Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California said an amazing thing on CNN yesterday. I don't remember which talking head was present (it doesn't matter--they're interchangable, and have less than one whole brain among the lot of them). He said that terrorism exists because the Clinton administration failed to do anything about the Taliban.

Putting aside the simplistic notion that there is a single cause of terrorism, let's look at the depth of Congressman Rohrabacher's lie. First, it is public record that the Clinton administration made several attempts to take out bin Laden, but halted all of them because civilians would have been killed.

More important, though, is what the current administration did about the Taliban, and they did plenty. In January of 2001, the Bush White House gave the Taliban $43 million to help fight the alleged war on drugs. They did this, knowing that the Taliban tortured and executed people, made the lives of women and children unbearable, and would undoubtedly put any money they received into extremist causes. I say they knew these things because these things were common knowledge. (I am excluding Bush here; during the 2000 election, he could not answer a question about the Taliban because he didn't know what it was.)

So our White House gave $43 million to an extraordinarily repressive and extremist group because that group considered the cultivation of poppies to be against the will of God. It is interesting to note that this transaction was made early in the Bush administration--May of 2001. (There is an interesting Enron/Afghanistan timeline you can sing along to also, all of which provides background for the "anti-drug" money, if you want to consider it.)

As for the lying Congressman from California, the CNN interviewer didn't bother to challenge anything he said. I can't blame her. In order to do that, she would have had to: a. have a clue about recent history, and b. not be owned by the Bush White House.