Norm Dixon is a journalist for the â??Green Left Weekly,â?� the newspaper on which the article you appended first appeared. The Green Left Weekly is a self-admitted far-left, radical newspaper. The Green Left Weekly is a huge supporter of Hugo Chavezâ??s government. The Green Left Weekly says Chavez is blameless for having done what he did to RCTV. (Read all about it: http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/711/36928) The Green Left Weeklyâ??s website proudly links to the website www.resistance.org.au. :wtf:

I am pointing this out so that our readers can have an understanding of what kind of a newspaper the one your article hails from really is. They [the readers] might be fooled into thinking itâ??s a respectable and fair-minded publication, and that the allegations made in the article you posted are inspired by objective reporting. I hope that what I pointed out above will make them think twice about that.

You once scolded me for daring to quote out of the Weekly Standard, but relying on far-left newspapers with an ultra-bias that makes the WS look like the Christian Science Monitor is fair game? Really, now.

But hey, whatever dirt I can sling at the paper would not change the fact that the claim your article makes might be true, right? Even a broken clock is right twice a day (clichés kick ass). If the Green Left Weekly, a paper I have no respect for, printed that the sky is blue, I would not be questioning it just because itâ??s on the Green Left Weekly.

And after reviewing this article by Dixon with the open-mindedness and objectivity I always strive to apply to everything, I have come to the open-minded and objective conclusion that this article is disgustingly biased, shamelessly mendacious, and downright wrong. :woohoo:

The number of times Dixon doctors quotes and excerpts, omitting the parts that contradict his point, by itself is sickening, and you will see why.

One would think a fine, objective, truth-seeking mind like Dixonâ??s could go at least, I donâ??t know, about five or six paragraphs before he outs himself as the abject liar that he really is. But in this article, he outdoes himself. He distorts the truth right up front in the second (well, technically third, but the second he writes himself) paragraph.

â??Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive â?? on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man â?? in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters.â?�

Good job, Dixon, now can we please have the real, undoctored excerpt of the speech?

The speech Dixon is (supposedly) quoting from is a speech Ronald Reagan gave at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC, on March FIRST, not 8th, 1985. The full transcript of the speech can be found here: 1985 CPAC Speech by President Ronald Reagan

And I do believe Reagan was actually quoted as saying the following.

â??Throughout the world the Soviet Union and its agents, client states, and satellites are on the defensiveâ??on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive.â?�

Okay, letâ??s stop right there for a second. Go compare and contrast for a bit. THE SOVIET UNION AND ITS AGENTS. Why is THE SOVIET UNION PART missing from Dixonâ??s excerpt? What does he want to accomplish by cutting out the Soviet Union and making it look like Reagan was referring to the subsequent â??freedom fightersâ?� when he wasnâ??t?

Reagan goes on to say: â??Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. Theyâ??re doing so on almost every continent populated by manâ??in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America. In making mention of freedom fighters, all of us are privileged to have in our midst tonight one of the brave commanders who lead the Afghan freedom fightersâ??Abdul Haq. Abdul Haq, we are with youâ?¦ They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help.â?�

Dixon says Reagan had been specifically singing the praises of â??the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators.â?� :what: Iâ??m of the idea Dixon is reading a different speech, because in this one, I donâ??t see a reference to anything like that anywhere in it. What I do see is a shout-out to Abdul Haq. What I do see is a shout-out to â??freedom fightersâ?� of the likes of Abdul Haq. Abdul Haq was an able Afghan commander â?? an actual Afghan, the only kind the U.S. ever supported â?? who among many others led the fight against the Soviets. Abdul Haq was also very anti-Taliban, so much so that he was named a United Nations Peace Mediator in 1998. He tried to lead an uprising against the Taliban after 9/11, but he was caught and executed by his enemy. :sadcrying

Having gone this far in proving how selective â?? and deceitful â?? Dixon is in doctoring his information, I could very easily choose to stop here, and claim I have also done much to discredit whatever new set of lies he has in store for us in the rest of his article.

But that would be too easy. And for the sake of truth, it might still be the case that Dixon is factually correct in supporting the idea of an Osama-CIA link in the 80â??s.

Unfortunately for Dixon, and predictably enough, that isnâ??t the case.

Fishman, I donâ??t think you read my thread very thoroughly, else you would have been able to notice that Dixon is committing the same common mistake as all those who are as shortsighted as he on this issue. When he claims the CIA was funding, arming, and training the Mujahideen, he is making no distinction whatsoever between the various factions (i.e.: the official Afghan fighters and the Afghan Arabs I talked about). To him, the logic could not be any simpler: U.S. funding ISI > ISI funding Afghan rebels > Saudi Arabia funding extremists who are fighting alongside the Afghan rebels = U.S. funding the extremists just mentioned.

Very convenient of Dixon to spin it this way to make his point (in 2001, it was still all the rage to be making his kind of claims), but it doesnâ??t add up.

Dixon tries to cover up for his lies by making a few measly mentions of the ISI. If Dixon is such an authority on the ISIâ??s dealings and transfers, perhaps he should listen to â?? and value â?? what Mohammad Yousaf had to say on the matter. Mohammad Yousaf was the Pakistani Brigadier who ran ISIâ??s Afghan efforts from 1983 to 1987. In the Bergen book I already quoted from, he says:

â??It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers' money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan's policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.â?�

The above account would sharply contradict Dixonâ??s subsequent claim that â??Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.â?� It was actually a pro-Islamistâ??s branch of the ISI that was partial to Hekmatyar due to his impressive military track record and vociferous Islamist stances. The U.S. could not have had a â??favorite,â?� other than the official Afghan fighters it hoped the ISI would behave about and give their money to, which it did in great part.

Yousaf refutes the Osama-CIA link. Even Osama himself refutes the Osama-CIA link.

But Dixon knows better than both of them. And nothing can stop him. Heâ??s got a nation to smear.

Weâ??ve seen how biased, selective, and deceitful Dixon can be in his reporting, and how he remorselessly and consciously distorts â?? or outright fabricates â?? facts to suit his point (i.e.: America evil, Muslim extremism faultless).

But letâ??s not stop here. :jointsmile:

Dixon next tries to build his case on the history of the MAK and what went on at Camp Peary. His main source for his new set of allegations appears to be John Cooleyâ??s book â??Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism,â?� a book which I have read and own a copy of. But Iâ??ll get to the book in a minute.

Letâ??s first talk about the part about Ali Mohamed. The article claims that Mohamed trained these fighters at the knowledge and endorsement of the CIA, and that it was with â??US assistanceâ?� that these operatives returned to Afghanistan. However, according to the Center for Cooperative Research (Ali Mohamed), Mohamed had actually stolen CIA plans without the CIAâ??s knowledge (and certainly neither endorsement) and passed them on to al-Qaeda, and the U.S. did not discover him doing this until 1990. He appears to have been playing both sides since 1984, and the CIA had been tracking him since then. At the time the article claims he was training extremists in the New York area, he was actually on official active duty at Fort Bragg, and would come to al-Kifah by his own will only on week-ends when he was free. At one point, the CIA did start suspecting he wasnâ??t being their good boy, and began monitoring him for this. Cooperative Research calls him â??a spy for bin Laden working in the US military.â?� Dixon is once again quite the dee-jay in remixing facts to make it appear Mohamed and his trainees had the CIAâ??s blessing all along, but it actually appears that the CIA had been secretly watching them the whole time! â??Some FBI agents have been assigned to watch some Middle Eastern men who are frequenting the al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Each weekend, Mohamedâ??s trainees drive from al-Kifah to the shooting range, and a small FBI surveillance team follows them. The FBI has been given a tip that some Palestinians at al-Kifah are planning violence targeting Atlantic City casinos. By August, the casino plot fails to materialize, and the surveillance, including that at the shooting range, comes to an end. Author Peter Lance will later say that why the FBI failed to follow up the shooting sessions is a â??great unanswered question.â?� [Lance, 2003, pp. 29-33; New York Times, 10/5/2003]â?�

In regard to the articleâ??s claim that Mohamedâ??s trainees were returning to Afghanistan with US assistance, Gerald Posner has a different view. He writes in his book â??Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11â?�:

â??Mohamed conducted a series of weekend "training" classes and a two-week-long intensive seminar. Almost all the volunteers were Arab immigrants. They bought $600 one-way fares as a sign they were willing to give their lives for Islam."

According to him, these fighters were forking over their own money. So whoâ??s right?

And as far as the al-Kifah Refugee Center goes, there exists no record that the U.S. was behind its activities (the capitalistic and individualism-driven culture of the United States likes to let people do whatever the fuck they wantâ?¦ well, perhaps with the exception of some Republicans). In fact, once things did start smelling fishy, the FBI cracked down on the center, and all MAK offices in New York were shut down. (Rohan Gunaratna, â??Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terrorâ?�)

Similar unfounded insinuations are made in regard to MAK somehow having the U.S.â??s total blessing as well. MAK was one of many fraudulent â??charitiesâ?� that was secretly channeling money to the Arab Afghansâ?? activities in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was not â??runningâ?� the organization as much as its actual founder, Abdullah Azzam, but yes, bin Laden definitely had his own stake in MAK. During a debate with Peter Lance (who actually seems to claim bin Laden wasnâ??t much of a MAK presence at all), Richard Miniter describes him as more of a â??quartermaster.â?�

â??There were two distinct fronts in that war in Afghanistan. One was composed of the Mujahideen, those were the native Afghans who were fighting the Soviets, they had about seven factions. Then the second front was composed of the Arab Afghans who were composed of radicals funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and Azzam was attempting to fuse them into one solid coherent force and Bin Laden was key to that effort because he was negotiating with the military leaders, trying to keep people at peace. Bin Laden was essentially the quarter master creating guest houses, training facilities, food and also most importantly a database of who all of these Islamic fighters were so that they could get letters home and things like that. So, he was working with Azzam at that point, Azzam wasn't even the senior partner.â?� (lance/miniter)

Now, on to Cooleyâ??s claims. Those who have not read the book should know that he is not very fond of citing sources in it, but even I will admit that this is a cheap shot on my part, and it also has little to do with how mind-bogglingly incorrect Dixon is in his article.

Dixon writes â?? Dixon has the audacity to write: â??John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, 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 â??black Muslimsâ?� were taught â??sabotage skillsâ?�.â?�

I can only hope that Mr. Cooley was immediately informed of how horribly misrepresented and misquoted he was here, and that he contacted the Green Left Weekly, or Dixon, to give them a piece of his mind. :cursing:

Because I am holding Cooleyâ??s book right here in front of me, open on pages 86-7, the only part in the book where Camp Peary is mentioned.

In the interests of truth and factualness, both virtues which Dixon and his paper savagely rape on a constant basis, I will transcribe word for word all of what Cooley wrote about Camp Peary, even seemingly irrelevant details such as its geography and size, instead of omitting such parts and replacing them with periods. Why? Because as we have seen, Dixon has (and will once again, as I shall demonstrate in a bitâ?¦ Iâ??m far from finished with the guy) shamelessly used sequences of periods to fool the reader into believing he was omitting irrelevant parts, when in truth he was conveniently expelling the parts which were incompatible with his point. What a true piece of shit, he is.

â??Camp Peary, nicknamed â??The Farmâ?� in the American spy world, was and probably still is the CIAâ??s main place of training for spies, infiltrators and covert operators of all sorts. Its very existence was classified secret until various visitors discovered it and began to write about it at the beginning of the 1990s. The Farm is a parcel of land about 25 square miles in area, just northeast of Williamsburg, Virginia, running between US Route 64 and the James River. Some of the future Afghan warrior-trainers, chiefly Pakistanis sent by the ISI, were probably able to see [Colonel Charles] Beckwith and his men train on a model of the occupied American embassy compound in Tehran, rehearsing all their hypothetical moves once they got over the wall. Camp Peary was also where members of the CIA Career Training Program, many of them officers seeking advancement and new assignments in covert action in Afghanistan and elsewhere, studied and worked out. Subjects, which were imparted to the trainees for the Afghan war, included use and detection of explosives; surveillance and counter-surveillance; how to write reports according to CIA â??Companyâ?� standards; how to shoot various weapons, and the running of counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations. There were also classroom courses in the all-important subject of recruiting new agents, couriers and assorted helpers. Paramilitary training also went on at another CIA-used Army Special Forces site, Harvey Point, North Carolina.â?�

Unless my eyes fail me, thereâ??s no mention of â??Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddinâ?� being â??sent to Camp Peary,â?� just U.S.-backed and ISI-backed Pakistani â??warrior-trainers.â?� Whereas until now Dixon spinned facts and bended the truth, in this instance he is downright making shit up.

If anyone is not yet convinced of what a lying and biased weasel Dixon really is, then let me also quote another excerpt from Cooleyâ??s book which Dixon appears to have conveniently skipped:

â??Grass-roots recruiting for the jihad in the United States was not handled directly by the CIA, despite its overall management of the program. Various local cover groups, often legitimate Muslim charities and mosque communities in cities such as New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and other large centers of Arab-Americans, shielded the CIA from direct recruiting. Such recruiting, and weapons training in America which followed, if directly run by the men from Langley, Virginia, would have been a flagrant violation of the CIAâ??s charter, which forbids all domestic activity inside the United States.â?�

I canâ??t believe that Iâ??ve come this far, and thereâ??s still more.

Dixon writes: â??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, â??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.â?�â?�

<BUZZER> :error:

Nice try, Norm â??Lying Shitâ?� Dixon, but weâ??re well aware of your antics by now. You try once again to disguise parts that contradict you with periods, so now we wonder, what could be hiding behind that gap between â??Yes, I didâ?� and â??[Guys like]?â?�

Gigliozzi is here to tell you:

(Actual quote

â??Did I know he was out there? Yes, I did, but did I say this tall, slim, ascetic Saudi was instrumental? No, I did not. There were a lot of bin Ladens who came to do jihad, and they unburdened us a lot. These guys were bringing in up to twenty to twenty-five million dollars a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. Itâ??s an extra two hundred to three hundred million a year. And this is what bin Laden did. He spent most of the war as a fund-raiser, in Peshawar [Pakistan]. He was not a valiant warrior on the battlefield.â?� (Mary Ann Weaver, â??The Real Bin Laden,â?� New Yorker, January 24, 2000.) (http://www.newyorker.com/FROM_THE_AR...17fr_archive07)

We can also listen to the words of Abdullah Anas, an associate of Abdullah Azzam. On September 12, 2004, he told the French television program Zone Interdit (â??Forbidden Zoneâ?�), â??If you say there was a relationship in the sense that the CIA used to meet with Arabs, discuss with them, prepare plans with them, and to fight with them â?? it never happened.â?� (The United States did not create Osama bin Laden - US Department of State)

So there. :thumbsup:

Dixon continues: â??Bin Laden only became a â??terroristâ?� 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.â?�

Um, no. Bin Laden became a â??terroristâ?? in US eyes after he was found responsible for orchestrating the bombing of the Goldmore and Aden Hotels in Aden, Yemen, on December 29, 1992, which killed two people, neither of them Americans. (More people would have died, but several bombs, including a truck full of them, had been found ahead of time and disarmed.) Bin Laden had targeted the hotel because it was at the time the temporary home of almost one hundred U.S. Marines, who had been stationed there for a supply operation. Unbeknownst to bin Laden, the Marines he had originally intended to harm had checked out of the hotels two days earlier. â??It was only after this bomb in Aden that first word came through of bin Ladenâ??s connections and how he might target America,â?� said a former senior official at the CIAâ??s directorate of operations. (â??The Road to Ground Zero,â?� The Sunday Times, January 6, 2002.) The CIA did not even set up a bin Laden â??stationâ?� inside its headquarters until January 1996. (Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002), 184.)

Thatâ??s about as much as I can take of shooting down Norm â??The Inventorâ?� Dixonâ??s roller-coaster ride of hateful, anti-American bullshit. But before I hang up on this idiot, I think Iâ??ll pass the ball to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Ladenâ??s second in command. In 2001, he wrote a manifesto for Al-Qaeda called Knights Under the Prophetâ??s Banner. Here is what he says in it about this issue:

â??While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujihideen factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujihideenâ??s relationship with the United States was totally different.
Indeed, the presence of those young Arab Afghans in Afghanistan and their increasing numbers represented a failure of U.S. policy and new proof of the famous U.S. stupidity. The financing of the activities of the Arab mujihideen came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular [Arab] organizations. It was substantial aid.
The Arab mujihideen did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujihideen themselves. Osama bin Laden has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujihideen that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 yearsâ?¦ [The Arabs] formed fronts that trained thousands of the Arab mujihideen and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel, and organization.
If the Arab mujihideen are mercenaries of the United States who rebelled against it as it alleges, why is it unable to buy them back now? Are they not counted now â?? with Osama bin Laden as their head â?? as the primary threat to U.S. interests? Is not buying them more economical and less costly than the astronomical budgets that the United States is allotting for security and defense?â?�
---------------------------------------

So the conclusions here are the following:

1) Norm Dixon is an asshole, who has read and knows the truth but wants to lie to us and his readers simply to propel his hateful beliefs. How this man is allowed to work for a newspaper is beyond me.
2) The Green Left Weekly is just as much at fault for having this fraud on their payroll.
3) The United States did not â??fund, arm, and trainâ?� bin Laden. Just let it go, people.
4) Ron Paul is STILL wrong, and unfit for the presidency.

Fishman, in rushing to find a published article to counter my argument, you ended up trusting a pathetically incorrect and outrageously dishonest piece. Did you at all bother to verify Dixonâ??s â??reportingâ?� as you were reading it?

I hope my merciless analysis of it will prompt you to consider taking the time to do that in the future. I would hate to see you, or anyone, fall prey to the nauseating misinformation of bullshit-cannons such as the Green Left Weekly.

Whoo! Thatâ??s it. Thatâ??s the end, right here, people. Congratulations to all who got this far. Wasnâ??t that easy on me either. Took me all morning to research and write this.

Can I get some kudos?

[fishman3811]

OK i was misinformed ive been reading on the net and your right the CIA didnt fund the Arab fighters or Bin Laden.Im glad i know the truth now thanks....peace

[Breukelen advocaat]

Great work, Gigli. :thumbsup: