Letters to the Editor
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This is shocking, 5-year old news!
Pakistan playing nice with al-Qaida is nothing new.
Shortly after 9/11, this story appeared in the MSM:
Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani ISI, an organization funded by the CIA, ordered Omar Sheikh to wire transfer $100000 to Mohammad Atta.
Inspite of strong proof, the story got no traction nationally and died. Later, the final 9/11 Commission report stated that discovering who funded the 9/11 attacks is "of little practical importance."
To learn more about this shocking new 5-year old story, check out this complete 9/11 timeline compiled entirely from mainstream news accounts.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/
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Rewriting history
Koppekman, I expect better interviewing....Krongard states that many people wanted the Shah of Iran out.....it should be pointed out that many in the US gov't and military thought The Shah was too soft ( the US traditionally likes its puppets to be more brutal on descent). Furthermore, Castro is bad, real bad...but so was Batista....but Batista kissed our ass and we like that. Castro won't, thats what makes him worse than Batista. These points should have been clarofied.
RC
Seattle
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"Second Wave of Attacks"
I only know that since 9/11 we really haven't had anything [in the United States].
Except for the anthrax attacks, which President Bush described as "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country" in his radio address on November 3, 2001.
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terrorists are aberrants, like criminals
Not to be too glib; but we've tried a military nation-state solution to international terrorism, we should go back to a cooperative criminal justice approach to public safety (see www.interpol.int/Public/FusionTaskForce/default.asp), look at who takes the lead in the UK - law enforcement.
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Textbook
Interesting that Krongard refers to Afghanistan as "absolutely textbook-perfect", in terms of cooperation. The story I keep hearing is that Rumsfeld prevented the military from sealing off the Pakistan border at Tora Bora, letting bin Laden escape, because CIA were in charge there rather than DOD. This might have been a good point on which to follow up. Why is Krongard talking to the press now, anyway?
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Thanks to Salon, Alex Koppelman and A.B. Krongard
I came to this interview in quite a different frame of mind from that of the previous four post-ers and want to express my heartfelt appreciation for this piece.
By now I'm used to being either "the" or "a" (depending on the number of responders) Maverick if I post here but wotthehey.
My online-with-my-computer morning started with reading a post I regularly get from a source called Knowledge News, which refreshed and encouraged me vastly because it was objective and informational in its explorations of the "who"s and the "what"s of branches of Islamic fundamentalism as well as the history, geography and ethnic makeup of the Pashtun Afghanistan/Pakistan border area. Knowledge News is not "an opinion" source and this morning I enormously appreciated its so-to-say ?dispassion?.
My today's Salon.com page also features an interpretive article on the latest NEI report and its political context/connotations, by Sidney Blumenthal. Sidney Blumenthal and I are by what (in description of myself only here) I sometimes call "knee jerk"/temperament bias[es] combined with whatever degree(s) at differing times of attempted ?"dispassionate"? (*), i.e. objective study and information gathering and hard-headed no-holds-barred conclusions and presentation/interpretation of conclusions, "horses of the same color" (to considerable extent, any way).
A.B. Krongard (whom I immediately Googled when I got to Alex Koppelman's bunch-the-white-shark line [:-)]) could not possibly be described that way. And Krongard was the guy I needed to hear this morning. No holds barred, factual and -- by comparison with many of us erstwhile writers, self-expression enthusiasts wouldbe psychologizers etc. -- not self-serving. His answers to Alex Koppelman's queries are factual and succinct and beautifully devoid of the let-me-tell-you-all-about-myself tone of so much of the blogosphere. I consider it a personal privilege to "meet this man" in the form of this interview.
So here's a Vote of One (so far as to this article, any way) of thanks to Salon editors for your choice of what is "fair and balanced" [?! L-)] "news reporting". And thanks to Alex Koppelman and to "Buzzy" Krongard.
salonmarte
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P.S. from salonmarte
And apologies to both Krongard and the that-day shark for writing "bunch" for "punch". Guess my own hard-hittingness abilities were a bit low -- see impossible length of previous sentence, "for the which" I apologise to any/all who tried to read my post.
Way past time for me to Get Out of Chat Rooms, for now!
:-)
salonmarte again
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"It really doesn't matter what the paper says"
in that part of the world, it really doesn't matter what the paper says, it's about how the people behave. When it's in their interest to behave in a certain way, they behave that way. When it isn't, they don't.
...Hmm...papers...Geneva Convention...Constitution...Human Rights.
"In that part of the world"...Wait ! He's talking about the USA, right ?
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Conservatives - great job!!!
I can't wait until this unstable country becomes an Islamic republic.
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CIA Strong Man Punches Shark .... defeats terrorism
Having been immediately alerted to the kind of macho man we're dealing with here (who in their right mind would even consider punching a shark? What the hell for?) alarm bells jangled when he advocated sending troops into the North West Frontier to just sort the whole damn place out.
Wonderfull! What a great solution, I wonder why nobody ever thought of it before? (But then I never would have thought of punching a shark, either ... ) It shows amazing foresight, and in view of the way things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, seems to be a 'text-book' solution. Bound to bring the locals around to our way of thinking; just a few bombs and they always see the sense in abandoning their tribal culture.
Jeez. Typical CIA tactics. And they've always worked. Right?
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Which do they hate more -- our values or our invasion?
Sure, radical Islamists hate our culture and free-ish society, but we turned the heat up with years of interference and invasion into the Middle East.
Now we're making enemies hand over fist, people who wouldn't have been motivated to take up arms until we tried to do a smackdown in Iraq.
Until we get straight what the motivations really are, we're going to continue to make horrible mistakes that only make the situation worse.