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Fair number of Afghan helicopters were US supplied Russian ones. Cheap to buy, easier to fly and simpler to look after. I suspect many will be back in the air shortly. Easy targets for drones I’d think.
The other point that one ought to make is that organisations aren't homogenous, they're (obviously) made up of people. Those employees often have little to no understanding of what other employees in that organisations are doing, why they're doing what they're doing, or who's paying for it and why, especially so in ultra secretive organisations like the CIA and whether that opposes or supports other equally oblivious employees in other organisations made up of further employees striking out in the dark with their own sets of instructions, plans and ideas...then add into that individual beliefs, motivations, bribes, friendships, personal deals...
...Chaos
But yeah, here's a photo of Prince Charles standing next to a random Arabic Prince...
Mind you, while I don’t think they’d be able to operate them at anything like a regular Air Force would, they’d make pretty effective weapons for one way suicide missions, no?
Do the Taliban have a history of suicide missions? Genuine question, I wasn't aware they had, I thought IEDs where their preferred way of killing people.
Terrorists place bombs on the ground, the good guys drop them from the sky.
Do you now accept that the US didn’t fund Bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Or are you picking and choosing which bits of wikipedia you believe?
According to a much respected former UK Foreign Secretary, who wasn't noted for being a conspiracy theorist, the US funded Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
His exact words :
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development
Do the Taliban have a history of suicide missions? Genuine question,
I don't think they have (as far as I know) I don't know if that's some ideological belief or whether they've just never had airplanes available to them to use. Let's hope they don't start, eh?.
I don't think there's evidence for bin Laden being funded directly by the CIA. The evidence says he fought with the mujahedeen who were being supplied weapons by the Chinese and ****stanis, and the money to buy them came from Saudi Arabia and the US (via the CIA) and I don't think Cooks article says any thing other than that, although you can read it either way.
Edit: and that's not evidence, that's just Cook's version of events
Osama bin Laden was always an extremely big player in the Afghan jihad. He wasn't some minor individual who the CIA inadvertently funded, trained, and armed.
I don’t think Cooks article says any thing other than that, although you can read it either way
Cook could not have been more crystal clear in what he meant, I can't see how it could be read "either way".
The shoulder-mounted stinger missiles were the jihadists most prized weapon, in fact nothing typifies more the Afghan jihad than photo of a traditionally Muslim dressed man with a stinger missile on his shoulder.
They weren't supplied by either China nor ****stan.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/sns-worldtrade-missiles-lat-story.html
Sure, but the Evidence shows that analysts in the CIA knew who bin Laden was, what he wanted, and who he blamed for Muslim suppression, so the idea that..
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.
Is not the whole story, as some people in the CIA knew exactly that's what he'd do. It was just that it was in their interest of some people within the CIA at the time to supply the mujahedeen with weaponry to **** about with Russians and that's what they did. They may have read him wrong, or not paid attention sufficiently well, or underestimated him and all those things, but the idea that bin Laden worked for or was handed wads of cash by the CIA is for the birds.
Cook could not have been more crystal clear in what he meant, I can’t see how it could be read “either way”.
Try harder, you're not that stupid
According to a much respected former UK Foreign Secretary, who wasn’t noted for being a conspiracy theorist, the US funded Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
He's simply wrong, just as he is wrong about the origin of the name Al Qaeda (unless you think Robin Cook knows the history better than Bin Laden himself). http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/
Cook's unsourced assertion - in an comment piece banged out in less than 24 hours after 7/7 - goes against the twenty years of research that we now have.
People should read Steve Coll's excellent book on the Bin Ladens, which describes in detail how OBL gathered money from Saudi donors (but not the state) and distributed it in Afghanistan. It also details the limited extent of OBL's involvement in the contracting business and his knowledge of engineering (which puts paid to a lot of the early myths presumably spread by OBL himself of OBL driving diggers through Tora Bora and importing bulldozers from "his" company). There's plenty of detail about the family's real estate investments in Florida too...
Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.
"Washington" does lots of inexplicable things (dissolving the Iraqi army) with disastrous consequences (Iraqi civil war, ISIS).
I don't know why my Chicago Tribune link doesn't show any text, presumably it's a paywall thing.
I can read the whole article but I guess this paragraph sums up my point.
Taliban forces in Afghanistan still have about 100 U.S.-supplied Stingers, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, and the weapons are potentially well suited to destroy the helicopters that are expected to soon begin ferrying U.S. special forces into the country.
Written 20 years ago.
you’re not that stupid
Thanks for suggesting that my stupidity is limited, but how can you be sure?
Btw there's well researched books which claim that man-made climate change is nonexistent.
Apparently there's even books which claim that the moon is artificial and not natural.
It understandable that for some people the reality that Al Qaeda is the monster which the West created is too much to accept. Also understandable is that some people will be busy writing books to shift the blame.
I can read the whole article but I guess this paragraph sums up my point.
Taliban forces in Afghanistan still have about 100 U.S.-supplied Stingers, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, and the weapons are potentially well suited to destroy the helicopters that are expected to soon begin ferrying U.S. special forces into the country.
Is your point "the Taliban had US weapons in 2001 and this proves the CIA funded Bin Laden"?
Connoisseurs will note the immediate abandonment of Robin Cook as a source and the shift to "yeah, well you can prove anything with books, can't you?"...
Edit: eff this
Mujahedeen - disparate rebel groups mostly native Afghanis from various ethnic groups
Taliban coalition of three or more ethic pashtun Mujahedeen groups
Al Qaeda largely Arab lbut almost exclusively foreign to Afghanistan terrorist group
Is your point “the Taliban had US weapons in 2001 and this proves the CIA funded Bin Laden”?
No that's not my point at all. If you read back carefully you will see that it was in response to this :
"The evidence says he fought with the mujahedeen who were being supplied weapons by the Chinese and ****stanis"
The clue was in my accompanying comment :
"They weren’t supplied by either China nor ****stan."
And there is no "abandonment" of Robin Cook as a source....wtf is a connoisseur in this context, unless you feel that using pretentious language somehow makes your point more valid?
The former UK Foreign Secretary's opinion on the matter is not somehow less valid than the opinion of some random geezer on a mtb forum who reckons that he's read a book.
Robin Cook's opinions carry a lot of weight. He was well-formed, took his brief very seriously, would have accessed far more material than I am ever likely to, including restricted information.
He was right about the Iraq war, ie Iraq didn't have WMDs, it was attacked because it was weak not because it was a threat, and the war was a disaster. But feel free to dismiss him if his opinions don't fit in with your narrative.
first time i've watched the new GB TV and they were really laying into Biden on this - never mind the role Trump played earlier. Evil little channel, that i have now hidden on the EPG.
Robin Cook’s opinions carry a lot of weight
It's the opinion of a politician, and a politician who spent time in the Foreign Office so everything he says is supposed to be open to interpretation, that's literally his job. He knows that anything he writes will be read be people who still have to deal with the FCO, and everything he says has to be able to be "interpreted" by those people. There's numerous audiences that he's writing for. But yeah, by all means take it face value if you want. I genuinely don't think you're that naive though
But feel free to dismiss him if his opinions don’t fit in with your narrative.
Literally everyone and anyone has an opinion, it's still not evidence of anything, and the evidence (what there is publicly available) makes his statement about Washington being surprised about the activities of bin Laden laughably innaccurate.
and to think, that’s the same fella (Bandar Bin Sultan) that set the Al Yamamah deal in motion which got Prince Andrew all het up when it looked like the Serious Fraud Office were going to delve deeper.
Wonder what Sherard Cowper Coles, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time, who successfully intervened to prevent full investigation, before becoming HM Ambassador to Afghanistan the very next year is up to now?
Sherard Cowper Coles, was Robin Cook's PPS 1999-2001...
It's all very well to suggest the CIA or MI6 (or the many other intelligence agencies with whom they collaborate) are organizations in chaos, with no real co-ordination; in fact, if you look at this paragraph:
US intelligence helped Saddam's Ba`ath Party seize power for the first time in 1963. Evidence suggests that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, when he participated in a failed assassination attempt against Iraqi strongman Abd al-Karim Qassem. In the 1980s, the US and Britain backed Saddam in the war against Iran, giving Iraq arms, money, satellite intelligence, and even chemical & bio-weapon precursors. As many as 90 US military advisors supported Iraqi forces and helped pick targets for Iraqi air and missile attacks.
It would be hard to argue that the outcome of CIA efforts supporting Saddam Hussein in the late 50s was mapped out decades in advance... I for one wouldn't suggest that for a moment, however, when you modus operandi is to covertly plough weapons into a situation, you can't really be too suprised when
a) You spark a trend whereby the global arms race intensifies and more and more resources and funding are ploughed into the weapons trade as nations rush to remain competitive and protect their interests (which just so happens to be quite profitable for many in political, military and intelligence circles)
and
b) It blows up in your face
Quite aside from all this, just why is it that the UK and US remain so in league with Saudi Arabia, happy to turn a blind eye to all manner of transgressions, from the orchestrated spread of wahhabism, to the vast humanitarian crisis in Yemen, to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (who lest we forget, is reported to have been Saudi Intelligence's go-between with Osama Bin Laden)?
I will take your opinion onboard Nick.
Literally everyone and anyone has an opinion
Yeah it's a bit like anthropogenic climate change, but I decide who to trust.
I have no idea why I've got pulled up for quoting a foreign secretary though, or why his opinions are somehow less valid than yours or politecamaraman.
Especially when his analysis of Iraq/the terrorist situation, based on exactly the same intelligence access as the prime minister, proved to be so much more accurate than Tony Blair's.
I've offered an alternative pov to yours, you decide if you want to accept it. Whatever your conclusion it's unlikely to have a global impact.
When did kaBULL become Karble?