Thursday, July 21, 2005

The CIA/OBL myth

I see Red Ken, with the aid of the BBC’s microphone, is off trumpeting his anti-American lies again. Yesterday he was blaming the west in general and the US in particular for the ills of the world.

And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

That, like so much of what emanates from Ken Livinstone’s mouth, is simply untrue. As Richard Miniter noted 2 years ago, there were 2 separate rebellions against the Soviets. A local rebellion, and a rebellion made up of foreign, Islamic extremists. The former was funded in part by the CIA. The latter was funded by Saudi Arabia.

Not only have the former CIA agents in charge of the operation denied ever funding or training OBL, so has OBL. In an interview with arch anti-American Robert Fisk, OBL said:
Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help.
I realize that the myth of the CIA “creating” Bin Laden melds nicely with the general Livingstone/BBC view of the US as a mlaignant force in the world, but if either of them actually have any evidence whatsoever to support this charge, they should make it known. Otherwise, they should keep it to themselves.

For those who might argue that the BBC is just reporting what someone else said, note that the BBC often provides contradicting, corrective information if it quotes someone saying something that it believes to be false. That it didn’t in this case suggests that it didn’t see anything wrong with what Livingstone said.

(Posted from Wisconsin, USA)