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Your comment uses too many acronyms to understand, I'm sure others here feel the same. I know that CIA is the US Central Intelligence Agency, and KIA means kill

Your comment uses too many acronyms to understand, I'm sure others here feel the same. I know that CIA is the US Central Intelligence Agency, and KIA means killed in action ... by context I'm pretty sure AQ is Al-Qaeda and AFG is for some reason an acronym for Afghanistan? But I have no idea what IC, CTC, or the USS Cole are. Is "United Front" an organization that would justify the capitalization, or do you mean a united front in general? Aside from that, what does an embassy bombing in Tanzania/Kenya have to do with Afghanistan or 9/11? Was it done by Al-Qaeda? And could you clarify or expand on most of the rest of your comment?

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Aside from that, what does an embassy bombing in Tanzania/Kenya have to do with Afghanistan or 9/11? Was it done by Al-Qaeda? Yes, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole were carried out by al-Qaeda.
dogman144 5y ago
> It’s a fairly lengthy operation to succinctly cite But also see other user’s post below. In short, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda were on the map for a very long time, but no one listened. By the time 9/11 occurred, AQ was a global, well coordinated organization with a single underfunded agency (CIA) tracking it. The agency was largely forbidden from accessing the only spot Al Qaeda really aggregated: Afghanistan. If you can orient to a pre-Internet time, it makes sense how much (realized) risk this black box caused - embassy and US navy ship bombings, and 9/11. The United Front is another term for the Northern Alliance, a ~tribal group in northern AFG. It was the CIA’s main access and information flow into AFG until 9/12. The state dept and official policy largely forbade interacting with them though. The leader of the UF who the CIA linked with starting back in the late 90s, guy named Massood, was assassinated by the Taliban/AQ on like 9/10 iirc (so days before 9/11). This all goes to say that the invasion of AFG was tremendously important, but staying there once AQ was gone maybe was not. There are fairly tragic records of July and early Sept 2001 briefings from the CIA to the President on the imminent threat actual. One way to start reading about this history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Aside from that, what does an embassy bombing in Tanzania/Kenya have to do with Afghanistan or 9/11? Was it done by Al-Qaeda? Yes, the embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole were carried out by al-Qaeda.

dogman144 5y ago

> It’s a fairly lengthy operation to succinctly cite But also see other user’s post below. In short, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda were on the map for a very long time, but no one listened. By the time 9/11 occurred, AQ was a global, well coordinated organization with a single underfunded agency (CIA) tracking it. The agency was largely forbidden from accessing the only spot Al Qaeda really aggregated: Afghanistan. If you can orient to a pre-Internet time, it makes sense how much (realized) risk this black box caused - embassy and US navy ship bombings, and 9/11. The United Front is another term for the Northern Alliance, a ~tribal group in northern AFG. It was the CIA’s main access and information flow into AFG until 9/12. The state dept and official policy largely forbade interacting with them though. The leader of the UF who the CIA linked with starting back in the late 90s, guy named Massood, was assassinated by the Taliban/AQ on like 9/10 iirc (so days before 9/11). This all goes to say that the invasion of AFG was tremendously important, but staying there once AQ was gone maybe was not. There are fairly tragic records of July and early Sept 2001 briefings from the CIA to the President on the imminent threat actual. One way to start reading about this history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cofer_Black