Taliban?

[SHRED]

I thought we were fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?

What does the Taliban have to do with exporting terrorism, or 9-11?

---

[leftofcool]

1. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan? I thought they were in Iraq.

Oh wait! That's the other war.

[SHRED]

2. We pay them yet we fight them

How the US Funds the Taliban
By Aram Roston
November 11, 2009

~snip~

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

SOURCE:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

[Goldstein1984]

3. It's called mission creep...

It's why we're going to be an occupying force in the Middle East for decades.