Dana Rohrabacher Lies Again About Aiding Osama Bin Laden’s Taliban Pals
Rohrabacher “forgets” he lobbied for Taliban while it protected Osama bin Laden
Rohrabacher “forgets” he lobbied for Taliban while it protected Osama bin Laden
For Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the week proved to be yet another political mess.
First, the Weekly exposed that Orange County’s senior career politician paid his wife 50 percent of the federal campaign contributions he raised in the latest reporting period and that she has taken more than a quarter of a million dollars in contributions since 2006.
Then, Rohrabacher must have also guzzled one too many tequila shots before he blamed President Barack Obama for the top one percent of Americans enjoying a huge income disparity gap that began in 1993, when Obama was an unknown Chicago constitutional law professor.
Now, the man who wasn’t brave enough to volunteer for Vietnam War duty when he was eligible to serve in the military is ridiculously touting on Twitter his own brilliance fighting Middle East terrorism.
In an Oct. 27 post, a battered Rohrabacher stated to nobody in particular: “In 1990s I was one of the few trying to defeat Taliban by building coaltion [sic] that after 9-11 became Northern Alliance. Awarded medal for this.”
That statement is a purposely misleading half-truth. It is true that at one point the congressman had harsh words for the Taliban. But it is more true that before and after those harsh words he vociferously supported the Taliban at the very time it harbored Osama bin Laden and his terrorists prior to the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
As I’ve previously reported, Rohrabacher told a Washington, D.C. news outlet in 1996 that liberals in the American news media had smeared the noble intentions of the Taliban. In fact, in one of the biggest blunders in American political history, he stated that Taliban members were not “terrorists or revolutionaries” and that “their takeover of Afghanistan would be a positive development” for the United States.
You can stop laughing now. During Bill Clinton’s second term as president, Rohrabacher did ridicule Clinton for, get this, allegedly doing what the congressman had done: snuggle up to Taliban leaders.
But in April 2001–less than five months before bin Laden’s devastating terrorist attacks, Rohrabacher was back on board with the Taliban–a move the congressman seems to have conveniently forgotten.
Here’s a few line from one of my 2003 news articles:
“On April 11, 2001, Rohrabacher traveled with [Khaled] Saffuri and others from Washington, D.C. to meet in Qatar with Taliban leader Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil. The regime that was protecting bin Laden from U.S. intelligence operations wanted Rohrabacher to help increase U.S. aid to it, at the time already more than $100 million annually. Rohrabacher emerged from those meetings to tell Middle East news media that the meeting had been “frank and open” and that the Taliban leaders were “thoughtful and inquisitive” as well as “flexible.”
Rohrabacher was obviously mistaken. Five months later to the day, bid Laden’s terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. In the days following those attacks, the congressman claimed he had anticipated the Sept. 11 suicide missions a day before they were launched, but could not get National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to hear his warnings. He eventually blamed the disaster on Bill Clinton, who had been out of power for eight months. The Orange County Register dutifully reported the congressman’s attack on Clinton, but left out his questionable involvement with the Taliban.”
In fact, Rohrabacher’s blunder was worse.
Saffuri, his travel companion to Qatar before terrorist attacks, was a Palestinian known to financially supported the families of anti-Israel suicide bombers, according to conservative foreign affairs experts including Frank Gaffney.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
