North Korea Sells SAMs to Al Queda, Al Queda Uses Them To Shoot Down Our Helicopters

From One Free Korea:

Wikileaks: North Korea sold missiles to Al Qaeda, which may have used them to kill American soldiers


Posted by Joshua Stanton on July 27, 2010 at 7:23 pm · Filed under Terrorism (NK)



A powerful Afghan insurgent leader and a man identified as Osama Bin Laden’s financial adviser purchased ground-to-air missiles from North Korea in 2005, according to an uncorroborated U.S. intelligence report released by Wikileaks on Sunday.



“On 19 November 2005, Hezb-Islami party leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [sic] and Dr. Amin [no last name], Osama Bin Ladin’s financial advisor, both flew to North Korea departing from Iran,” the undated report said.



“While in North Korea, the two confirmed a deal with the North Korean government for remote controlled rockets for use against American and coalition aircraft,” said the report, whose origin could not be determined from the version published on the Wikileaks site. [WaPo]



And here is the suspected consequence of that:



about 18 months later, according a previously undisclosed after-action military report obtained by Wikileaks, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter was downed by a missile “shortly after crossing over the Helmand River.”



“The impact of the missile projected the aft end of the aircraft up as it burst into flames followed immediately by a nose dive into the crash site with no survivors,” the May 30, 2007 report added.



Reached for comment, a State Department spokesman repeated that State Department lawyers do not consider the sinking of the Cheonan to be the state sponsorship of terrorism.



The report is dated May 30, 2007, which would be about a month after North Korea was to have met its first deadlines under Agreed Framework II, and just three months after the agreement itself. Readers will recall former Bush Administration official Danielle Pletka’s accusation in the Washington Post that Hill “demand[ed] that intelligence regarding North Korean noncompliance with its denuclearization commitments be vetted through him and cut[ ] off the flow of information to diplomats with contrarian views on the wisdom of his approach to Pyongyang.”



Knowing that there are congressional staffers who are reading this, it would be my respectful suggestion that they take a very close look at just what State told the intelligence oversight committees about North Korea’s suspected sponsorship of terrorism in the months leading up to October 11, 2008, when President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.



The Taliban leader mentioned, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is an individual with a long and repulsive history. Hekmatyar muscled his way to the leadership of a mujaheddin faction after the Soviet invasion. His medieval radicalism made him a favored beneficiary of the Pakistani ISI and the Saudis, which largely controlled the distribution of U.S. aid to the mujaheddin and helped Gulbeddin build a power base at the expense of more moderate groups. Our deference to the Pakistanis was one of the two grave errors of our otherwise commendable support for the mujaheddin. The other was our post-Soviet withdrawal from Afghan affairs, a decision that abdicated Afghanistan to thugs like Gulbuddin, and ultimately gave rise to a sanctuary for Osama bin Laden.