blackmailing them , bullying them
religous fundamentalists like bin laden were bred by bush.
bush even trained al quaeda ,
fought with them years ago..
bali happened because howard sent troops into fight with the yanks
if australian troops DID NOT go to iraq , there would NEVER have been the bombing in bali...
bunsen burner said:
Err, Loser, sorry, Lasher:
Care to back any of these up rather than sending me threatening PMs?
erm, ill field this one.
its a little scattershot, and chinese whispered, some is incomplete and some is based on opinion.
al-queda was born in afgahnistan, in the conflict between the mujihideen and the soviets. this conflict was paid for by three broad groups, private donors from around the persian gulf, the house of saud, the ruling political family of saudi arabia, and the CIA. the CIA were mostly happy to stay out of the actual conflict by funneling money through a pakistani general in the western pakistani city of peshawar, but they supplied some specialized weapons, like stinger AA missiles, and probably training, although this was probably very indirect. like they trained the pakistanis and the pakistanis trained the afgahns. there is no evidence that bin laden was ever directly a CIA operative, he was merely one of many leaders and organisers over there that benefited from the assistance of the pakistani proxy.
there is a very good ground level journalistic account of the history of the movement and the region just come out called Al-Queda - the true story of radical islam by Jason Burke. hes an american journalist who travelled the region for most of the time he documents. its a great book, and i recommend it.