By That is what classified documents released on the WikiLeaks website says:
There are fleeting — even taunting — reminders of how the war began in the occasional references to the elusive Osama bin Laden. In some reports he is said to be attending meetings in Quetta, Pakistan. His money man is said to be flying from Iran to North Korea to buy weapons. Mr. bin Laden has supposedly ordered a suicide attack against the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. These reports all seem secondhand at best. [New York Times]
The North Koreans have been selling arms to the Iranians for years, which are then shuttled over to the terrorist group Hezbollah. It is definitely a possibility that Al Qaeda and the Taliban could also be buying weapons from the North Koreans.
With that said the rest of what I read in the New York Times article from the WikiLeaks report I didn’t find very interesting. Really only people who haven’t been paying attention to what is going on in Afghanistan will trumpet this report. They are trumpeting the German called air strike for example that killed a number of Afghan civilians as something new even though there is even an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the incident now. I’m sure the usual anti-military crowd will eat this stuff up as usual.
9:59 am on July 26th, 2010 1
"Did Osama Bin Laden Buy Weapons From the North Koreans?"
It is hard to know.
A better headline might be:
"Did Osama Bin Laden Buy Vehicles From the Americans?"
The FORD badge on the truck is compelling evidence.
10:28 am on July 26th, 2010 2
Perhaps an even better (more accurate) headline might be:
"Did Osama Bin Laden Buy Weapons From the North Koreans, Syrians, Israelis, Chinese, Russians, Iranians, South Africans, Brazilians, Germans, Brits, Americans, ………?”
11:55 am on July 26th, 2010 3
Another question might be, "Did Tommy Franks fail to kill or capture Osama bin Laden?"
11:56 am on July 26th, 2010 4
"Really only people who haven’t been paying attention to what is going on in Afghanistan will trumpet this report."
You're missing the bigger picture, which is that the news have been spun to the point of making a war in a distant country as worry and guilt free as possible for the general public. Honestly, would most people in the general public know we were fighting in Afghanistan if they didn't watch the news? I think it reveals a concerted attempt at fabricating consent, or at least minimizing dissent.
10:15 am on July 27th, 2010 5
Well Kim-jung-il said there will be a "sacred war" Islam and Juche have a lot in common when you think about it Sogun too. Maybe they've joined forces I mean an atheist communist state saying sacred war strange but not that strange for the DPRK.
1:12 pm on July 27th, 2010 6
It looks like great minds think a like
because Foreign Policy and Tom Ricks agree with me that the WikiLeaks documents is pretty underwhelming for those of us who have been following the war in Afghanistan:
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/26/…
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/26/w…
2:41 pm on July 27th, 2010 7
4187's, 5504's and unit level AAR's no one ever read.
3:21 pm on July 27th, 2010 8
#6,
Yes and no. It depends on whether you blindly believed the coverage as fact and nothing but or not.