Why 2001 Little Hawk?? In 1993 Al-Qaeda carried out an attack against the WTC that didn't quite come off, they then attacked US personnel in the Khobar Towers in 1996, US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, US Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. The President of the United States during this period was Bill Clinton - He didn't go to Congress - He didn't go to the UN - He just started throwing Cruise Missiles about (Damn near starting a nuclear war between Pakistan and India in the process in 1998 - only very quick talking averted it) Would he be up there on trial with the rest of them??

The Taliban in their own totally inept, incompetent and corrupt way "ruled" parts of Afghanistan between 1994 until they were driven out and back home to Pakistan in 2001. The ONLY year they ever made any move against the growing of opium poppies in Afghanistan was in 2000, the reasons for doing this were as follows:

- To qualify for UN aid programmes
- To maintain market price for stocks of raw opium and manufactured heroin already held
- To reduce and damage the economic and financial base of their opponents.'

In the Taliban's eyes there is nothing wrong with growing opium poppy, there is nothing wrong with producing raw opium, there is nothing wrong with making and selling the heroin that comes from it. This after all is how they currently fund their insurrection. What they see as being wrong is for "good Muslims" to use the stuff.

The Khalq faction of the Communist PDPA took over in Afghanistan in April 1978, in their first six months they had murdered over 38,000 Afghan civilians including ~12,000 members of the Parchami Faction of their own party. Their appeals for Soviet assistance began almost immediately on them taking over, the Soviets were in Afghanistan in Brigade strength long before the US got interested and well over six months before the Soviets sent in their 40th Army in December 1979. Between the Afghan Communist PDPA and the Soviet 40th Army between 1978 and 1989 they managed to reduce the total population of the country by one-third. They destroyed the agricultural base of the country causing widespread malnutrition and disease, they had reduced the two largest cities in Afghanistan to ruins and reduced their populations by 90%, the 15 million landmines indiscriminately sown throughout the countryside to "deny it" to the "enemy" ofcourse made things very easy for those driven from the cities to seek shelter in the countryside.

You will hear very little complaint from the people of Iraq who for the previous 24 years had seen their wealth dissappear with Saddam Hussein's grandiose schemes while they themselves were being murdered at an average yearly rate of around 102,000. Still no signs of Iraq breaking up or descending into civil war as many on this forum predicted - and no "Arab Spring" for Iraq as there has been in Syria - wonder why? Maybe because everything that the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria protested about and demonstrated for was "given" to the people of Iraq in 2003.

You will hear very little complaint from the people of Afghanistan they had been slaughtered at a yearly average rate of almost 109,000 over the period from April 1978 to October 2001 - even with the ongoing insurrection that average yearly death toll has been reduced by 97%. Massive investment - investment NOT aid - is flowing into the country. Massive progress has been made to improve the lives of Afghanistan's population.