Hey, it worked before. /s

I agree with you, gjohnsit, that the assertion that Iran supported Al Qaeda because Al Qaeda operatives traveled through Iran at some point is sad, infuriating, humiliatingly flagrant and shocking in its stupidity. It seems they don't even think anyone will take it seriously.

But we trained Al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. The CIA supported and trained Al Qaeda. Does the Authorization to Use Military Force apply to the CIA? Can we send American forces to destroy the CIA?

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_cia07.htm

On March 20, 1998, The New York Times reported that during its existence, Harvey Point trained 18,000 foreign intelligence operatives from 50 different countries.

Among those terrorists trained at Harvey Point were those who worked for,
the Chilean military junta of General Augusto Pinochet
El Salvador's death squad chief Roberto D'Aubisson
Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate
Katangan secessionist leader Moise Tshombe
Angola's UNITA guerrilla force
Colombian counter-insurgency personnel
Laotian anti-communist paramilitary forces
Arab cadres who would later join Osama bin Laden's forces fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan

… Cuban exile operatives, some of whom had received CIA training, staged two audacious acts of terrorism in 1976: They bombed a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people, and participated in the assassination of Chilean exile leader Orlando Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, who were killed by a car bomb as they drove up Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.

… In his newly published memoir, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, former CIA officer Bob Baer describes the "two weeks of nonstop demolition training" he received in North Carolina as a young recruit in the early 1970s:

"We spent two days crimping blasting caps to make sure we understood that if you crimped them too high, they'd explode and take your hand off. After we'd mastered that, we crimped them in the dark, by feel.

Then we started blowing things up: cars, buses, diesel generators, fences, bunkers. We made a school bus disappear with about 20 pounds of U.S. C-4. For comparison's sake, we tried Czech Semtex and a few other foreign plastic explosives.

"Not that you really needed anything fancy. We blew up one bus using three sacks of fertilizer and fuel oil, a mixture called ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil), that did more damage than the C-4 had. The biggest piece left was a part of the chassis, which flew in an arc, hundreds of yards away.

We learned to mix up a potent cocktail called methyl nitrate. If you hit a small drop of it with a hammer, it split the hammer. Honest. We were also taught some of the really esoteric stuff like E-cell times, improvising pressurized airplane bombs using a condom and aluminum foil, and smuggling a pistol on an airplane concealed in a mixture of epoxy and graphite.

By the end of the training, we could have taught an advanced terrorism course."

http://www.historycommons.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=harvey+point&...

1980: Afghan Fighters Begin Training in US
Some fighters opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan begin training in the US. According to journalist John Cooley, the training is done by Navy Seals and Green Beret officers who have taken draconian secrecy oaths. Key Pakistani officers are trained, as well as some senior Afghan mujaheddin. Much of the training takes place in Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia, which is said to be the CIA’s main location for training spies and assets. Other training takes place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Harvey Point, North Carolina, and Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia. Subjects are trained in how to detect explosives, surveillance, how to recruit new agents, how to run paramilitary operations, and more. They are taught to use many different weapons as well, including remote-controlled mines and bombs, and sophisticated timers and explosives.

… in the late 1980s, US consular official Michael Springmann will notice fighters from many Middle Eastern nations are getting US visas, apparently to train in the US for the Afghan war (see September 1987-March 1989). Additionally, more training takes place in other countries. For instance, Cooley will note, “By the end of 1980, US military trainers were sent to Egypt to impart the skills of the US Special Forces to those Egyptians who would, in turn, pass on the training to the Egyptian volunteers flying to the aid of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan.” Cooley will further note, “Time and time again, these same techniques reappear among the Islamist insurgents in Upper Egypt and Algeria, since the ‘Afghani’ Arab veterans began returning there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” [COOLEY, 2002, PP. 70-72] It is not known how long these training programs continue.

http://www.historycommons.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=ksm+north+car...

1987-1991: KSM Works in Afghanistan for Warlord Most Favored by CIA
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) fights and works in Afghanistan. KSM, a Pakistani who spent most of his childhood in Kuwait, went to college at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the US from 1983 to 1986. Then, in 1987, he goes to Afghanistan to take part in the struggle against the Russians. Two of his brothers die in the fighting there. Another brother, Zahid Shaikh Mohammed, works for a prominent Islamic charity there and introduces KSM to Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan warlord. KSM serves as Sayyaf’s secretary and helps recruit Arabs to fight in Afghanistan for Sayyaf’s faction... At the time, the CIA and Saudi Arabia are spending billions of dollars funding warlords such as Sayyaf. The Los Angeles Times will later call Sayyaf “the favored recipient of money from the Saudi and American governments.” While in Afghanistan, KSM also gets to know bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and many other future al-Qaeda leaders.