Charlie Wilsons War. New movie with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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http://imdb.com/title/tt0472062/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wilson_(politician)

In the early summer of 1980, Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, a news junkie, read an Associated Press dispatch on the congressional wires, that described hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan.

Not many, however, were paying attention, not even in the American government, when Charlie Wilson picked up a phone and called the Appropriations Committee staffer who dealt with "black appropriations", the CIA funds, and ordered him to double the current appropriation for Afghanistan. Wilson had just been named to the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. He was now part of the band of twelve men in the House responsible for funding CIA operations.

When Wilson first visited Afghanistan in 1982 it was the center of the Afghan military activity. His schedule called for the traditional tour of the U.N.-supported refugee camps. Without Charlie Wilson's actions, the Soviet Union might have crushed the Afghan resistance. Charlie Wilson's actions, with the help of many others, helped bring down the communist government by supplying millions of dollars to the Afghan Mujahideen to beat the soviets in Afghanistan.



I never realized Wilsons involvement in Afghanistan.
 
Feb 10, 2000
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The cruel irony is that he was arming the same people who would go on to form the Taliban and al Qaeda. That doesn't necessarily make his actions wrong in a historical context, but there's no question they had a lot of negative impact.
 

Mill

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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'Ole Charlie Wilson went into Afghanistan several times. He begged the CIA to let him shoot at a Russian Plane or Copter with a Stinger, and finally with some help of the people that would one day make up the Northern Alliance they let him.

All this is discussed in Milt Bearden's book.