Right. The murder of Massoud two days before September 11 was just a BIG OL' COINCIDENCE.
"let's agree that it is unwise to effectively run their recruiting campaigns via US foreign policy."
No. Let's agree that loony religious psychos who blame the Jews for all their problems AND are peed-off about something somebody did four hundred years ago need to be killed and their corpses stuffed with pig guts.
Speaking of coincidences, isn't it just amazing that the US got the Taleban to get rid of those bad old poppy crops just at the right time? Now, there's no cash crop, no food crop, and the Northern Alliance is still growing poppies. Let's see, those are our new "allies" right?
And another coincidence: the US told Afghanistan via Pakistan that they would be attacked no later than mid-October -- months before 911.
And speaking of truly amazing, how about this (you didn't see it in the New York Times).
Musharraf: From CIA With Love?
Musharraf: From CIA With Love?
This article speculates on the possible behind-the-scenes role of CIA Director George Tenet in fixing the Vajpayee-Musharraf talks. Pakistani hardliners too are reported to be angry with the General's decision to visit New Delhi.
Some circles in the US see a linkage between the recent high-profile visit of Mr.Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, to New Delhi, the unpublicised visit of Mr.George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to Islamabad where he had an unusually long meeting with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the self-styled Chief Executive of Pakistan, and the surprise decision of the Government of India to invite the General to New Delhi for talks without any longer insisting on the stoppage of Pakistani support to cross-border terrorism as a pre-condition for a resumption of the bilateral dialogue at the political level.
Mr.Armitage, who had spent some years of his career in the CIA/DIA and holds the highest Pakistani civil decoration that could be awarded to a foreigner for his role during the Afghan war of the 1980s, has a large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.
Mr.Tenet had worked for some years as an aide to one of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees before he was nominated by Mr. Bill Clinton as the Director of the CIA. Significantly, he was one of the very few ( the Director of the FBI was another) important appointees of the Clinton Administration to have been asked by President Bush to continue in his post despite the criticism of the functioning of the CIA and its failure to detect the preparations for India's Pokhran II nuclear tests of 1998 by Mr.Bush and his advisers during the Presidential election campaign last year.
These circles attribute this decision not to disturb Mr.Tenet from his post to an important behind-the-scene role, which he has reportedly been playing since last year in working for a rapprochement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel in West Asia and between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Mr. Bush and his senior aides, who do not want the President to personally play an active mediatory role in West Asia or elsewhere similar to the high-profile roles played by Mr.Clinton, reportedly felt that US interests could be better served by continuing to use the deniable, stealth services of the CIA chief.