Great NYT magazine article on Tora Bora

[karynnj]

Kerry connection - This is the most complete account I've ever seen about Tora Bora - and Kerry was 100% right. The CIA in the 80s financed the building of the cave complexes - Bin Laden, who was a civil engineer, actually worked on it. A Brig General with 4,000 marines in Afghanistan proposed encircling Tora Bora to capture the over 800 Al Qaeda soldiers including Bin Laden - but he was turned down.

The end of the article deals with the far greater mess that now exists with Bin Laden and probably a large number of Al Qaeda likely in the lawless area in Pakistan. (Wasn't a Senator assured by Ms. Rice that our needs were being taken care of in Pakistan? Wasn't his follow up a very skeptical "Adequately?" )

[TayTay]

1. Unbelievable.

The brathtaking incompetence and arrogance of this Administration is just unbelievable. They should have pursued bin Laden and instead, as Sen. Kerry said, outsourced the whole thing to fighters who had mixed loyalties.

It's just so sad that Kerry wasn't elected. He knew this stuff backwards and forwards.

[karynnj]

2. From the article, they even tried to outsource

the effort to the Afghani who invited Bin Ladin to come to Afghanistan when he was thrown out of Sudan, and gave him permission to use the Tora Bora region and another region both of which were under his control!

I had thought I couldn't be surprised by CIA activities - but financing the Tora Bora caves is pathetic. Couldn't we have at least asked for a blueprint back then? (The worst thing is that even now a large % of the people think Reagan was the greatest President we ever had.

[TayTay]

3. The American foreign policy since the 50's has been awful

We have done some very bad things. We overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and re-installed the Shah, who was a brutal and repressive dictator. We did it for oil. We propped up the brutal, repressive and religiously extreme rulers of Saudi Arabia. We did it for oil. We financed Saddam, then waged war against him. It is just amazing how awful the whole thing has been. We financed a lot of the resistance in Afghanistan in order to screw the russians, but then didn't follow through on helping the Afghanis to establish a stable country. Bin Laden took advantage of that to establish a theocracy.

The blowback from our mis-adventures and our attempt to control the region has been brutal. Sen. Kerry knows this. He knows what kinds of awful things have been done in the America's name. Hell, he survived one such mis-adventure in Vietnam and it changed his life.

Just awful.

[karynnj]

4. This is why I hope Kerry will run and win

Tay Tay said:

Sen. Kerry knows this. He knows what kinds of awful things have been done in the America's name. Hell, he survived one such mis-adventure in Vietnam and it changed his life.

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At this point, he's the only politician I can think of who is unlikely to be seduced by the power of the Presidency and the idea that problems can be solved by undertaking these adventures. Many of the Presidents were good men, but as you said our Foreign policy since 1950 has been atrocious.

It wasn't until something I read pointed out that the very end of Kerry's speech in 1971 was the most important part, that I read it closely enough to realize what he was saying. When he talked about how he wanted Vietnam to be the place where America turned and the soldiers helped it turn. He seemed to commit himself to fighting these types of actions. I really think he might be the only one committed enough to make changes.