Reply #8: misunderstanding

[paulthompson]

Just after I posted this, the thread was locked as a dupe, so I'm reposting here (it's in reply to someone who claimed the Afgan war was justified because the Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden):

You seem to be under the common misunderstanding that the US actually wanted the Taliban to turn Osama over. Not so. For instance, in late Sept. 2001, a US official stated that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr. bin Laden was captured."

On Sept. 17 and 18, 2001, Pakistan sent Mahmood Ahmed, the head of their intelligence service, to Afghanistan to supposedly convince the Taliban to turn Osama over. This visit was done at the request of their close ally, the US. But according to Knight Ridders newspapers later, Mahmood did "nothing as the visitors poured praise on Omar and failed to raise the issue" of bin Laden's extradition. Time magazine also later reported that Mahmood in fact urged Omar not to extradite bin Laden, but instead urged him to resist the US. A similar visit later in the month went exactly the same. These were supposedly the main extradition efforts.

The US in fact went to great lengths to make sure Osama escaped Afghanistan alive, and even airlifted out members of his immediate family. See here:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/escapeafghanistan.html

Why would they do all this? You can't have an Orwellian police state and a war on terrorism without an Emmanuel Goldstein figure to hate. Read 1984 if you don't understand that reference.

Recall also the build up to the first Gulf War, where supposedly at the time the US war trying every avenue to achieve a peaceful solution so there wouldn't need to be a war. Information that has come out since then shows that was a crock, and they were trying their best to foil any peaceful solution. They even tricked Saddam into invading Kuwait in the first place, by pretending to give the idea a green light.