The Return: A Book for Frances about Life and Death
             Preface
            Back Cover
      You're in Charge: A Guide to Becoming Your Own Therapist
            Introduction: The Art of Self Observation
             On Dreaming
            Foreign Editions
   Since the New Deal: An Annotated Chronology of the Events That Have Changed the United States
             The C.I.A. (excerpt)
             Origins of the Cold War (excerpt)
             Some Quotations that Demonstrate the Underlying Philosophy Since the New Deal

 
      Afghanistan, "Terrorism," and Blowback   About Anthrax
     Some Thoughts on 9-11-2001

Afghanistan, "Terrorism" and Blowback: A Chronology
by Janette Rainwater, Ph.D.

                                p7

1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Afghanistan it had been "arms in, drugs out" despite the Carter administration's efforts to run a drug-free war. With Reagan that changed. The FBI, instead of the DEA, was put in charge of the anti-drug program in the United States, so any previous DEA-CIA information-sharing ended. A blind eye was turned to the Afghani warlords who controlled the Khyber Pass and other transit routes to Pakistan through which military supplies and newly-trained mujaheddin must pass. Western supplies of heroin from Central Asia increased ten-fold in the decade of the war, soon surpassing Southeast Asia as the principal source. And the drug was no longer coming out as raw opium or blocks of morphine; heroin-processing laboratories sprang up in both Pakistan and Afghanistan displacing Marseilles and Hong Kong as the principal refining centers. The war took a recess each year at poppy harvesting time when the indigenous soldiers on both sides would go home to help harvest their crops. Soviet soldiers, frustrated with fighting a guerrilla war for which they had not been trained, quickly became addicted to the easily available drug, just as American GIs had in Vietnam. It can't be proven, but possibly that was part of the CIA scheme (as had been suggested to Casey and Reagan by the head of the French CIA and even given a label--- "Operation Mosquito.") Casey also needed the exemption for the covert operation against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas to protect the CIA officials working with cocaine-dealing contras. In 1995 the Clinton administration rescinded the exemption with no fanfare; this action did not become public knowledge until 1998. Cooley, pp. 126-139, The Consortium, June 1, 1998, pp. 2-4.]

June, 1982    First Lady Nancy Reagan announces her "Just Say No" campaign in the "war on drugs." Attorney General Smith asks for an appropriation of $130 million to finance this conceit.

June 6, 1982    Israel invades Lebanon in "Operation Peace for Galilee." [The immediate goal of Menachem Begin's government was to destroy the infrastructure of the PLO terrorists in southern Lebanon who had been killing and harassing citizens of northern Israel. Begin's ultimate aim, however, was to force the Palestinians out of their refugee camps and into Jordan where he hoped they would overthrow the monarchy and take over the country as "Palestine." Then with Palestinian ambitions for statehood satisfied, Israel could annex the West Bank captured in the 1967 War. Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1996, B7.]

September 16, 1982    Militiamen from the Lebanese Christian PhalanqueC allies of IsraelC storm two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, slaughtering around 800 civilians as Israeli troops, commanded by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, stand by. [The invasion of South Lebanon ("Operation Peace for Galilee") had escalated. Israeli troops laid siege to the capital Beirut to widespread international condemnation. After the massacre in the refugee camps, 400,000 Israeli citizens demonstrated to protest the protracted campaign and the many Israeli casualties and demanded an inquiry into the degree of Israel's culpability at Sabra and Shatilla. Protesters gathered daily outside the windows of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, shouting "Murderer" in a manner reminiscent of the American doves who hurled similar epithets at LBJ. Like LBJ, Begin resigned office in August, 1983 saying, "I cannot go on." Karpin and Friedman, Murder in the Name of God (1998), pp. 66-67.]

October 23, 1983    Blowback to USA for Sabra and Shatilla: A suicide truck loaded with explosives crashes into the US Marine barracks outside Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 United States Marines and severely injuring dozens more. This is the highest loss of Marines in a single day since Iwo Jima.

September 20, 1984    Blowback: The Islamic Jihad sends another explosive-loaded truck to bomb the US Embassy in Beirut on a day when the US and British ambassadors are meeting there. This time guards kill the suicide bomber before he can slam into the Embassy; fourteen people die.

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