Democrats were willing dupes...again

[StevenSeagal]

Ok Fairweather thanks for helping me straighten it out. Here is your reply to GGK:

 

Explain. I'll bet you can't. Saudis? Sure. Saudi does not equal Taliban. Why are you so xenophobic and hegemonic, Gutter Slop

 

Again no question at all. You clearly indicate that you believe Bush never hosted the Taliban. Turns out you were correct.

 

Your reply never suggests that you were unfamiliar with the Taliban's US visit. Matt's post suggesting you Google it clearly suggests that your reply was factually incorrect and that you are clueless about the visit.

 

You're all clueless. I have this all figured out with my super secret access to the CIA!

[olyclimber]

the funds given to the islamic fighters in afghanistan was done through several presidencies (both democratic and republican)

[mattp]

There actually WAS a story behind Glasgow's post. I agree there may not have been a direct Bush connection at the time so had you bothered to look it up you could have made a stronger reply than assuming he was confusing the Taliban with the Saudis and calling him names.

 

But was there some other connection? Wasn't Bush governor then? Or if, as you so often seem to argue, any friend of our enemy is by definition a traitor, should we wonder whether Cheney is a traitor based on dealings he had with the Taliban several years before 911?

 

But your "example" appears to be rhetorical nonsense.

 

 

[Fairweather]

Um, Glassgow dishes out more name calling than I could ever give. He's an hysterical tool, and the fact that you are willing to support his "incorrect" claims with nothing more than a weak-knee suggestion to 'Google it' based solely on your hatred of Bush says a lot. Next time you make or wish to support a claim, try giving it some teeth with a fact-based link...and a reality check.

[olyclimber]

given our government was dealing with radical islamics in Afghanistan for some time, it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal that Bush might have met with them when they visited texas. bush was an oil man and was then governor...what was it...1997?

 

http://www.jihadunspun.com/articles/04152002-Bush.Oil.Taliban/index.html

 

Madeleine Albright was the first to refuse to negotiate with the Taliban in 1997. Before that, from 1994 to '97, Clinton did negotiate with the Taliban. We describe the meeting of Rocca and some Taliban leaders in Islamabad in August 2001. There are documents to support it. And at the same time in Washington there are lots of meetings of the energy policy task force and lots of oil company representatives around Dick Cheney. The task force's conclusion is that Central Asia oil is a very important goal. And at the same time people are negotiating with the Taliban for the first time since 1994.

[mattp]

Whatever, Fairweather.

[sobo]

i'm reading a book about about the arise of the taliban right now...we knew very well what the taliban where all about and that they were rabidly anti-american (but then they aren't the only ones). the Taliban and the extremist Islamic movement in Afghanistan served us well in encouraging the Soviet Union to leave that area towards the end of the Cold War. our money was green and they took it as they saw the anti-religious communist as a more immediate threat at the time. then once that ceased to be a problem they turned their love towards the West.

 

This one? If not, then I highly recommend that you add it to your list.

 

[StevenSeagal]

given our government was dealing with radical islamics in Afghanistan for some time, it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal that Bush might have met with them when they visited texas. bush was an oil man and was then governor...what was it...1997?

 

http://www.jihadunspun.com/articles/04152002-Bush.Oil.Taliban/index.html

 

Madeleine Albright was the first to refuse to negotiate with the Taliban in 1997. Before that, from 1994 to '97, Clinton did negotiate with the Taliban. We describe the meeting of Rocca and some Taliban leaders in Islamabad in August 2001. There are documents to support it. And at the same time in Washington there are lots of meetings of the energy policy task force and lots of oil company representatives around Dick Cheney. The task force's conclusion is that Central Asia oil is a very important goal. And at the same time people are negotiating with the Taliban for the first time since 1994.

 

Please stop with the facts. I need more hyperbole. I'm not feeling it.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

We are no longer at war with Eurasia, people!!!

[Fairweather]

Oceania.

 

[olyclimber]

 

the writer obviously has a bit of an agenda, but it seems to be well researched and based on fact.

[sobo]

I'll have to check that one out. Please do read Taliban. It's dense, with a lot of historical background to lead up to the meat, but well worth the read in the end.

[mattp]

given our government was dealing with radical islamics in Afghanistan for some time, it wouldn't actually be that big of a deal that Bush might have met with them when they visited texas. bush was an oil man and was then governor...what was it...1997?

 

I agree with that, Porter. In the interest of business and even politics, we deal with bad people all the time.

 

I think Glasgow's point may have been that these guys seem to be criticizing McDCermott for lending support to Saddam, but Bush or maybe Cheney had previously lent support to the Taliban at a time when, even back in 1997, they knew that the Taliban were enemies of the U.S.

 

I don't think it is quite the same -- we had not already been through one war with the Taliban and were not engaged in a campaign to start a second war with them in 1997 -- and MCDermott was there to make a statement about our foreign policy and not to make a business deal. But there certainly is SOME similarity. They were clearly hostile to us at least in their rhetoric.

 

I also don't think McDermott was lending support to Saddam. He said it was not time to invade, but he certainly did not say anything "nice" about Saddam that I can recall.

[JosephH]

CBS / 2007 - U.S. oil services firm Halliburton Co. is shifting its corporate headquarters and chief executive from Houston to Dubai in a move that immediately sparked criticism from U.S. members of Congress.

 

This, after years of relentlessly pursuing business in Iran even after 9/11 and the start of the Iraq War. Cheney has stalled Justice Department investigations and will continue to until he is out of office. I expect an extensive list of blanket pardons on Bush's last day in office covering a broad spectrum of administration and corporate officials.

 

Which is a bigger problem - a visit to Iraq to see if we should be starting a war, or executing every possible legal loophole in a desperate bid to do hundreds of millions worth of business with Iran? Funny what people can be distracted by, but political distraction has been the main agenda at the Justice Department for some time now.

[mattp]

Careful there, Joseph. If you suggest that Cheney is a calculating businessman or ruthless politician and not a true patriot you may find these guys calling you a conspiracy theorist or a traitor.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Careful there, Joseph. If you suggest that Cheney is a calculating businessman or ruthless politician and not a true patriot you may find these guys calling you a conspiracy theorist or a traitor.

 

The only traitor is Baghdad McDillhole.

[StevenSeagal]

Settle down guys. Cheney has a right to make a living just like the rest of us. If you don't like it, you could start your own oil services company, you know.

[tvashtarkatena]

The bottom line was they had no business being there in the build up to the war. I remember feeling that they were distinctly giving shelter to the enemy.

 

 

 

Apparently the State Department felt differently. They approved the trip. A Congressman's job includes fact finding trips like this, particularly one aimed and preventing a war based on lies. McDermott's assertions that Saddam had no WMDs (something I, and practically everyone I knew already knew before the invasion) have been proven 100% correct since this trip. Your assertion that McDermott's trip was somehow 'shameful' because it didn't toe the the administration's bullshit campaign to get this country into a disastrous conflict seems to suggest that what's actually good for this country doesn't matter, as long as fealty to the Commander in Chief, even if he's a lying shitbag, is observed. Um, I call bullshit on that.

[mattp]

Tvash, I seem to recall it being more of a political trip than a fact finding trip. I think he said at the time that he felt he had to go to Iraq to get any coverage of his statements that invasion was a bad idea.

[tvashtarkatena]

Semantics. He was right to go, and right to get the message out to the American people that the justification for war was bullshit.

[mattp]

I agree he was right to go, but it isn't just semantics. His motivations in making the trip have everything to do with whether you think he was boldly speaking truth to power, pandering to a liberal Seattle electorate, or committing treason.

[kevbone]

Man, back to politics....we were having such a nice day talking about snow and REI.....

[glassgowkiss]

So MattP's semantics are defendable, but GLassgowkiss' statement is allowed to stand? It simply isn't true.

 

Goddamnit! I posted an objective response that established that one of the premises (Taliban leaders visited Texas) is true, the other not true (Bush hosted them...although a conservative blog I searched indicated he "gave approval for the visit"); I passed no judgment otherwise!

 

The fact that is was in 1998--pre 9/11 and pre GWB as prez--is also relevant, don't you think?

 

George Bush was a Texas Governor and his approval shows more then just bad judgment.

Between the Taliban taking over Kabul in September 1996 and the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in the summer of 2001, neither the administration of president Bill Clinton nor that of his successor, President George W Bush, ever designated Afghanistan as a terrorist or even a rogue state: the Taliban were wined and dined as long as they played the Pipelineistan game in Central Asia (see Pipelineistan revisited, December 24-25, 2003). Unocal - which had put the CentGas Pipeline Consortium in place - hired Henry Kissinger as a consultant. Unocal also hired two very well-connected Afghans: Zalmay Khalilzad, a Pashtun with a PhD from the University of Chicago and former Paul Wolfowitz aide, and Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar. In 1996, both Khalilzad and Karzai were ultra-pro-Taliban. Karzai is now Afghanistan's US-backed ruler. Khalilzad also made splendid career moves: Bush-appointed National Security Council member (working under Condoleezza Rice), "special envoy" to Afghanistan (only nine days after the Karzai government was sworn in), and current US ambassador.

 

The Taliban didn't want to play ball: every time, they wanted more money and more investments for the roads and the infrastructure of their ravaged country - until an exasperated Washington decided to finish them off. This was discussed in Geneva in May 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, and finally at a Berlin hotel, also that July, a meeting involving US, Russian, German and Pakistani officials. Asia Times Online later learned in Islamabad that the US plan was to strike against the Taliban from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before October 2001.

here is your soorce of the info: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FE18Aa03.html

Edited March 29, 2008 by glassgowkiss

[JayB]

Aside from the "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend" inspired support of the various Islamists fighting the Soviet Union (this was long before the Taliban took control of the country from the various warlords who reigned after the Soviet retreat), I can recall the US (can't recall whether it was the Bush or Clinton administration) either engaging with the Taliban or proposing to engage in them in pursuit of the common goal of controlling poppy production.

 

Seems like the general consensus at the time was that the Taliban were reprehensible but that they were calling the shots in Afghanistan and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and there was neither a plan to remove them, nor a strategic imperative that would justify the costs of doing so before 9/11.

[billcoe]

Well it's worth remembering that Bill Clinton personally authorized a first strike via offshore cruise missile on the Bin Laden group after the administration had determined that they were responsible for the attack on our embassy in Kenya, and possibly on the USS Cole as well. (the upper management got into that big bureaucratic rambling and endless discussion thing and waited long enough to make a decision that they missed the target). They had earlier been unable to dent the Talibans armor and get at Bin laden via the usual diplomatic channels.

 

Furthermore, another interesting point in the middle of all this - George Schultz, former sec of State under

Ronald Reagan had retired from his position on the Board of Directors at Chevron and his slot had been filled by Condoliza Rice. She was fully aware of the Talibans continual refusal to allow the pipeline (which Glassbonghits notes above) across their country from her position on the Bush cabinet. This fact would have been widely shared during cabinet meetings and common knowledge amongst all cabinet members. This fact alone has raised eyebrows and added fuel to the fire of conspiracy theorists that the US itself had created the 9/11 strike for economic reasons.

 

It should come as no surprise that the first order of business post Afghanistan war, was to build that pipeline. Seems to me that big business influence runs across both Democrat and Republican lines, and when a congressman or 2 decides to not go with the flow, they get the underhanded backstabbing backdoor Washington press release that creates consternation and the impression of impropriety which people just buy right into: their voters believe bad things about them, yet it really doesn't say a FU*$@ING honest or true thing about them.

 

I suspect such is the case here, if anyone knows any true dirt on these dudes, bring it now, otherwise, I'm going to believe it just the usual Washington DC trash talk and 100% no substance bullshit, and not just because they are Democrats:-)

 

Regards to all