>Peter K. replies
>Hah, you spoke too soon! From today' New York >Times:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/international/asia/17DOCU.html
Well, actually it supports what I wrote. For example:
>>"The documents show that the training camps, which the Bush administration
has described as
factories churning out terrorists, were instead focused largely on creating
an army to support the
Taliban, which was waging a long ground war against the Northern Alliance.<<
Again, showing how much the whole Afghan campaign is a sideshow (though it may speed up non-Russian access to Caspian oil and gas, something that benefits the Bush-Cheney bottom line, the bottom line of their entire ilk).
We know the perps of 9-11 didn't use truck bombs or infantry tactics, and we know that the bulk of the contingent went to W. Europe and the US to get their training. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Bush's Carlyle Group owns the aviation schools or provides maintenance to them (more on this one later) where the pilots among the 9-11 perps trained.
Again, nothing that I've seen so far connects the main of the Taliban movement with 9-11. Hell, it's easier to connect Bush to 9-11 than the Taliban (though more likely a colossal fuck-up they are now riffing wildly on than any master plan).
Now Afghanistan might have some status as a holy land among some Muslims (and Buddhists, too, as well as Aryans seeking their cradle of race), but not Wahabbis, which is why Wahabbism doesn't export well to a place like Afghanistan. It's too Saudi and too elitist. My own theory is that the Afghan Arabs were mostly irreligious freebooters or were attempting to convert to Deobandi Taliban and assimilate into Afghanistan.
I won't try to justify the Taliban's militant fundamentalism, but I will say (1) in it's extremism it wasn't unique in that part of the world and (2) it could be rationalized as conveying a legitimacy to rule Afghanistan that just being a Pashtun militia couldn't.
The Afghan Arabs might overlap with Al Qaeda, but you know whoever pulled off 9-11 succeeded because they were largely self-contained and worked on a need to know basis. Much has been made of their flagrant behaviour in the US, but I believe that was because they were confident in their cover--that they looked like guys who were going to work for the governments of SA, UAE and Egypt when they were finished in the US or Western Europe. Sure, Islamic militants might not hang out at titty bars in Florida, but Arab flyboys with military missions sure do.
Charles Jannuzi