Doh, wrong collective, sorry fedquip. Damn dropdown menus

Stewart's best performance ever, I think.

I'm surprised this hasn't got more votes.

There's no money in helping your own country. There's plenty of money to be had in selling arms to warring nations, however.

so... us military sales to saddam before the kuwait invasion made regime change then a potential quagmire?? that us military sales to the taliban emboldened them??

really???

not really

from 1972 to 1990 us military sales to saddam amounted to a measly total of 200m dollars, in the form of 117 light helicopters -- during the same period, the warsaw pact, china and others sold saddam a grand total of 43.96 BILLION dollars worth of military goods, making the us contribution towards the whole a whopping half a percent

in afghanistan, us aid went to afghan mujahideen until the soviets pulled out in 1989 -- when was the taliban created? oh yeah, 1994... hmmm? but, but... weren't the mujahideen and the taliban allies?? nope, they were enemies... in fact, the mujahideen fought alongside us forces AGAINST the taliban since 2001

so... if this was posted for jon's very funny comedy - great! heh heh, his hammish act is always worth some laughs

if this was posted as any sort of political history, well, it's lack of context makes it dishonest

Oh, but Diogenes you leave out a bit. In addition to the US funding the mujahideen rebels, the CIA trained and beefing up the Taliban, as well as funding bin Laden to fight the Russias if needed. Starting in 1985.

We really like funding both sides. And hedging our bets always leads to problems.

oh, but you'd be wrong, though it's hard to blame anyone for believing such a simple and widespread myth

right off the bat, the afghan mujahideen were not the taliban and the arab mujahideen were not the afghan mujahideen -- these were three distinct groups

the us funded only the afghan mujahideen from july 1979 (sorry, jon, you should have shown carter, not reagan) to february 1989

the taliban was not formed until 1994, and didn't come from the afghan mujahideen anyway, so the us had no connection to them

the third group in the soviet invasion of afghanistan was the arab mujahideen -- these were arab 'freedom fighters' recruited from many middle-eastern countries and funded extensively by the saudi gov't and privately -- *important* the us and/or cia did not recruit, fund, train or in any way assist these arab mujahideen, including bin laden and a nascent al qaeda

i know you don't want to believe it, but those are the facts -- start digging, the truth is there to be found - the most conclusive of which is osama and zaywahiri directly disputing any connection

*NSFW for bitch word.

This video has been marked NSFW (called by gold star member ant)

If you want someone to reject their understanding/recollection of reports they've previously absorbed you really have to do the foot work and point them to sorces, Diogenes. I can't imaging it would take more than 10 min, during which time you can listen to some more Daily Show.

I personally remember reading that the US provided intel and loaned money to the Iraq government to fight Iran... and then Rumsfeld hopped over there to make sure the world knew the US was picking a side to support.

heh, this clip could be the video definition for "Blowback - Unintended Consequences".
( jeez i hope we make it to 2008 )

ok, bamdrew, though i won't say fair enough...

the daily show really shouldn't have it both ways - it's either a comedy show or it's a news program -- jon stewart on crossfire intimated that the show shouldn't be taken seriously because they followed a program where puppets make crank phone calls

if this is the source of other people's beliefs or 'what they've absorbed' then i can only shake my head - too many people are not sufficiently circumspect of what they accept as a source for their understandings

so, with no idea of why, what, or from where they draw their beliefs...

yes, i'll try to help in providing what they apparently can't or don't want to find

osama / taliban:

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html

as to saddam, well, your contention and mine aren't specifically at cross purposes...

the tds clip appears to claim that our military sales to saddam made him too powerful to easily remove in any subsequent regime change

to this you bring up rumsfeld and intel - both of which, i'll wager, did very little to strengthen saddam vis a vis the tds claim -- the military sales / aid i already clarified in my first post here

only the most obtuse of revisionists will fail to remember the context of realpolitik of the early '80s -- the ayatollah's islamic revolution having just seized control of iran--as well as their taking and holding us hostages for 444 days (and finally releasing them just two years before the rumsfeld photo), and providing hezbollah support with which they kidnapped more americans in lebanon--meant that the us was pleased to have a secular foil on the arab street

you may find it interesting that, in speaking of the infamous photo op of saddam and rumsfeld shaking hands, for every such photo, i can provide you with at least five of jacques chirac and saddam

Oh Diogenes you need to go find a lantern. The usinfo web site is nothing more than Bush's mouth piece Karen Hughes. And why should I believe Bergen without any citations by him?

Did bin Laden receive funds, weapons or training directly from the CIA? No, but all mujahideen benefited in one way or another from the CIA's support of Pakistan's ISI. And bin Laden would not have any reason to go to Afghanistan and become a freedom fighter if not for the United States' prodding that led to the Soviet invasion in the first place. Directly or indirectly the CIA's meddling in that part of the country had a hand in creating Al Qaeda.

My citations?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1113164
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1000554

so, wait... you won't believe or credit any information from the us state department's public affairs section because of a perceived punditry by its under secretary, but you'll readily give credence to a site like globalresearch.ca, which itself is a mishmash of hackery, anti-americanism and anti-globalization?

heh, there goes your credibility

your second link is a wonder of the 'cut-and-splice, out-of-context quotation' technique, infamously popularized by the likes of michael moore

'but all mujahideen benefited in one way or another from the CIA's support of Pakistan's ISI.'

yes, in your unsurprisingly obtuse statement, a greater us support for the afghan mujahideen meant more military successes, which in turn meant that osama and the rest of the arab mujahideen didn't necessarily need to risk their necks in battle, as we have seen was the case during the soviet invasion - this could certainly be seen as a benefit for the latter

'And bin Laden would not have any reason to go to Afghanistan and become a freedom fighter if not for the United States' prodding that led to the Soviet invasion in the first place.'

revisionist garbage

as noted in my second post here, us aid began in 1979, not 1980 - but your stretching that to mean that the us brought on the entire invasion is too much -- with your 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' argument completely ignoring afghan political history prior to july 1979, such as the panjdeh incident, tacit soviet support for the marxist pdpa since the late '50s, and the soviet-afghan bilateral treaty of support and cooperation of 1978, popular uprisings against the atheistic reform programs of the taraki gov't leading to soviet-backed executions and mass bombings killing over 50,000 afghan protestors, and finally the fact that the amin gov't was requesting significant and direct soviet military involvement prior to any actions taken by the us... this goes to show how simplistic your view of the situation is, and that your laying the blame for osama and al qaeda at the doorstep of the united states is inappropriate

your cites also continue to claim that the taliban was the beneficiary of us aid - this is complete bunk -- ALL us aid to pakistan--and by isi-extension, to afghanistan--ended on october 1, 1990 and is a matter of record under the pressler amendment

basically what your skewed sources are claiming is that because us aid in the '80s supported the afghan mujahideen fighting the soviets, thus any afghan who fought against the soviets with us aid who then went on to support the taliban in the mid-'90s, well... ipso facto, the us aided the taliban

nice reasoning - lol

Woah Woah Woah! I NEVER said the US aided the Taliban. As far as I can tell you are the one that brought that gem in to the conversation. It is you that are jumping to conclusions.

A) My credibility, your credibility, what does it matter. You brought two sources to the table, I brought four. You don't like my sources, I don't like yours. And yes in my view the us state department's public affairs is nothing more than a creation for suck puppetry propaganda.

B) I see you agree with me that's good.

"a greater us support for the afghan mujahideen meant more military successes, which in turn meant that osama and the rest of the arab mujahideen didn't necessarily need to risk their necks in battle, as we have seen was the case during the soviet invasion - this could certainly be seen as a benefit for the latter"

Diogenes is on PAR, with the best of em.....so being on a payroll perhaps, the kinna person who is either to dense t and believes official, promulgated "facts", or some internets blurb from a stroker,
or to blind to see his own shadow, in broad daylight, won't make this stream anything but a convoluted circle-jerk.....Afraid it is like a big contest for power-grabbing Diogenes, and while personally, can't stands the spokesmouth (dailyshowguy) most times, we can see what tossing so-called reports from both camps, without having allll the intel, and truth, on a subject as elementary as global proprietary geopolitical information is going to amount to....JACK SHIT. No one has a complete set of player, information, and timeline, how about those 3 for starters.....so, prove there is not a behind the official story set of circumstances, to begin.

Bill Hicks had a nice segment that reminded me of this. Somewhere on the Sift...

whoa, whoa, whoa... i never said that YOU said that the us aided the taliban - read more carefully -- i also was not the first to bring it up... jon did with his graphic innuendo at 3:25 in the vid - when my correction of this misinformation was subsequently challenged by nebosuke, i reiterated the mistakes in the initial premise - then you came in chiding me for not providing references

but if you check carefully, you'll see that what i said to you in regards to the taliban was prefaced with:

'your cites also continue to claim...'

and

'basically what your skewed sources are claiming...'

so, am i offbase? not at all - your cites did indeed misrepresent...

'Backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence, which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests.'

'These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment “opposition to Uncle Sam” in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America’s broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.'

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm

so either you don't read your own sources, or you don't believe them -- nice

a. your cites, my cites - yeah, who cares? i at least carefully read both mine and yours -- what follows in this post should satisfy your need for a higher (both in number and quality) degree of sourcing than you've provided - speaking of which, bergen doesn't provide his sources because HE is the primary source -- your cites' quotings from the likes of abdel monem said ali and ahmed rashid are what are called secondary and tertiary sources -- finally, i think when you fully peruse the citations i'll provide, you'll see that the sourcing of the state dept webpage belies your opinion of it

b. lol - if you think i agree with you, then you are pretty dense -- you probably blame hurricanes on butterfly wings

c. 'And prior history notwithstanding, without the ISI's, and through them the US, insistance on bringing in Arabs to fight with the mujahideen there would LIKELY be no Al Qaeda.'

lol, again - what makes you think that the us and isi insisted on bringing in arabs to fight? you're very misinformed -- first of all, if they did insist, then why the hell didn't the arabs fight? heh --- what both the us and isi DID want was SUPPORT, re. cash and logistics

unfortunately, along with the cash, the arab states sent us their fundamentalist troublemakers and criminals given early parole to fight for islam in afghanistan, e.g. the folks who assassinated anwar sadat, etc -- the trouble came about after the afghans won and the arab states didn't want their 'jihadists' back - lol

but anyway, here are the cites and sources for you...

'Assess for me the role of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan Arabs in the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Arab element of the ten year engagement in Afghanistan was fundamental to its success, but within the context of fund-raiser.'

'The Saudi Arabian government, and rich, wealthy princes ... contributed and matched dollar for dollar the US government's money in the Afghan war?

That was within the context of the program that CIA was managing. And that's the way it was funded. And that is known. Beyond that, you had Saudi Red Crescent and all forms of Gulf Arab organizations who were drawn to the only operative jihad at the time, a very major event within the world of Islam. And they were fund-raisers. And they brought additional moneys into the Afghan program, into the resistance from their own sources, and did good works.

They built orphanages, they built homes for widows of martyrs, and brought in, after the war turned to the advantage of the mujahedeen, some ... 20 to 25 million dollars a month. ... So in that regard, they played a very major role. Now, part of your question is what about the combat role. Minimal. There were some Arabs that fought with some mujahedeen groups, but not many. At any given time, inside Afghanistan, [there were] maybe 2,000 Arabs. ... But the people of Afghanistan fought that war, they bled, they died, they were driven out of their country. To suggest that others were engaged in the combat activity to any extent is just simply wrong.'

'Who were the Afghan Arabs?

Muslims from all over the world: North Africa, Persian Gulf, but from all over the world. Other than that, you had a rag tag bunch of Muslims that were taken from one jail or another, whether it's in Cairo or in Algiers or any other country in the Gulf, and put on an airplane and flown to go do the jihad with the fondest hope that they not come back. They didn't die in great numbers. They died in tiny numbers, and they did come back. And my bet is that even the Saudis were terribly happy to see the son Osama bin Laden go off to war. And some might have thought wouldn't it be nice if he didn't return.'

'Because so much of what we hear about Osama bin Laden comes out of his Afghanistan experience, I'm trying to get this straight, he was mostly a philanthropist and a financial contributor, and a minor combat figure, who happened to dabble in combat?

... I can possibly give him credit for having been present and accounted for at one major battle in ... Baktia Province in 1987. Beyond that, I simply cannot say that there is any war record at all. What I can say is that the hype that surrounds Osama bin Laden--most of it generated by the US media and backed up by statements that verge on hyperbole from the United States government--that this man was literally swinging through the valleys of the Hindu Kush with a dagger in his teeth and single-handedly driving out the Soviet army, this did not happen. The Afghan people did that. The Arab role in the combat situation on the ground was minimal to nonexistent, period. And to suggest otherwise is simply to either gloss over history or to create history for your own reasons.

I can imagine someone out there watching saying. "This is the CIA talking." You're not going to admit that you created the most dangerous public enemy in the world.

You bet I would. If I could look you in the eye and say, "Trust me, Osama bin Laden was my guy. If it wasn't for the CIA he wouldn't be anything then, he wouldn't be anything today," if I could say that with a straight face, I think that would speed up the process of removing Mr. bin Laden as a source of great, great concern for the United States. I can't say that because it's simply not true. You can find nobody who is familiar with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those years that would say bin Laden played any role other than the fund-raiser.'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/bearden.html

'MILTON BEARDEN, AUTHOR; FORMER STATION CHIEF, CIA: That's what it was. It was a jihad, and it was a jihad for ten years. There were a million Afghans killed, a million-and-a-half wounded or maimed, and five million driven into exile. That's -- it's awfully close to 50 percent of the population of the country. So it was in fact a jihad, and our role was pretty much tandential to what everybody else was doing. The Afghans were doing the dying and the fighting. The Saudis and the Americans were paying the freight. The Chinese were ordinance. They provided an awful lot of weaponry. The Egyptians provided a lot of weaponry. And bin Laden and a lot of young Gulf Arabs and other Arabs came to do the jihad.

ADAMS: It was quite a cause for them.

BEARDEN: Of course, it was.

ADAMS: Did you meet bin Laden then?

BEARDEN: No, no. Bin Laden was one of many. Bin Laden is becoming a myth that I'm a little uncomfortable with. When bin Laden was in Peshawar in Pakistan where he spent almost all of the war, but he was a fundraiser. We are talking about money that came from Gulf Arabs in a given month could have been $20, 25 million in a given month.

ADAMS: Had you heard about this man, though, that had $250 million of his father's money from Saudi Arabia to bring to the cause?

BEARDEN: Had I heard of him? I knew bin Laden was out there. I knew that the Saudi Red Crescent was out there. I knew that all of the Red Crescent organizations of the Gulf Arab states were out there. But did I take a look and say that this tall thin ascetic-looking Saudi was special? No. To be perfectly frank, the money that they brought in relieved the United States and Saudi Arabia of going deeper into their own national treasuries for more money.'

'ADAMS: When the Gulf War starts and bin Laden says never has Islam suffered a greater disaster than this invasion, meaning the presence of U.S. forces there to defend Kuwait and to support Saudi Arabia, and you hear this, and you know these are the guys that you helped -- the CIA helped fight against the Soviet Union -- what do you think? What's your reaction at that time?

BEARDEN: Well, a couple of reactions. One, CIA, CIA as the executive instrument of the United States government, you know, three presidents beginning with Jimmy Carter were helping the Afghan people resist the Soviet invasion. It's a real stretch in my opinion to say we helped bin Laden or even cared about him. That he participated in it most certainly -- it was OK with us. It was his business and all that.

Now on the one hand, it was fundamentalist Islam that defeated the Soviet Union, and it set in play or set in motion the history that played out through 1989. November 9th, the Berlin Wall is breached, and it's all over.

Now that some of the Arabs that went to that jihad have remained problematic, sure. Am I shocked? Not really. You know, war brings strange allies together, doesn't it? I mean, if you had to worry about unintended consequences, then would we have ever helped Joseph Stalin deal with that other great acute evil, Adolph Hitler? Sure we would, even though 200 million people get subjugated for 50 years; and we spend our nation's treasure for half a century dealing with the Soviet Union.'

http://www.asms.net/facultymanaged/srou/osamabinladen/real%20Articles/Interview%20with%20CIA%20agaent.htm

'Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan.'

http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/Understanding-Terror-Networks-Sageman.asp

'REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, tell us about your experience during the Afghan war and what did you do during that jihad?

BIN LADIN: Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, that He made it possible for us to aid the Mujahidin in Afghanistan without any declaration for jihad. It was rather the news that was broadcast by radio stations that the Soviet Union invaded a Muslim country. This was a sufficient motivation for me to start to aid our brothers in Afghanistan. I have benefited so greatly from the jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such a benefit from any other chance and this cannot be measured by tens of years but rather more than that, Praise and Gratitude be to God. In spite of the Soviet power, we used to move with confidence and God conferred favors on us so that we transported heavy equipment from the country of the Two Holy Places (Arabia) estimated at hundreds of tons altogether that included bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks and equipment for digging trenches. When we saw the brutality of the Russians bombing Mujahidins' positions, by the grace of God, we dug a good number of huge tunnels and built in them some storage places and in some others we built a hospital.'

http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

'Was this the origin of al Qaeda?

Yes. al Qaeda wasn't an outgrowth of Adbullah Azaam's "Office of Services," as has been suggested elsewhere. al Qaeda grew in opposition to Azzam's organization, not out of it. Azzam's organization had been becoming something like an NGO, which provided education and the like. Bin Laden didn't want to do that. He wanted to fight the Soviets by forming his own group. But this is also an early example of an interesting trait of bin Laden's: He acts on impulse and doesn't follow good advice. Azzam didn't think the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan were all that important to the anti-Soviet effort. So Azzam wanted to pepper them among different Afghan units and use them as morale-boosters. Bin Laden didn't listen. And at the end of the day Azzam was right: It was the blood of Afghans that won the war against the Soviets, along with lots of money from the United States and Saudi Arabia.'

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/31205/

'Peter, what is the--you talk a little bit in the book about this notion of blowback, the fact that the CIA really created al-Qaeda or the entire--this sort of Muslim fundamentalism network that we're now facing and more or less put lie to that, or at least minimized the impact of the CIA and say that Osama bin Laden had a bigger part in that.

Mr. BERGEN: Well, I mean, I--just for clarity's purposes, the CIA, you know, obviously had a big role in the Afghan resistance, $3 billion they supplied, but they were basically signing checks. And it's interesting--it's a widely held view on the left that somehow CIA was involved in the founding of al-Qaeda or helped bin Laden, and conspiracy theorists around the world believe this, but there's just no evidence for it. Surprisingly, there are very few things that the US government and bin Laden agree upon, but Ayman al-Zawahiri has released statements that there was no backing from the United States. Other people within al-Qaeda--there really is just simply no evidence for that. The real story is not that the CIA knew who--you know, was helping out bin Laden 'cause they had no idea who he was until about 1995 when they first set up a unit in--specially looking at him directly in January of 1996. So really the story is not one of CIA complicity in the rise of bin Laden; it's actually ignoring the problem before it was too late.'

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5151657

d. i have a very open mind, but it's also quite critical - i try to check the facts that i choose to believe very carefully, and if i ever see a source that intentionally tries to deceive, well, they lose all credibility with me - that's why all these CT nuts with their tongue-in-cheek logical fallacies and faulty syllogisms hold no truck with me -- if that means i have a closed mind, in your opinion, so be it - i'm more than fine with that

First Comedy Central *findthumb...

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also for international ppl who cant view TDS clips
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/23/daily-show-three-generations-of-america-to-the-rescue/

Embed seems to be not valid on my end.. I'm from "foreign" so this video wont work for me, I'll let it Deadpool so you can fix it if you want, Fedquip

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