On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, James Heartfield wrote:
> I might have missed it but surely there is a great journalistic job to
> be done digging up all of the praise heaped upon the Afghan freedom
> fighters by the Reagan (and Thatcher) right in the early eighties. I'm
> presuming that this does not happen so much because people don't know
> how to research before news articles were posted on the web.
I think it might also be the the fact that, at least here in the States, the fact is just so inescapably obvious that no one feels the need. Also it doesn't seem to help. None of them feels the least bit of shame. From personal experience, I know the following item from the September 26th Onion gets big laughs out of even Reagan republicans:
Bush Sr. Apologizes To Son For Funding Bin Laden In '80s
MIDLAND, TX-- Former president George Bush issued an apology to his
son Monday for advocating the CIA's mid-'80s funding of Osama bin
Laden, who at the time was resisting the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. "I'm sorry, son," Bush told President George W. Bush. "We
thought it was a good idea at the time because he was part of a group
fighting communism in Central Asia. We called them 'freedom fighters'
back then. I know it sounds weird. You sort of had to be there." Bush
is still deliberating over whether to tell his son about the whole
supporting-Saddam Hussein-against-Iran thing.
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com