You must have also found in your studies that Osama bin Laden, the main proponent of "Islamo-fascism", was a former operative of the CIA for many years in Afghanistan during the '80s against the Soviet Union and in the '90s in Chechnya. You also must have learned that the bin Laden family has very strong business ties to the Bush family..."Does anyone out there have a source for this bit of revolting news?
I would sure like to know how much of that is truth... none, some, or all.
2 comments:
Hi Bob. This is something I'd heard before too, but never bothered to investigate. When I read your post, I popped over to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about it. They actually have some decent info with references and everything.
Overall, though, it looks like the answer is, "officially, no." But I guess we ultimately have to make our own judgment based on how much we enjoy conspiracy theory. Here's the relevant info from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,
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.[43]
However, Peter Bergen, a CNN journalist and adjunct professor who is known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, rejected Cook's notion, stating on August 15, 2006, the following:
that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden—is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[44]
Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran ISI's Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:
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.[45]
Other sources also dispute the notion that the CIA had any contact with non-Afghan mujahideen[46]
For a while Osama worked at the Services Office working with Abdullah Azzam on Jihad Magazine, a magazine that gave information about the war with the soviets and interviewed mujahideen. As time passed, Aymen Al Zawahiri encouraged Osama to split away from Abdullah Azzam. Osama formed his own army of mujahideen and fought the Soviets. One of his most significant battles was the battle of Jaji, which was not a major fight, but it earned him a reputation as a fighter.
It's all true.
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