Here's an interesting article article from the Orange County Weekly, not the usual liberal outlet.

It's on wacko Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California and his unauthorized meeting with a high Taliban official in early 2001.

Thanks, fantomas.

Highly questionable meeting.

Is 9/11 another event that the public does not hear the truth on until 35 years in the future?

Oh what a tangled web we weave....

Fantomas, just to clarify: The OC Weekly is a liberal paper; they are the OC division of the LA Weekly which is waaaay left. I guess being in OC only makes them a little less to the left of the LA Weekly. Or did you mean that they weren't the usual suspects?

That doesn't make Rohrabacher any less of a scum bag. Yes the Taliban will bring morality to the region!! Er, well, yeah--and destruction and oppression of women and what little shreds of democracy had existed there before will be crushed and......

Dana R. isn't quite on the loony right yet, but he's on his surfboard heading that way. Armchair psychoanalysis: Dana wanted to feel important so he thought he'd f**k around with Afghan politics; too bad he was hopelessly out of his depth. They played him like a Stradavarius.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

Even more frightening - according to a Salon.com article (I realize this is left-wing), the Administration was meeting with the Taliban in the weeks prior to 9/11 trying to get a pipeline built, and actually threatened military action if they did not cooperate.

I would have posted the link here, but when I went to the salon.com web site, the articles on this topic (which may have been excerpts from a book being written by 2 French journalists) were inaccessible, although still listed in the index.

If this is true, it makes the Administration's claim that no one could have known about 9/11 a little more hard to swallow. There are already consipiracy theorists out there believing Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen (just like FDR and Pearl Harbor). For the record, I am not one of them.

The real irony in this story, though, is that the main source was an FBI agent who quit the agency and took the job as head of WTC security, and was lost on 9/11.

[quote]Originally posted by CPT_Doom:

The real irony...is that the main source was an FBI agent who quit the agency and took the job as head of WTC security, and was lost on 9/11.

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Could be irony; could be something else.

Salon does not publish "left-wing" views in great numbers. Some folks equate "left-wing" with anything that critiques the Unelected One in any form...

Condi Rice said last spring that no one could have known about "airplanes being flown into buildings," and was almost immediately discredited by intelligence memos that showed that very method was being discussed as a possibility.

[quote]Originally posted by Bill W:


Could be irony; could be something else.

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Or it could be irony AND something else!

I suppose the terrorist strike against the WTC in 1993 was also George W. Bush's fault. And the Khobar towers. And the U.S.S. Cole. And the embassy bombings in Africa. And the planned attacks in 2000 on LAX and on jumbo jets flying across the Pacific - both of which were thwarted.

Notice, too, that "Khobar" and "Cole" both start with the same sound, the hard "c" followed by a long "o" - "co," same as the first syllable of W's Secretary of State, Colin Powell's, first name. CO-incidence? Oh, I doubt it.

Oh, there's enough blame ot go around tor the current sad state of world affairs. There's even enough blame to go around on the ongoing horror that is American foeign policy. And it all starts with communism. America through the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's was so terrified of communism that it would support, prop up or even install any regime that claimed it would counter communism. That same attitude has been extended to the war on drugs. This insane insistance on the enemy of my enemy must be my friend becomes even more dangerous in light of the fact that, particularly on the drug front, many of the regimes we have created to counter the drug trade have not only failed, but increased and enhanced the drug trade for their own profit. No, George W. Bush, his administration and his policies are not the only source of our predicament. Every politician since Truman shares a piece of that blame, but the one hard and fast reality of being president is that if it hits the fan during your term, it's your problem. Of course, Bush has been quick to use the corrollary, if something good happens during your term, it has nothing to do with the guy who was there before.

[quote]Originally posted by CPT_Doom:
Even more frightening - according to a Salon.com article (I realize this is left-wing), the Administration was meeting with the Taliban in the weeks prior to 9/11 trying to get a pipeline built, and actually threatened military action if they did not cooperate.

I would have posted the link here, but when I went to the salon.com web site, the articles on this topic (which may have been excerpts from a book being written by 2 French journalists) were inaccessible, although still listed in the index.
....
The real irony in this story, though, is that the main source was an FBI agent who quit the agency and took the job as head of WTC security, and was lost on 9/11.

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Here you go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/internat...nal/12LADE.html

>>
By ETHAN BRONNER

A former F.B.I. antiterror official who was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 complained bitterly last summer that the United States was unwilling to confront Saudi Arabia over Osama bin Laden and that oil ruled American foreign policy, according to a new book published in France.

The former official, John P. O'Neill, was the director of antiterrorism for the F.B.I.'s New York office when he resigned in August to become chief of security for the twin towers.

"All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia," Mr. O'Neill is quoted as saying in the new book, "Ben Laden: La Vérité Interdite" ("Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth"), which argues that Saudi support for Mr. bin Laden has been extensive.
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Here are some other links.

http://www.infowars.com/resources.html
http://www.infowars.com/resources.html#BUSH_LINK
http://www.infowars.com/resources.html#CARL

http://www.bushnews.com/attack.htm

http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/bl_tft.htm , where you can read:

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They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia" from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Until now, says the book, "the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that."

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military one", the authors claim.

"At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,'" Brisard said in an interview in Paris. [This threat was made before September 11th.]
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm . It's from 1997.

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A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.
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[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: twin58 ]

Oh my, oh my. I'd forgotten about John O'Neill...how tragic!

Now to William, the archdefender of W. No, W. wasn't responsible for WTC 93 or Khobar, etc. Those happened on Clinton's watch.

But W's father, H.W., while VP, and later as President supported Osama bin Laden's efforts in Afghanistan, as a leader of the Mujihadeen. Reagan adored those freedom fighters. Later during this same period, before the Gulf War, of course, H.W. and Reagan supported Saddam against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. Jqueer notes that this was of a piece with the anti-Communist of the Cold War era, which is true, though Reagan took it to extremes more than once (Nicaragua, Grenada, Guatemala, etc.).

BTW, an excellent, thorough article on Ayman Al-Zawahiri, one of Islamic Jihad's and Al Qaeda's chief masterminds, in the current New Yorker (it's not online, unfortunately).