USA planned the invasion of Afghanistan MONTHS before 9/11

[zulu9812]

We've all been lead to believe that the reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan was 9/11: the Taliban were harbouring the organisers of the terrorist attack. America invaded to punish the Taliban for offering shelter to Al Queda and to apprehend Usama Bin Laden.

Well, it wasn't true. That wasn't the reason at all.

First up, we have this article from Janes International Security News, from March 2001

India joins anti-Taliban coalition

By Rahul Bedi

India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

Military sources in Delhi, claim that the opposition Northern Alliance's capture of the strategic town of Bamiyan, was precipitated by the four countries' collaborative effort. The 13 February fall of Bamiyan, after several days of heavy fighting, threatened to cut off the only land route from Kabul to Taliban troops in northern Afghanistan. However, media reports indicate that Taliban forces recaptured the town on 17 February.

India is believed to have supplied the Northern Alliance leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, with high-altitude warfare equipment. Indian defence advisors, including air force helicopter technicians, are reportedly providing tactical advice in operations against the Taliban. Twenty-five Indian army doctors and male nurses are also believed to be treating Northern Alliance troops at a 20-bed hospital at Farkhor, close to the Afghan-Tajik border. The Statesman newspaper quoting Indian officials said the medical contingent is being financed from Delhi.

Several recent meetings between the newly instituted Indo-US and Indo-Russian joint working groups on terrorism led to this effort to tactically and logistically counter the Taliban.

Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while India, Russia and Iran were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support. Oleg Chervov, deputy head of Russia's security council, recently described Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a base of international terrorism attempting to expand into Central Asia. Radical Islamic groups are also trying to increase their influence across Pakistan, he said at a meeting of Indian and Russian security officials in Moscow. "All this dictates a pressing need for close co-operation between Russia and India in opposing terrorism," he said.

Military sources indicated that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are being used as bases to launch anti-Taliban operations by India and Russia. They also hinted at the presence of a small Russian force actively assisting Massoud in the Panjsher Valley. "The situation in Afghanistan cannot be ignored as it impinges directly on the 12-year old Kashmir insurgency," an Indian military official said, adding that the Northern Alliance's elimination by the Taliban would be "disastrous" for India

So okay, we're not talking about the USA invading Afghanistan 6 months before 9/11, but they were certainly involved in military action. Let's take a look at another article, this time from The Public Affairs Magazine dated June 2001

India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans for "limited military action" against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime.

The Taliban controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan and is advancing northward along the Salang highway and preparing for a rear attack on the opposition Northern Alliance from Tajikistan-Afghanistan border positions.

Indian foreign secretary Chokila Iyer attended a crucial session of the second Indo-Russian joint working group on Afghanistan in Moscow amidst increase of Taliban's military activity near the Tajikistan border. And, Russia's Federal Security Bureau (the former KGB) chief Nicolai Patroshev is visiting Teheran this week in connection with Taliban's military build-up.

Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of "facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-Sharief city in northern Afghanistan.

Military action will be the last option though it now seems scarcely avoidable with the UN banned from Taliban-controlled areas. The UN which adopted various means in the last four years to resolve the Afghan problem is now being suspected by the Taliban and refused entry into Taliban areas of the war-ravaged nation through a decree issued by Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar last month.

Diplomats say that the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Collin Powel and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and later between Powell and Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh in Washington. Russia, Iran and India have also held a series of discussions and more diplomatic activity is expected.

The Northern Alliance led by ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and his military commander Ahmed Shah Masood have mustered Western support during a May 2001 visit to Dusseldorf, Germany.

The Taliban is using high-intensity rockets and Soviet-made tanks to attack Northern Alliance fighters in the Hindukush range with alleged Pakistani aid. But Northern Alliance fighters have acquired anti-tank missiles from a third country that was used in the fight near Bagram Air Base in early June. The Taliban lost 20 fighters and fled under intense attack.

Officials say that the Northern Alliance requires a "clean up" operation to reduce Taliban's war-fighting machinery to launch an attack against the Taliban advance to the Tajik-Afghan border. This "clean up" action is being planned by the US and Russia since the Taliban shows no "sign of reconciliation".

Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong military back up of the US and Russia. Vital Taliban installations and military assets will be targeted. India and Iran will provide logistic support. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already hinted of military action against the Taliban to CIS nation heads during a meeting in Moscow in early June.

...

So we can say, without doubt, that the USA intended to deploy some form of military might - be it infantry, special forces, aircraft, etc. - in Afghanistan well before the World Trade Centre attacks. This story was corroborated by the BBC in a story which also sheds some new light on the issue - this article dated September 2001

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.

Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

So the USA did want to kill or capture Bin Laden - albeit before the 9/11 attacks. If we maintain our sense of disbelief, and dismiss any conspiracy theories that the USA had advance warning of 9/11 and deliberately failed to act, this still tells us that any desire to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan was completely unrelated to to 9/11. The news story continues...

The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.

Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

I'm sure that we all remember from Vietnam what "advisors" means.

He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.

Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.

So the USA definitely did have plans for an invasion of Aghanistan before 9/11.

And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.

Why is this? Because the invasion was never about retribution for 9/11.

So what was it about? Here is an article from the Asia Times, which makes for interesting reading.

Under the influence of United States oil companies, the government of President George W Bush initially blocked intelligence agencies' investigations on terrorism while it bargained with the Taliban on the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim. In the book Bin Laden, la verite interdite (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that was released recently, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

The authors claim that O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it". The two claim that the US government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the US government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia" from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Until now, says the book, "the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that."

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military one", the authors claim.

"At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,'" Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

According to the book, the Bush administratino began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. US and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.

To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a US expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of US intelligence organizations, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The last meeting between US and Taliban representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, the analysts maintain. On that occasion, Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for the US government, met the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan in Islamabad.

Brisard and Dasquie have long experience in intelligence analysis. Brisard was until the late 1990s director of economic analysis and strategy for Vivendi, a French company. He also worked for French secret services, and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous Al-Qaeda network, headed by bin Laden. Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy, available through the Internet.

Brisard and Dasquie draw a portrait of the closest aides to Bush, linking them to the oil business. Bush's family has a strong oil background, as do some of his top aides. From Vice President Dick Cheney, through the director of the National Security Council Condoleezza Rice, to the ministers of commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, all have for long worked for US oil companies. Cheney was until the end of last year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for oil industry; Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron; Evans and Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant.
...

Well? What do you think? This certainly adds credence to the War on Terror being a "phoney" war.

 

[Red Stranger]

The Taliban was oppressive before 9/11 also.

 

[zulu9812]

The Taliban was oppressive before 9/11 also.

So what? The official reason for the invasion of Afghanistan was as a response to 9/11.

 

[Red Stranger]

9/11 show the evil of the Taliban regime. But without 9/11, I'd still support the liberation of the Afghani and Iraqi people.

 

[Inqvisitor]

9/11 had nothing to do with any of Bush's destructive antics in the Middle East. It was merely a ploy used to justify war without end for the sake of a most vile ideology.

 

[Inqvisitor]

9/11 show the evil of the Taliban regime. But without 9/11, I'd still support the liberation of the Afghani and Iraqi people.

There are a lot of other countries under oppressive regimes...many much worse...

 

[zulu9812]

9/11 show the evil of the Taliban regime. But without 9/11, I'd still support the liberation of the Afghani and Iraqi people.

Of course you would: you would support any actions of a Republican government. If they told you to jump off a cliff, you'd say "Which cliff, sir? This cliff, sir? Yes, sir!"

But I'm not asking Republicans if they would support their Republican government's actions, no matter what. I am asking if people agree with the assertion that the US government used 9/11, used those people's tragic deaths, as a smokescreen and a reason to cause more deaths.

 

[Xenocrates]

Good post Zulu.

The next question is:

'why did they want to invade Afghanistan?'

The letters O, I and L may only give you three points in scrabble.......

But who's O, I and L did they want, perhaps all of it?

 

[Red Stranger]

There are a lot of other countries under oppressive regimes...many much worse...

One at a time. If you try to defend everywhere you are strong nowhere. We start off with the worst regimes then move up. That's why we are harder on Iran than Venezuela.

 

[zulu9812]

One at a time. If you try to defend everywhere you are strong nowhere. We start off with the worst regimes then move up. That's why we are harder on Iran than Venezuela.

You don't seriously think that Venezuela is under an oppressive dictatorship, do you?

 

[Red Stranger]

Hugo Chavez, you decide.

 

[El_Machinae]

Didn't Clinton have plans/opportunities to kill Osama before 9/11 too? It seems like this could have been part of that. If Afghanistan was deemed to be a potential threat, it makes sense to have plans.

I'm sure the Pentagon has plans to invade Canada kicking around, in case they ever feel like having their Whitehouse burned down again.

 

[zulu9812]

Hugo Chavez, you decide.

You're an arse. Hugo Chavez has won a combination of 9 general elections and referendums on his ability to lead - giving him the greatest democratic mandate of any leader in history.

 

[zulu9812]

Didn't Clinton have plans/opportunities to kill Osama before 9/11 too? It seems like this could have been part of that. If Afghanistan was deemed to be a potential threat, it makes sense to have plans.

I'm sure the Pentagon has plans to invade Canada kicking around, in case they ever feel like having their Whitehouse burned down again.

What you're talking about are contingency plans. Sure, all major governments have contingency plans for everything. But that's not what this is about. This about actual action that was taking place before 9/11 and that was already scheduled to increase in the Autumn.

 

[warpus]

While the U.S. may have been planning an invasion of Afghanistan before 9/11... 9/11 was the sort of justification they needed to carry it out.

Would have they invaded anyway if 9/11 didn't happen? Probably - but they would not have as much support.

 

[Red Stranger]

I'm sure the Pentagon has plans to invade Canada kicking around, in case they ever feel like having their Whitehouse burned down again.

We need a Canadian/American fence.

 

[woody60707]

The USS cole, The Marine barracrks that got bombed over seas, ect ect. We have been wanting to get Bin laden for years. We know hes been in Afghanistin for years, Russia would love nothing more then to once and for all, do away with the Taliban. After the the Taliban did a Castro on the US, after we gave them Stinger missiles and other weapons to defeat the USSR(it may of been called Russia back then, not sure.) We would also love nothing more to do away with the Taliban So yes, I would hope that the US had plans for dealing with the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Al Queda.

 

[JohnRM]

We've all been lead to believe that the reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan was 9/11: the Taliban were harbouring the organisers of the terrorist attack. America invaded to punish the Taliban for offering shelter to Al Queda and to apprehend Usama Bin Laden.

Well, it wasn't true. That wasn't the reason at all.

First up, we have this article from Janes International Security News, from March 2001


So okay, we're not talking about the USA invading Afghanistan 6 months before 9/11, but they were certainly involved in military action. Let's take a look at another article, this time from The Public Affairs Magazine dated June 2001


So we can say, without doubt, that the USA intended to deploy some form of military might - be it infantry, special forces, aircraft, etc. - in Afghanistan well before the World Trade Centre attacks. This story was corroborated by the BBC in a story which also sheds some new light on the issue - this article dated September 2001


So the USA did want to kill or capture Bin Laden - albeit before the 9/11 attacks. If we maintain our sense of disbelief, and dismiss any conspiracy theories that the USA had advance warning of 9/11 and deliberately failed to act, this still tells us that any desire to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan was completely unrelated to to 9/11. The news story continues...



I'm sure that we all remember from Vietnam what "advisors" means.



So the USA definitely did have plans for an invasion of Aghanistan before 9/11.



Why is this? Because the invasion was never about retribution for 9/11.

So what was it about? Here is an article from the Asia Times, which makes for interesting reading.


Well? What do you think? This certainly adds credence to the War on Terror being a "phoney" war.

Wait until you find out that we've had plans for more than a hundred years to invade Canada *oops!*.

Dude, this is not a shock. Afghanistan was a terror-sponsoring state. We knew this and we were planning for going after them. 9/11 sealed the deal.
No conspiracy proven.

 

[Inqvisitor]

One at a time. If you try to defend everywhere you are strong nowhere. We start off with the worst regimes then move up. That's why we are harder on Iran than Venezuela.

So your proposal for world peace is basically war without end...?

Are you at all aware of the human costs of waging such an unwinnable war...?

 

[El_Machinae]

We need a Canadian/American fence.

A fence is a barrier to trade, barriers to trade decrease the benefits from having a trading relationship and waste a bunch of money to boot.

We don't need a fence. Even if there is some smuggling, it goes both ways. And the cost of ending that smuggling would hurt our countries quite a bit (compared to our current relationship).