America... Spying on Americans

As recently as Friday, when he was interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS, Mr. Bush refused to confirm the report the previous evening in The New York Times that in 2002 he authorized the spying operation by the security agency, which is usually barred from intercepting domestic communications. While not denying the report, he called it "speculation" and said he did not "talk about ongoing intelligence operations."

But as the clamor over the revelation rose and Vice President Dick Cheney and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, went to Capitol Hill on Friday to answer charges that the program was an illegal assumption of presidential powers, even in a time of war, Mr. Bush and his senior aides decided to abandon that approach.

"There was an interest in saying more about it, but everyone recognized its highly classified nature," one senior administration official said, speaking on background because, he said, the White House wanted the president to be the only voice on the issue. "This is directly taking on the critics. The Democrats are now in the position of supporting our efforts to protect Americans, or defend positions that could weaken our nation's security."

Democrats saw the issue differently. "Our government must follow the laws and respect the Constitution while it protects Americans' security and liberty," said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the Senate's leading critic of the Patriot Act.

"It's a tired old story, look it up." hahaha. Aint that the truth. Bushies never heard of blowback although many were pragmatic enough to invest in it. Arming Saddam and bin Laden has been very lucrative for the arms merchants.

It wasn't the democrats that leaked it, printed the story, or had anything to do with outing it.

Gawd, I have no idea how anyone can't see what is happening or what this man is.

Ticomaya wrote:

Stevepax wrote:

We created the terrorist AlQueda, only we called them freedom fighters at the time because they were using our tactics that we taught them on the Russians. We however don't care for it much when they turn around and use it on us!

Please substantiate that statement. How did we create al Qaeda, in your view?

It's a tired old story, look it up. I'm tired of explaining it to you guys. I'm in no mood to play games with you Tico. We did, you know it, case closed!

Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an "international terrorist" for his role in the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders".

In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.

With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.
The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

We created the terrorist AlQueda, only we called them freedom fighters at the time because they were using our tactics that we taught them on the Russians.

A little known member of the alphabet soup of federal agencies is the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (more familiarly known by the unpronounceable acronym NCIX) -- an organization whose main goal is "to improve the performance of the counterintelligence (CI) community in identifying, assessing, prioritizing and countering intelligence threats to the United States." To accomplish this task, NCIX now offers that ultimate necessity for Homeland security, downloadable "counterintelligence and security awareness posters." One features the text of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution ("…Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…") and the likeness of Thomas Jefferson, but with a new addendum which reads: "American freedom includes a responsibility to protect U.S. security -- leaking sensitive information erodes this freedom."

Another NCIX poster might come straight out of the old Soviet East Germany: "America's Security is Your Responsibility. Observe and Report." While NCIX is an obscure agency, its decision to improve on the 1st Amendment and a fundamental American freedom is indicative of where our Homeland Security State is heading; and the admonition to "Observe and Report" catches its spirit exactly.

I read through all 19 pages of posts to this thread. I am just marking this so I know where I left off. I don't post often to the polical threads but when I do, folks who know me know where I lean. Ticocomya might describe me as a "wacko...America-hating-leftist." I would disagree, but perhaps will talk about that tomorrow.

Are you of the "destroy America first" variety of right-wingers?

Tico,
You seem to have problems with reading comprehension today.

Quote:

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

The CIA is funded by the US.

Back to the original statement.

Quote:

We created the terrorist AlQueda, only we called them freedom fighters at the time because they were using our tactics that we taught them on the Russians.

Hmm... what was your argument again Tico? It seems the original statement is pretty clearly supported.

Contrary to what people have come to imagine, the CIA never recruited, trained, or otherwise used Arab volunteers. The Afghans were more than happy to do their own fighting -- we saw no reason not to satisfy them on this point.

While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. Freelance cameraman Peter Jouvenal recalls: "There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs. One Afghan told me, ?'Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them. They thought they were kings.'"

... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill.

The US trained the Mujahideen that became Al Qaeda. Your arguments completely ignore the original statement Tico.

They were called freedom fighters at that time. The US trained them. They became Al Qaeda.

FreeDuck wrote:

Are you of the "destroy America first" variety of right-wingers?

Perhaps that's your opinion, FD, and you are welcome to it.

My question to RJB was not to accuse him of hating America by any means, but merely to address his comment that I might think of him as an "America hating leftist," and I simply wanted to make it clear that I don't think all leftists hate America. I don't know him well enough to have formed an opinion on the matter.

Ticomaya wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:

Are you of the "destroy America first" variety of right-wingers?

Perhaps that's your opinion, FD, and you are welcome to it.

My question to RJB was not to accuse him of hating America by any means, but merely to address his comment that I might think of him as an "America hating leftist," and I simply wanted to make it clear that I don't think all leftists hate America. I don't know him well enough to have formed an opinion on the matter.

It was a question, not an accusation. But notice how such a question makes a person intstantly defensive. In fact, I think just tossing the label out there at all makes people who might identify with any part of it defensive. Perhaps that's the intent.

And there are some on the right that think that privacy is a bad thing, or that checks and balances are "quaint", or that the Constitution was just a suggestion. The point is, there's no point in labeling folks as there could just as easily be people on the left who feel the same way. Same goes for "America-hating left". Some might characterize a systematic dismantling of the
Constitution as "America-hating".