White House : Taliban isn't US enemy

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
How does that change anything? Mullah Omar, founder of the Taliban, met with Reagan, and would later meet with Texas representatives. He was on the receiving end of a lot of aid from the USA before he was labeled an enemy. Even as late as 2002 the Taliban offered to turn over Bin Laden but that offer was ignored.

As I said earlier those were not the "Taliban" meeting with Reagan.
Your own source shows that he created them years later. It changes the whole dynamics of your first reply.

As far as what came later that's all part of the public record.

I hope that helps.

Originally posted by Vitchilo

White House Stands by Biden Statement That Taliban Isn't U.S. Enemy

The White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden for saying that the Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite the years spent fighting the militant Islamic group that gave a home to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama bin Laden while he plotted the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"It is a simple fact that we went into Afghanistan because of the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. We are there now to ultimately defeat Al Qaeda, to stabilize Afghanistan and stabilize it in part so that Al Qaeda or other terrorists who have as their aim attacks on the United States cannot establish a foothold again in that country," Carney continued.

Yeah Al-CIAda is the enemy...

Try looking in Virgina at CIA headquarters.

well.. didn't the USA slaughter millions in Iraq because of the Taiban ?? hmmmmm.. someone is going to answer for this for sure..

Originally posted by Komodo
well.. didn't the USA slaughter millions in Iraq because of the Taiban ?? hmmmmm.. someone is going to answer for this for sure..

Has everybody's Cheese slid completely off their Cracker today?

reply to post by SLAYER69



Yep the Taliban goto the White House meet a Us President and bring their women without a burka!!!

Oh that one was rich guess people forgot that the Taliban are like Redknecks who use to keep their wife barefoot and pregnant.

Sure is a lot of fiction writing on here and from the White House.

They are right...The REAL ENEMY is WITHIN!
The Terrorist Within

reply to post by Vitchilo


As always...it is best to start with the ACTUAL QUOTE as opposed to spin

NEWSWEEK: I know you don’t believe we can reshape Afghanistan and make it into a caramelized democracy.


BIDEN: Look, look, Les, let’s posit that your statement is that it’s clear that Pakistan could live with an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.


NEWSWEEK: They did.


BIDEN: We could not. We could not because they harbored, sheltered, and supported an outfit that created a real threat to the United States.


NEWSWEEK: And we told them if you stop harboring al Qaeda, we’ll live with you too.


BIDEN: Yes, but they didn’t.


NEWSWEEK: And we can make that deal now

BIDEN: We didn’t. That is part of what the reconciliation process is about right now. We are not just deciding that all we are doing is supporting a government and building up their military capability. We’re engaged in a reconciliation process. Whether it will work or not is another question. But we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.


Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:


One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.

www.thedailybeast.com...

Now...does anyone understand the difference between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda?

The Taliban were sheltering Al-Qaeda.

The USA told the Taliban to give them up.

They refused...we went in and toppled the government and chased the Taliban into the hills.

They are still there, but not sheltering Al-Qaeda any longer.

The Taliban leadership offered Guarantees to the new Afghan government as wella s the US that they will never again harbor terrorists. They have also said they will recognize the new Afghan government.

We can either give them a second chance to participate in the new afghanistan with strict conditions, or we can risk ongoing battles between the new Afghan gov plus US forces and the 25,000 Taliban tribal folks that are out there fighting.

You can get all gung-ho and say hunt them all down...that puts the USA in Afghanistan for another decade at the minimum...or you can let the Afghan government work out a peace deal with folks that regret thier association with Al-Qaeda.

I would get the ef out of Afghanistan, let the Afghan gov work out a peace deal with the Taliban. If we ever need to go back in we won't have to occupy, but be able to do strategic, smaller, operations with the support of a friendly and stable gov there. Best course IMO.

The alternative is an endless war. We are never going to make Afganistan into a club med for the USA. Let them work out their own government.

Geez ...after 10 years of occupying Afghanistan, we found Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan! Get a clue already.

reply to post by Vitchilo

I suppose this should come as no shock, although I find myself ready to throw up after reading this today. If the Taliban aren't the enemy, what exactly are they? Are we going to see Omar invited to the Rose Garden next? Heck.. why not... Arafat was.

We have a homeless problem, so we rename and reclassify the homeless. No problem!

We have a immigration problem. So we give them all amnesty to redefine their status. No problem!

We have a war problem. So we redefine the enemy as ..whatever they are now.. and delcare peace. No problem!

There is one MINOR problem..and that would be the thousands upon thousands of good American men and women who have been killed or wounded out of that hell hole and at the hands of the Taliban fighters. Of course, it's JUST troops...and they signed up for it right? So.. NO PROBLEM. Oh yeah.. I could just puke.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Mullah Omar IS the Taliban. Here he is meeting with Reagan, just as he would later meet with Unocal and Taxes representatives. Live in denial all you want, but the fact is, the United States wined and dined the Taliban, until they couldn't get their way with them and used the pretense of a 'war of terror' to take from them what they couldn't get.

This is the SAME Mullah Omar that offered to hand over Bin Laden.

If you want to make a big deal over the fact that they are in the presence of an "unveiled" woman, then take note when the Taliban also met with Unocal in 1997 they ALSO came in a delegation that included unveiled women. They seem to relax their fundamentalism when out of their homeland.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
Mullah Omar IS the Taliban. Here he is meeting with Reagan, just as he would later meet with Unocal and Taxes representatives. Live in denial all you want, but the fact is....

Your dates for the "Taliban" are all wrong. Your own sources conflict with your first reply in this thread about "The Taliban Meeting Reagan at the White house" You can post all the 9/11 Conspiracy videos and links all day long. None of them show Reagan or Bush Sr meeting with the Taliban during the period in question [Which was before the Taliban existed]

the United States wined and dined the Taliban, until they couldn't get their way with them and used the pretense of a 'war of terror' to take from them what they couldn't get.

Again, As I said earlier all of that [Which came after Reagan and Bush Sr] left office is all part of the public record.

This is the SAME Mullah Omar that offered to hand over Bin Laden.

I've never denied that they had set certain conditions to hand him over. Yet, They refused to do so.

If you want to make a big deal over the fact that they are in the presence of an "unveiled" woman, then take note when the Taliban also met with Unocal in 1997 they ALSO came in a delegation that included unveiled women. They seem to relax their fundamentalism when out of their homeland.

1997 eh?

Your statement and the year date stamp in your images don't match. Also, where was that image taken? Was she a non Afghan Translator?

How come it seems that almost every thread on ATS that has anything to do with terrorism is full of ignorance, it seems there are only a handful of member’s who actually know what they are talking about and another couple of thousand who would like to think they know what they’re talking about but in reality they are just talking utter rubbish and ignoring those who actually know what they are talking about.

For example “Al-CIAdu”, please give it a break, go read a history book.

The Taliban was disbanded in 1996, you Cleary don’t know what you’re talking about fi you’re going to make a claim like that. Why bother posting it

The best one by far is the idea that Mullah Omar met Regan. The Taliban didn’t form until 1996, Regan left office in 1989 and in any case Mullah Omar almost never left Kandahar it is impossible they would ever have met Regan in his capacity as POTUS.

I find the ignorance infuriating, peoples ignorance one a site who claims to “deny ignorance” is astonishing if you don’t know what you are talking about then don’t just write the first popular lie that comes into your mind. I don’t understand why people just write stuff that clearly isn’t true just for the sake of it then ignore and abuse anyone more knowledgeable than them for pointing out the error of their ways.

This site is becoming more and more about embracing ignorance rather than denying ignorance if you want proof of this just go read any thread about terrorism.

Originally posted by phishyblankwaters
reply to post by hapablab

 

Oh good, I was waiting for someone to create a thread, I just read that, I am sickened right now, they said these people are responsible for 9/11, now they are not our enemy, I want to cry it's so disgusting, wtf!.

The Taliban had nothing to do with 911, they operate with sticks and rocks. They were the ruling power in Afghanistan at the times that OBL was thought to be operating there.

In fact, when trying to revive the stalled pipeline deal the Taliban and the US (Halliburton and KBR) were working on, they offered to capture OBL and hand him over to authorities as a good faith measure. the US told them to stuff it.

i assume this happened long after they were invited to Texas and shown around by Bush.

See how propaganda works?

Taliban, Afghanistan, Al queda, Iraq, Iran, Saddam, Osama, Obama.....

Just keep repeating and "accidentally" mixing them up and you've got scores of people who believe Iraq had ties to 911, the Taliban had ties to 911, etc etc.

That is exactly how disinformation works.

edit on 20-12-2011 by phishyblankwaters because: (no reason given)

^^Quoted for truth. A little disinformation then a little more added and next thing you know it was the Salvation Army that was responsible for 9.11 & not a CIA project.

Word 'round the campfire is that the GSoA had a hand in the Lockerbie bombing...

reply to post by SLAYER69


So we'll continue to pretend the Taliban sprang out of the ground in 1996, they never existed prior to that, right? It was all peaches and cream until one day the Taliban dropped out of the sky. Mullah Omar WAS the Taliban, he didn't just wake up one day and decide to become a fundamentalist. He led the faction that murdered off the saner part of the Mujaheddin in their civil war, and even long after they were thought to be harboring Bin Laden after his expulsion from Saudi Arabia the Taliban were welcome in Washington, as late as 2001 as the video clip above shows. You can play semantics all you want about "the Taliban didn't exist then", but the fact is Mullah Omar was the founder of the Taliban and he has met with US leaders in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. The 80's and 90's is the phase when the Taliban became EMPOWERED by it's cozy relationship with the US. Even after we waged a war against them we still managed to appoint a Unocal adviser to the presidency of that nation.

ETA: much of your argument is based on when the Taliban were diplomatically recognized as the power in Afghanistan (1996), but your ignoring how long their movement had been building. I would hazard a guess that had the Taliban been more agreeable to our pipeline deal, that the 'war on terror' would have gone on ignoring their relationship with Bin Laden and no invasion would have been launched by the US against Afghanistan.

This just in, a clarification on the statement, "the Taliban are not the enemy, the America people are".

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Your ignorance is astounding sorry, but as someone who spends allot of time studying this stuff I just want scream.

This might help you in regards to the formation of the Taliban a short thread I wrote intended to help explain it to some members. If you want to know more I can suggest some good books that might help.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

In regards with what you are specifically discussing just now, Mullah Omar has never been to America, he hates to travel. According to a number of sources I have read when in power he almost never left Kandahar, he very rarely travelled to the capital Kabul. He only really started traveling further when NATO began hunting him. There is no way that this man would ever have gone to America, he refused to even talk to westerners.

Oh and you should no the Taliban was only ever diplomatically recognised by three states. Of the top of my head I think it was Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and UAE. America never really had any meaningful diplomatic relationship with the Taliban, they didn’t even have a ambassador in the state.

reply to post by rogerstigers


Ha! Well what do you want from these radical socialists? Are you expecting them to be straightforward when even the socialist and communist websites state that they will use any means necessary to achieve their goals?

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

I think you guys are arguing over semantics. Theres no question that Afghan leaders came to the US to meet with big business regarding the pipeline.

But if they're not going to be referred to as "Taliban", what should they be called "Afghani leadership"?

Though it seems relatively clear that they were Taliban.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
So we'll continue to pretend the Taliban sprang out of the ground in 1996, they never existed prior to that, right? It was all peaches and cream until one day the Taliban dropped out of the sky.

Don't take my word on it. Read your own sources.
Don't like your own source? Here is another.


Source

Groups of taliban ("religious students") were loosely organized on a regional basis during the occupation and civil war. Although they represented a potentially huge force, they didn't emerge as a united entity until the taliban of Kandahar made their move in 1994. In late 1994, a group of well-trained taliban were chosen by Pakistan to protect a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia. They proved an able force, fighting off rival mujahideen and warlords. The taliban then went on to take the city of Kandahar, beginning a surprising advance that ended with their capture of Kabul in September 1996.

Mullah Omar WAS the Taliban, he didn't just wake up one day and decide to become a fundamentalist. He led the faction that murdered off the saner part of the Mujaheddin in their civil war, and even long after they were thought to be harboring Bin Laden after his expulsion from Saudi Arabia the Taliban were welcome in Washington, as late as 2001 as the video clip above shows.

Again, I've never denied that there was talks in the mid to late 90s. But as far as the "Taliban" meeting with Reagan or Bush Sr way back in the 80s or early 90s is horse Dung.

Again don't take my word for it read your own source material on good old Omar.

You can play semantics all you want about "the Taliban didn't exist then", but the fact is Mullah Omar was the founder of the Taliban

Posting well known verifiable historical facts isn't playing Semantics.

The 80's and 90's is the phase when the Taliban became EMPOWERED by it's cozy relationship with the US.

Not accroding to your own quoted sources on Omar

Hey, I'm not the one who posted it. You are.

ETA: much of your argument is based on when the Taliban were diplomatically recognized as the power in Afghanistan (1996)

Actually the Afghan Northern Alliance was the Internationally recognized authorities of Afghanistan not the Taliban.
Source

The Taliban regime faced international scrutiny and condemnation for its policies. Only Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
For example “Al-CIAdu”, please give it a break, go read a history book.

Pretty sure that the "Al-CIAeda" reference stems from the fact that Osama and his fighters were funded by the CIA. Robin Cook, former member of the British Parliament talks about it here:

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

www.guardian.co.uk...

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
The Taliban was disbanded in 1996, you Cleary don’t know what you’re talking about fi you’re going to make a claim like that. Why bother posting it

The best one by far is the idea that Mullah Omar met Regan. The Taliban didn’t form until 1996, Regan left office in 1989 and in any case Mullah Omar almost never left Kandahar it is impossible they would ever have met Regan in his capacity as POTUS.

So the Taliban was formed in 1996 but they also disbanded in 1996?

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
The chief member in that delegation is Mullah Omar, or Mohammad Omar, and the defacto leader of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001 when he went into hiding;

Mohammed Omar Wikipedia

All the negotiating, money, and deal-making between him and Reagan/Bush or the USA, was in fact with the Taliban, even if they didn't officially adopt that moniker.

Even your own sources show that while he was a fighter with the Mujahideen, he later formed the Taliban in 1996 and became it's head. He may have been to meet at the WH when we were helping the Mujahideen fight the Soviets.

Semantics, shemantics.

Omar did travel to the US to meet Reagan, and the Taliban representatives did meet in Texas and at Washington to discuss the Unocol deal, as reported by the BBC. There is a strong faction right here in the US that want's to disavow we ever had a connection to them and deny we ever met with them on friendly terms.

Facts: Taliban, by that name, came to the USA and met with US officials and Unocol over a pipeline deal, and this was long after the Cole bombing blamed on OBL, in which we claimed the Taliban were harboring him.

That didn't stand in our representatives way to try and strike a deal with them, since they were gaining power in Afghanistan and we needed them for the deal.

That's what you all are overlooking in this thread. We only made the Taliban "the enemy" AFTER we couldn't reach a deal with them. The Taliban were willing to oust OBL and turn him over to the US if we would only produce the evidence linking him to 9/11 or terrorism, and the US couldn't or wouldn't do it. Someone in the Bush whitehouse decided it would be easier and more profitable to just wage a small war against them and install Karzai as a puppet regime, and let's not forget Karzai was a former Unocol member.

Some of you are getting bent out of shape trying to deny Omar's or Taliban's favoritism by the former administration's (plural, since it was under Clinton they visited Texas) and Bush after the 2001 attacks when they again visited Washington.

The US in it's typical convoluted fashion is waging a war against the Taliban because they are fighting us, they are fighting us because we invaded them. We invaded them because they are fighting us. Catch-22, it only makes sense in the corrupt world of US politics.

Historic revisionism can't make up for the fact that the Taliban have been to the US to meet with members of Bush's cabinet and Unocol. It can't make up for the fact that the war in Afghanistan is over the oil pipeline and the Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Anaconda are phony wars to extend US corporatism to that region - even to the point of installing our own corporate puppet Karzai as their leader.