i·me·michael

Frontline interviews Milton Bearden about the Afghan war’s importance to the Muslim world and bin Laden’s role in it. Bearden also questions classifying the Sudan as a ‘terrorist state’ and criticizes America’s retaliatory missile strike in the Sudan against bin Laden.

a very good read.

I could swear I’ve heard Bearden in other interviews talk about the guerilla training they gave the militants in Afghanistan, but he really doesn’t mention it here. He does talk about the backlash of some people saying how the CIA and the US created these guys (not bin Laden directly, or at all really), but he sidesteps that one. I’m gonna try and find that somewhere.

what I find interesting in the article is the tack the Bearden takes regarding US Policy. I mean here’s a guy heading up covert operations for decades, now saying that the US needs to lay things out on the table. That

“…these acts don’t necessarily fit in to the continuum of what the United States has been about for the last half century. And it’s just simply time to maybe address that seriously.”

I get the impression that he feels as long as we were fighting one big dragon in front of his lair (the Russians and communism), what we did was perfectly acceptable, but now that we have to deal with a we need to tread lightly, and reassess how we do things.

He ought to get together with Ollie North and start a band. Ha!