Molly Ivins: A Whale of a Tale

[Dudley_DUright]

Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty. I'll be go to hell. Danged if Charlie Wilson didn't win the Cold War singlehandedly. That would be the same Charlie Wilson we've known all these years as a rascal, reprobate and rouge -- and also, a semi-decent congressman from East Texas, a dead-serious patriot and a lot more fun than the average bear.

The thesis of George Crile's book "Charlie Wilson's War" is that Wilson, by brilliantly leveraging his position on the Defense Appropriations Committee, funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, where they gradually bled the Red Army to death and caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. End of Evil Empire, all courtesy of Charlie Wilson.

Crile has boatloads of evidence to back up this improbable thesis and a whale of a tale. This is both a heroic and a comic story featuring the most improbable cast of characters outside a Flashman novel. (Harry Flashman is the swaggering hero of the series by George McDonald Fraser, one of Wilson's favorite writers.)

The comic set pieces are irresistible. Who could miss with material like the time Charlie took a belly dancer from Fort Worth to perform for the Egyptian minister of defense? Or, my favorite, the time he dragged the wildly eccentric chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a guy who spits all the time and looks like the mad scientist from "Back to the Future," off to meet Zia ul-Haq and the Mujahideen.

more (including stuff about the CIA)...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15268&CFID=8292985&CFTOKEN=63416598

[morningglory]

1. In a way you could say CW has destroyed America as we know it

He helped fund Osama. Osama turned on us. We have busted the treasury attacking Afghanistan and Iraq and who knows where else?

[Dudley_DUright]

2. There is a name for this

It is called blowback, otherwise known as the "law of unintended consequences".