Posted on 09/27/2001 12:20:43 PM PDT by phillibuck
This is not brand new, but I found it whilst lurking somewhere else. Did a search for Rohrabacher's name here and found nothing. Kind of interesting speculation(?) or evidence(?) of what lead to Sept 11.
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The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
U.S. House of Representatives Floor Speech
September 17, 2001
Mr. Speaker, it is in deep sadness that I rise today to speak to my colleagues and to set down a record that I believe necessary to understand the horrible loss that we have suffered.
... in 1996, a new force appeared seemingly out of nowhere--the Taleban.
These were fresh, well-equipped forces who had, by and large, sat out the war. They had been in Pakistan in what were called schools (Taleban means student, even though many, if not most, of the Taleban are illiterate.) All of the money America provided the Mujahidin during the war had to go through the Pakistani ISI (their CIA) and, apparently, enough had been siphoned off to create a third force--the Taleban. When the war was over, with the other factions bled white, they could dominate Afghanistan.
Also behind the Taleban is and has been Saudi Arabia. During the war against the Russians, the Saudis provided the Afghan resistance with hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, they were financing anti-Western as well as anti-Communist Muslims, one of whom was Bin Laden. I met the head of Saudi intelligence, Gen. Turki, and suggested to him that the exiled King of Afghanistan be brought back. It was King Zahir Shah's overthrow in 1972 that started the bloody cycle of events that eventually led to the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the subsequent war against the occupation. The Saudis wanted nothing to do with bringing back the moderate, good-hearted exiled King. They and their Pakistani allies were in the process of creating a secret third force--the Taleban--to take over and to do their bidding.
When the Taleban first arrived on the scene, people believed they would be a force for stability, so, by and large, they were welcomed-except in the northern provinces of Afghanistan where the Taleban were blocked by local commanders unwilling to permit these unfamiliar troops to take over their territory.
All too soon, the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world were to discover that the Pakistanis and the Saudis had created a monster. The Taleban were and are Medieval in their world and religious view: violent and intolerant, fanatics, totally out of sync with Moslems throughout the world, especially Muslims living in the Western democracies. The Taleban are best known for their horrific treatment of women, but they are violators of human rights across the board. They have jailed and threatened to execute Christian aid workers, allegedly for daring to espouse a belief in Jesus Christ. They have ended all personal freedoms; freedom of speech and press are not even a consideration. They rule by fear.
The Talebans believe they have a private line to God. The rest of us, with our religious convictions, according to the Taleban, are not only wrong but evil. That is why they have been willing to give safe haven to the likes of Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist who has been in Afghanistan for years training terrorists and planning out his attacks. Oh yes, Bin Laden has an army of several thousand gunmen who have been maurading around Afghanistan like a pack of mad dogs, fighting the to keep the Taleban in power. These foreign religious fanatics have killed thousands of Afghans. So the Taleban and Bin Laden are despised in most of Afghanistan.
For these last few years, the Taleban, with support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have captured control of all but a small portion of the country. Only the northeastern Panjshir Valley territory in northern Afghanistan and the Shamali Plains north of Kabul, under the control of a legendary and dashing leader, Commander Masood, remained free of Taleban domination.
The day before the attack on the United States, there was an attempt to kill Commander Masood. Although he was reported dead, he struggled for life another five days.
The attack on Masood told me something was about to happen, because Masood was someone Bin Laden's enemies would obviously turn to in an attack on the Taleban. I was so concerned I made an appointment to see top NSC officials at the White House. My appointment was for 2:30. At 8:45 that morning the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center.
But the Taleban domination of Afghanistan need not have happened. As a member of Congress, for years I pleaded with the Clinton Administration to provide some kind of help for the Northern Alliance. President Clinton would have none of it and, in fact his administration was, in many ways, responsible for keeping the Taleban in power.
Every time I suggest this, some people go ballistic because they believe I'm being partisan at this moment when national unity is obviously the order of the day. Unfortunately, I am not being partisan. As a senior member of International Relations committee, I officially requested State Department documents that would prove or disprove my suspicion that the Clinton Administration was secretly supporting the Taleban. I was stonewalled for several years. My request for those documents pertaining to the development of our government's policy toward the Taleban was ignored. I was given meaningless documents and the State Department made a joke out of Congress's right to oversee America's foreign policy.
By the way, in Afghanistan, it is commonly believed that the United States put the Taleban in power and supports the regime. There are reasons they believe this.
In 1996, for example, the Taleban overextended their forces and thousands of their best fighters were captured in northern Afghanistan. The Taleban regime was vulnerable as never before or since. It was a tremendous opportunity. The Alliance could have easily dealt a knockout punch to the Taleban. At that time I personally was in contact with the leaders of the Northern Alliance and recommended a quick attack and bringing back the old King, Zahir Shah, until some form of a democratic process could be established. This was a turning point.
Who saved the Taleban? President Bill Clinton. And please, I beg of you not to dismiss what I say. I am not being partisan. That would be sinful at a time like this. What happened was that, at this moment, when the Taleban could have been eliminated, President Clinton dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth and Bill Richardson, our United Nations Ambassador, to convince the leaders of the Northern Alliance not to go on an offensive against the then- vulnerable Taleban.
These two high-level American officials, sent by President Clinton, convinced the Northern Alliance to accept a ceasefire and a supposed arms embargo against all sides. Of course, the minute the ceasefire went into effect, the Saudis and Pakistanis began a massive rearming and resupply effort that rebuilt the Taleban forces. Our intelligence knew of the massive resupply effort, but we conveniently left the Northern Alliance in the dark. The Taleban offensive then started again and they drove most of the Northern Alliance out of the country.
For years I begged the Clinton Administration, our government, to support those resisting the Taleban regime, to support the former King, Zahir Shah, to let him head an interim government until a more democratic process could be put in place. Instead, the only response was a stonewalling of my request to find out what was our government's real policy toward Afghanistan.
All the while, Bin Laden, who had killed American military personnel and had declared war on the United States was running around Afghanistan, using it as a base of operations, a safe haven for terrorist attacks on the Philippines (he tried to kill the Pope) and other places. We did nothing. We were, in fact, supporting the Taleban. This as part of an understanding with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to let them dominate Afghanistan. This understanding was obviously turning into a nightmare; yet our leaders lacked the will to change the situation. Over and over again, I warned that our policy toward the Taleban would come back to hurt our country. I was ignored and at times belittled.
But why weren't we warned by others of the horrific attack about to be launched against us? There was a headline in the Washington Post on September 14th suggesting that America's intelligence services have been conducting a secret war against Bin Laden for a several years. If that is true, then we need to fire the incompetent leaders of that covert war because they were responsible for protecting us from this heinous and cowardly gang. Instead, there was no warning, yet we were told the heads of our intelligence organizations were focused on Bin Laden. We spend tens of billions of dollars annually for good intelligence and have tens of thousands of people committed to this endeavor. And they totally miss a terrorist operation of this magnitude run by their number one targeted terrorist leader. This was clearly the worst failure of intelligence in American history.
I can't help but remember a few years ago I was called by a friend who worked in Afghanistan during the war against the Russians. He indicated that he could pinpoint Bin Laden's location. I passed on his phone number to the CIA. After a week, when he had yet to be contacted, I called again. After another week of no response, I contacted the Intelligence Committee here. Porter Goss, chairman of the committee, set up a meeting with the Bin Laden task force (CIA, NSA, FBI). They, too, left my friend waiting by the phone. After weeks and weeks, my friend was at long last contacted. He described the agents who talked to him as somewhat disinterested. That may have been because by that time over a month had passed and the tip off was a little stale.
My friends, the slaughter of these thousands of Americans must be avenged and we must see to it that such a monstrous crime can never happen again. To accomplish this we must be strong and smart. We do not need to use our troops to invade Afghanistan. We should already be dispatching special forces teams and Rangers to those countries on Afghanistan's northern border. Those teams and other military units should establish a system to supply and equip those Afghans friendly to the United States, so that they can free themselves, with our help, from the Taleban rule. We can then join them in hunting down and killing every member of Ben Ladin terrorist gang and hanging their bodies at the gate.
Revenge is not an end in itself; otherwise we would be inconsistent with our own convictions. But by killing Bin Laden and his gang of fanatics and by joining in an effort to stamp out the scourge of terrorism, we are setting a moral standard.
First, our American dead will be avenged, which will hopefully deter at least some of those swine who contemplate such attacks in the future. Second, we are affirming that targeting unarmed noncombatants, anywhere in the world for whatever reason, will no longer be tolerated. If this is to be a better world, if we are to build upon the ashes of this tragedy, we will do it by seeing to it that the Bin Ladens of this planet are never given a safe haven again. And that those countries which harbor such criminals will themselves pay a price for this criminal disregard for the victims of such terrorism.
There must be an accounting. At home, those top government executives whose policies protected the Taleban, those intelligence officers who were so incompetent that this attack came without warning, must be cleared out. Those countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia have a price to pay, and finally the murdering terrorists themselves.
We will have victory over those ghouls who murdered our defenseless fellow Americans. We will win because we are unified as never before and because this generation of Americans has the courage, tenacity, and ideals that have always been America's greatest source of strength. It's up to us and we will do our duty. And nothing will deter us.
from the official House of Reps page
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